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Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 1:21 pm
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After spending a few days in thought over Uta's issue about Availability in General, I was struck with a thought to help colorists from burn-out. With all good things, over time a person gets either bored or overwhelmed by the work. Right now, the demand is much higher than the supply, so this could lead to complications on a colorists' drive later on down the road. In the game World of Warcraft, the hardcore raiding guilds have developed a system to combat against burn-out and I'm hopeful this could be played out for the colorists.
First, events need to be planned in advance. Every New Year, the staff should compile the suggestions made in the feedback forum and discuss possibilities and when suggested themes should fall. This will give all colorists time to work on each event as well as stocking up the end of the year.
Secondly, once there are more senior colorists, they should get longer breaks between doing breedings and customs. Longer than every other month, but that would require more hiring, which I'll cover in a bit. See the hardcore raiders give their members anywhere from a week to three week break between raids. They also have set groups who run on different weeks. To make this work in the shop it would follow a pattern like this: Group A of colorists will have customs while Group D does breedings; Group B has customs the next month while Group E does breedings; Group C has customs the third month while Group A does breedings; etc. While I understand this system was already in effect, it quickly died away as colorists became busy.
Thirdly, the mark of a good guild in WoW is constant recruiting so it would be ideal to hire every six months to a year. Why? Because people will still hit a burn-out, RL will take priority, etc. Also this hiring process will mark more guest colorists to help in events.
Uta commented on how the same lines during the WoW event was a great way to up availability. My suggestion is to hire a staff member (or more) that would do edits/lines/templates only for events. No coloring, just lines. To what purpose? This is a simple manufacturer line to save the colorists more time while getting event Soquili ready.
Also it's time to stop giving staff multiple jobs inside the shop and simplify with more non-colorists staff. That means hiring for other positions and not just picking someone for the job. The argument has been made that trust is crucial, but so is understanding, knowledge, and background on the subject. When a staff is hired without an announcement about position availability, it is seen as favoritism. The staff would be honestly shocked by the different backgrounds their consumers have and how much they honestly want to help the shop without thinking about the perks (or I'm just putting too much stock in humanity again).
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Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 2:44 pm
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Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 2:58 pm
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Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 3:01 pm
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Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 5:43 pm
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Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 5:55 pm
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Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 6:18 pm
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Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 6:29 pm
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Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 11:19 pm
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Planning in Advance Events are planned in advance, usually by several months or more.
Rotations Seniors currently operate on a three cycle rotation (between customs, breedings, & freebies, two rounds of custom/breeding then one of freebies.) Juniors have a 3 breedings, 1 Freebie rotation.
Hiring Not to belittle your analogy, but it's harder to find qualified colorists than it is competent WoW guildmembers for raids. Simply throwing open hiring is not enough - you'll notice we hired only four Juniors this past round and it wasn't because we only wanted four, it's because those were the only four we felt comfortable putting directly to breedings. The seeming glut of familiar colorists are those who showed definite promise but needed a bit more polish on their skills - we are hoping to graduate some of them into the Junior ranks in time. It's getting more difficult to find "ready made" staff who can immediately take on responsibilities.
I'm hoping if we improve the way things work around here, we'll be able to attract more colorists.
Template Manufacturer An interesting idea, though not the easiest skillset to find. It certainly bears exploring.
Multiple Jobs It is true that colorists do many jobs besides coloring, but simply adding more staff is not necessarily a viable solution. "Too many chefs spoil the broth" is an adage for good reason. The more staff we have, the more time each person has to spend co-ordinating with others to make sure that things aren't missed or done twice.
Rolling (and list making) are performed by colorists because the consequences of mistakes are too dangerous to allow non-staff to handle - what if someone's left off the list? What if that person has had known disagreements with the listmaker? Who will rectify the situation and how? That's why I do my own list at least - so if there are mistakes, it's my fault and no others - it's not foul play but simple human error.
I believe we have more than enough NCS (non-colorist staff) to get the necessary jobs done, if they are effectively deployed.
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Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 11:32 pm
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Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 11:54 pm
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Seasonal Temporary help is an interesting idea as well, though it may be of limited value, as positions which handle gold, the PB and/or the mules are not given out lightly. Crewing someone in the guild is also not done lightly as it gives them access to all the plans and works in progress in the Staff Lounge - future events, planned auctions, completed pets, etc.
If we can come up with specific instances where seasonal staff could work, I wouldn't mind suggesting it.
Artists as B/C Colorists I hope I don't seriously offend anyone but... >_>; in our experience it generally does not work out well. "Freeform" artists are used to exactly that, freedom, not working with templated art and making their own style mesh with the existing pieces. While they are *absolutely* incredibly talented folk out there in AS&R, and they can produce very impressive samples, more often than not when they come to translate that into a pet it just doesn't work out as well as you'd hope. They also tend to chafe under the constraints that things like breedings require, where you can't just do whatever you want but have to produce something that's a convincing meld of the parents.
Granted this is a generalization (I'm sure there are some who excel at both), but people without any template work experience do not usually make good colorists.
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Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2010 5:34 am
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Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2010 10:20 pm
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Posted: Thu Nov 25, 2010 8:04 am
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High-functioning Hellraiser
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Posted: Thu Nov 25, 2010 8:18 am
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