This past summer I worked as an office production assistant for a company called Red Car NY. They are are a national creative editorial company that offers their clients a diverse roster of creative editors, designers, animators, and visual-effects artists. Throughout my 3 month internship I was fortunate enough to spend time watching a Flame Artist work his magic. Now you may be asking your self, how what is a Flame Artist and how do they get their name. More often than not many jobs get their names from the tools they use and a Flame Artist is no exception. Flame is a computer program used to create 3D visual effects, advanced graphics and 3D compositing. Visual effect artist can use this program for real-time color grading and editorial finishing post-production solutions.
Typical solutions that Flame artist can fix consist of color correction, removing microphones/lights from background of the scene, adding special effects such as fires, mythical creatures, soaring bands of color, or flying splatters of blood.
Example of a Flame Artist using flame to relight a shot in a film.
Depending on their skill level a flame artist salary can range from $26,000 to $112,000 a year. Clients will typically pay them by the hour. Usually a Flame Artists office is a a lager room so that their clients can sit in an watch what you are doing and give them suggestions on your revisions.
If you feel that you are ready for a challenge, and work well under pressure and are a team player becoming a Flame Artist might be the job for you!
This past weekend I was in NYC interviewing for a couple animation/motion graphics internships for the upcoming summer. I interviewed at Click 3X (http://www.click3x.com/), this really cool entertainment company who do the graphics for the Superbowl, the Geico pig commercials and the E*Trade Baby. I got a tour of their studio and office which was really awesome. They have this massive Flame compositing suite with these mega computers for fast rendering.
I really love the E*Trade commercials. I learned they were made by filming babies on green screens and filming older children who read the script. The lips of the older children were composited onto the babies which was then supplemented by the voice actors audio track. A pretty crazy process that produced an almost seamless result.
I spend a lot of time on my weekends watching football games, and I began to think about the motion graphics used week in and week out by the major sports networks, in particular, Fox Sports. I discovered that Fox Sports has both a graphics and a design team, and that the graphics team was the one responsible for a majority of the graphics we have become accustomed to on Sundays, such as the basic wipes on the screen, as well as the jumping robot that shows up on the side of the screen quite often.
I was interested to find that the Fox Sports Graphics website actually had a link to the FOX NFL graphics used, and it showed the various wipes and interstitials and other graphics used. The website with all of this information can be found here.
I wasn't able to find substantial information on the Fox Sports Graphics team's software used, but the Fox Sports Design team's webpage states that it employs a number of designers, mostly those who specialize in Flame. Sports in particular have put a strong emphasis in their broadcasts on the use of motion graphics, and it can be seen more and more each year.
