I thought twice about posting this here, but I couldn't help it. How many times, in a 4a.m., coffee-addled, sleep-deprived daze, have you wished you had the resources to do this?
i wonder if his employee is part of the deal when he graduates and starts looking for work...
seriously though... maybe some schools should offer specialized programs for wealthy students that are bound for self-employment after graduation. the program could emphasize conceptual design, project management, and leadership.
well, i for one see no problem in this proposition, although i'd never do something like that, even if i had enough money.
Even if the person hires someone who can render cool shit for him/her, i think that will not overshadow the content, and if the instructors are stupid enough to look at the presentation over the content, (which i think a lot of instructors in american schools are) then it serves them right.
when I was an undergrad at Georgia Tech, one of the students in the class ahead of mine was the son of a VERY well-known architect who ran a large well-known firm in Atlanta - one day this guy shows up for a jury on a large urban design project with this PROFESSIONAL QUALITY model constructed by the model shop at his dad's firm - it was an unbelievably high-quality model, sitting right next to chip-board and elmer's glue work done by his fellow students
the employer/student has more lucid time to develop content than one would without presentation help. i don't think the line between seductive image and content (or intent) is as clear as you think sod.
the ethical pedagogical problem with this concerns the content that the 3d guy will invariably contribute.
one would not be sharing a level playing field with this guy as a classmate and in that way it's very realistic prep. for post school.
I TA'd a design studio for non-designers last year. A couple of the teams proposed to hire somebody to do CADwork. I talked them out of it. Schools take cheating very seriously and getting expelled over 20 hours of your life just isn't worth it. Most people I know do design because they like making things, whether by hand or digitally, and no matter what their socioeconomic circumstances. If they're not into the process.. the whole process.. as a student, I really think they should be looking for another trade.
In fairness to the guy trying to hire a Rhino/Maya expert: he hasn't said that he's an architecture or design student. He's only saying he needs renderings for an academic project. As an undergrad I used to work on freelance illustration and 3D modeling projects for medical students and science majors - it was not considered "cheating" in their field to hire a professional to create illustrations and diagrams, in fact in some cases their departments kept binders of contact info for people like me.
So just maybe this person is looking for help in 3D-ing something for illustration purposes in some other field.
Personally the issue that always annoyed me in grad school was the phenomenon of the model-building/research-assistant/stippler/etc. spouse (or life-partner, or mom, or house-boy) that many grad students seemed to keep busy on pretty much a fulltime basis. It seemed like there were a lot of people who effectively had a built-in assistant. I always wondered what happened to the classmate whose mom used to poche all his drawings and write "outlines" for all his papers "just to get him started" once he got a real job. I was afraid I'd end up in some firm with him and his mom as my cublcle-mates.
Yes Formerlyunknown, that's why I mentioned the PhD thing. Someone doing advanced research could actually have grant money, etc., to spend on an assistant.
Another interesting precedent: At my school, thesis students were allowed to recruit up to two freshman undergrads to help them in the last week of before reviews (freshman coursework and reviews were over). The freshman were encouraged to take up these offers as an educational experience. I personally declined, because my thesis was such that I didn't really need a workhorse to do renderings or build models, and it would have taken me too much time and energy to communicate what I was doing and supervise. Everybody was offered this assistance though, not just a few people.
Mar 1, 06 5:52 pm ·
·
The following excerpt comes from Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens - a study of the play element in culture:
“The player who trespasses against the rules or ignores them is a “spoil-sportâ€. The spoil-sport is not the same as the false player, the cheat; for the latter pretends to be playing the game and, on the face of it, still acknowledges the magic circle. It is curious to note how much more lenient society is to the cheat than to the spoil-sport. This is because the spoil-sport shatters the play-world itself. By withdrawing from the game he reveals the relativity and fragility of the play-world in which he had temporarily shut himself with others. He robs play of its illusion--a pregnant word which means literally “in-play†(from inlusio, illudere or inludere). Therefore he must be cast out, for he threatens the existence of the play-community. . . . In the world of high seriousness, too, the cheat and the hypocrite have always had an easier time of it than the spoil-sport, here called apostates, heretics, innovators, prophets, conscientious objectors, etc. It sometimes happens, however, that the spoil-sports in their turn make a new community with rules of its own."
[For the record, I'm a "spoil-sport," but not a cheat, and maybe that's why some have a hard time understanding me.]
At my school everyone pitches in to help the thesis students do their final production stuff. Its pretty interesting though, the way the labor gets divided up and how much you learn about the difficulty of shopping your work out to others and still having it turn out the way you want. If this guy is able to get useful production out of this deal he’ll be developing a lot of important management skills and, I bet, not doing much less work. If he’s trying to cheat and get off easy, he’ll just going to get some silly pictures that won’t help him much.
I think the whole architect-as-one-man-army thing is definitely not the only, and probably not the best way to operate.
mdler,
good comment.
there's one guy in our studio who seems to be of independent wealth who almost through a fit because he got his balls busted for not having plans pinned up for his crit. he thought the request was ridiculous.
btw, michael benedikt was telling us how at the university of the witwatersrand in south africa it was tradition for the elder students to "hire" the younger students to help with their work...real-world training in school
use whatever resources you've got. if this guy wants to spend his cash, then so be it. I mean, it's not that much cash in the big picture of school loans, not to mention that there is less model making going on (I spent fortunes on basswood in undergrad, spend almost nothing on materials in grad school).
