[I] Colorist Burn-Out and How to Avoid it

[lilmissy4205]

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).  

[Pepzilla]

Okay so this kind of spreads off topic from what youre saying but has to do with changing the responsibilities of colorists~

I think itd be nice to have an official organizer. Not a manager but someone who literally does the manual work involved with breedings and customs. Updating the lists, checking entries for completeness. Literally rolling for the winners even methinks.  

[lilmissy4205]

That would fall in hiring staff that is non-colorists to simplify the workload and save other staff members the worry. Your suggestion is a great one, King.  

[Renegade Athena]

I think both are quite excellent ideas. Especially about an organizer, because right now the colorist have to do a lot just to keep things running smoothly and it would take a load off if they didn't have to roll, keep track of lists, and other various tasks that they dont need to do while having to worry about coloring.  

[Yuuka Kurokawa]

I think several people have offered to help out, but have been told no thank you. I think it'd be great to help out the colorists. It always seems to me that they could use a hand, especially during events when they can't open/close at the set time.


Aerithe hired itself an event manager whose job it was to start the events, keep the lists, and roll the winners. I think that's Soquili needs if nothing else, to save it's colorists.  

[lilmissy4205]

I'd use the word "Organizer" over "Manager" to not make it seem so... controlling, ya know? But it would put a lot of strain on the event organizer to do all of that simply because sometimes things will start at one point, close at another, something happening in between, so they'd have probably underlings to help them with each task.  

[Graceangel]

Perhaps this event/sundry duties organizer/manager would during events run most of that; but during non event time, do what king was suggesting with going over lists. and maybe some people can be hired as "seasonal" staff who help just during events? Like, IRL, i work in retail for a very big national company. This time of year, we are swamped and are unable to meet our demand with the normal staff roster. They hire lots and lots of people to fill our staffing needs; then come just after christmas.. most of those people are let go. They are brought back later on when demand starts to come back. Sometimes we end up keeping people and making them permanent part of our staff.

This might be something they want to think about. I know that isn't a normal game plan for most b/c shops, but soquili isn't really just a normal b/c shop. The size of it really is huge enough to warrant some out of the box ideas to help the shop run as its best and most effective.

and, I'm sure there are plenty of people around who would be more than ecstatic to help soquili do lots of back of house type duties around here to make things better... especially if the end result is that there is more availability.  

[lilmissy4205]

An excellent point, Grace.  

[Felmino]

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.  

[lilmissy4205]

Thank you, Fel. I wasn't sure on some of the factors, but that does clear it up.

Also, I'd like to voice that a lot of artists in the Gaia community aren't even aware the of skill required for B/C pets. I actually shocked a few artists when I suggested they test their skills in B/C hiring threads. Not sure how you could advertise that out to that community, but I feel it would be something to look into perhaps to help with hiring.

But what about Grace's suggestion of "event" helpers only like the seasonal employment we're seeing across the US in preparation for Black Friday and the Holiday Season?  

[Felmino]

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.  

[Kamiki]

Fel - I think "event helpers" could be valuable, even if they didn't have access to the PB. Just having someone who could update raffle ticket lists and/or run games for colorists who would prefer not to/did not have the time to distribute the ponies they made. They might need mule access, but a new mule could be made for a certain event, or even keep the helpers to running free events and the like so no gold would have to be involved.

Maybe just on an event-by-event basis, depending on how the event is run/what games/raffle would be a part of it.

 

[LOLTERNATIVE]

With the trust issues about hiring someone to handle events etc'. You can check trade history and so should someone break the rules; surely you can report them.
But, while I am a newb, the B/C shop I work out hires people to help during events sometimes. Whether it be running small games or simply opening and closing an auction.

The people hired were regulars at our shop, so there was a level of trust. That might be something to go by.

in before; that's favouritism. It's not, it's just getting rid of some of the feeling of distrust and also feeling easy knowing the person is someone who knows the runnings of Soq.

I could be wrong about this; I'm only new but. Yeah.  

[one over three]

I may be one of the few with this sentiment but I've felt for a while that hiring on some colour only breeders / regular staff would be nice. Quality colourists are far easier to find then people who are skilled at colouring, editing, and shading but can still produce some stunning horses.

There are many colour soq who are just as beautiful as their edited counterparts, and I'm sure lots of people who are having trouble getting even their first Soq don't much mind if it doesn't have any edits.

This, of course, wouldn't be intended to remove the ability of regular colourists to do colour-only soq but just relive some of the demand for soq in general. As it's going right now I sometimes wonder if some people don't just ask for edits because unedited soq really aren't that much easier to get. (I'm not referring to anyone in particular there. That's just based on my own experience trying to get edited or unedited soq customs.)  

[Ririka]

Familiar colorists sort of work as "regular staff" whom take care of the area of producing unedited horses for small games, flaffles, small sales, and stuff that do not involve customs, breedings, high auctions, ect since the junior and senior colorists take care of those areas.

So basically while their main job is to first finish off their familiar quota, after that it is their job to produce unedited pets for flaffle stock and whatever else the shop may need.

As I pointed out in another thread, while hiring on more people may seem easy it is far from it. Sometimes hiring on more people can do more harm than good, especially when you have to jump through so many hoops just to consider hiring one extra person.