Pipeline programming

[bluebeezle]

I have sort of an unorthodox question, and I'm not sure where to post it. I'm a technical artist and while I'm capable of working as an artist in various parts of the artistic pipeline with modest success, I've found I really enjoy automating and streamlining art tools in every step of the pipeline at the studio I work for. I don't even know what to call that career, which makes it hard to compare jobs or find out what I should learn. I currently use JavaScript to extend Animate, After Effects, and Photoshop, but I'm self taught and would like to even venture to learning how to create tools outside of Adobe, if that would present more financial opportunities. Does anyone have any advice, or know where to point me? Thanks.

[Mylenium · Accepted solution]

There's no universal job for this. That's just the crux of it. Every facility has their own structures and needs and you can only operate within this context. It's the curse of all such programming - you can spend all day creating fancy JavaScript panels, Python Skripts and whatnot, but nobody would use them because they may not fit. Even many reasonably successful script sellers e.g. on sites like AEScripts only sell so many licenses.... If you're really looking to turn this into a job, then more generic consulting/ problem solving skills will be more adequate than programming knowledge. And if you really favor the latter, then inevitably you probably can't avoid getting into serious C/ C++ and working with the programs native APIs, networking code and so on. Ultimately that's what technical directors do - provide the tools for others, but often being the most invisible person of the whole process that keeps things running.

Mylenium