In the end, the design will be stand on it's own merit. The only variable is how good the guy is and how much he contributes. Surely, at a good school, really nice renderings could actually hurt a project.
my undergrad school had a similar apprenticeship of underclassmen to thesis students, most people didn't use the help, and if they did it was just for the last week of school (after underclassmen studios were finished). i helped a thesis student out while i was in first year - making a site model, photographing models and rendering some hand drawings - i learned quite a bit about representation, craft and got to work on a project that was way more complex than i could wrap my head around at that point. the experience definately changed the standards to which i held myself.
it does set up a strange hierarchy though, since it is never a collaborative process, but rather manager - cad monkey.
Mar 26, 06 7:57 pm ·
·
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Wealthy students, swamped with work?
I thought twice about posting this here, but I couldn't help it. How many times, in a 4a.m., coffee-addled, sleep-deprived daze, have you wished you had the resources to do this?
I should add that this could be a perfectly legitimate offer from a PhD student or the like ...
I'd be charging at least $30-50 an hour for 3D renderings. No doubt he'll find somebody willing to do it for $20, though.
i wonder if his employee is part of the deal when he graduates and starts looking for work...
seriously though... maybe some schools should offer specialized programs for wealthy students that are bound for self-employment after graduation. the program could emphasize conceptual design, project management, and leadership.
Or maybe a "Design for Developers" certificate program.
well, i for one see no problem in this proposition, although i'd never do something like that, even if i had enough money.
Even if the person hires someone who can render cool shit for him/her, i think that will not overshadow the content, and if the instructors are stupid enough to look at the presentation over the content, (which i think a lot of instructors in american schools are) then it serves them right.
paul,
isnt that called the ivy leauges???
this isn't just an "ivy league" thing ...
when I was an undergrad at Georgia Tech, one of the students in the class ahead of mine was the son of a VERY well-known architect who ran a large well-known firm in Atlanta - one day this guy shows up for a jury on a large urban design project with this PROFESSIONAL QUALITY model constructed by the model shop at his dad's firm - it was an unbelievably high-quality model, sitting right next to chip-board and elmer's glue work done by his fellow students
i think he got a C
exactly, ringo, i think some profs are smart enough to know good work from dirty shit, just well presented
mdler - based on that post it is safe to assume you did not get into an ivy, yeah?
the employer/student has more lucid time to develop content than one would without presentation help. i don't think the line between seductive image and content (or intent) is as clear as you think sod.
the ethical pedagogical problem with this concerns the content that the 3d guy will invariably contribute.
one would not be sharing a level playing field with this guy as a classmate and in that way it's very realistic prep. for post school.
didnt apply
got into my first and only choice, University of Cincinnati, however
I TA'd a design studio for non-designers last year. A couple of the teams proposed to hire somebody to do CADwork. I talked them out of it. Schools take cheating very seriously and getting expelled over 20 hours of your life just isn't worth it. Most people I know do design because they like making things, whether by hand or digitally, and no matter what their socioeconomic circumstances. If they're not into the process.. the whole process.. as a student, I really think they should be looking for another trade.
In fairness to the guy trying to hire a Rhino/Maya expert: he hasn't said that he's an architecture or design student. He's only saying he needs renderings for an academic project. As an undergrad I used to work on freelance illustration and 3D modeling projects for medical students and science majors - it was not considered "cheating" in their field to hire a professional to create illustrations and diagrams, in fact in some cases their departments kept binders of contact info for people like me.
So just maybe this person is looking for help in 3D-ing something for illustration purposes in some other field.
Personally the issue that always annoyed me in grad school was the phenomenon of the model-building/research-assistant/stippler/etc. spouse (or life-partner, or mom, or house-boy) that many grad students seemed to keep busy on pretty much a fulltime basis. It seemed like there were a lot of people who effectively had a built-in assistant. I always wondered what happened to the classmate whose mom used to poche all his drawings and write "outlines" for all his papers "just to get him started" once he got a real job. I was afraid I'd end up in some firm with him and his mom as my cublcle-mates.
Yes Formerlyunknown, that's why I mentioned the PhD thing. Someone doing advanced research could actually have grant money, etc., to spend on an assistant.
Another interesting precedent: At my school, thesis students were allowed to recruit up to two freshman undergrads to help them in the last week of before reviews (freshman coursework and reviews were over). The freshman were encouraged to take up these offers as an educational experience. I personally declined, because my thesis was such that I didn't really need a workhorse to do renderings or build models, and it would have taken me too much time and energy to communicate what I was doing and supervise. Everybody was offered this assistance though, not just a few people.
The following excerpt comes from Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens - a study of the play element in culture:
“The player who trespasses against the rules or ignores them is a “spoil-sportâ€. The spoil-sport is not the same as the false player, the cheat; for the latter pretends to be playing the game and, on the face of it, still acknowledges the magic circle. It is curious to note how much more lenient society is to the cheat than to the spoil-sport. This is because the spoil-sport shatters the play-world itself. By withdrawing from the game he reveals the relativity and fragility of the play-world in which he had temporarily shut himself with others. He robs play of its illusion--a pregnant word which means literally “in-play†(from inlusio, illudere or inludere). Therefore he must be cast out, for he threatens the existence of the play-community. . . . In the world of high seriousness, too, the cheat and the hypocrite have always had an easier time of it than the spoil-sport, here called apostates, heretics, innovators, prophets, conscientious objectors, etc. It sometimes happens, however, that the spoil-sports in their turn make a new community with rules of its own."
[For the record, I'm a "spoil-sport," but not a cheat, and maybe that's why some have a hard time understanding me.]
actually i like the posts of rita/quondam/wilhelm - he's a catcher in the rye
hopping along....
At my school everyone pitches in to help the thesis students do their final production stuff. Its pretty interesting though, the way the labor gets divided up and how much you learn about the difficulty of shopping your work out to others and still having it turn out the way you want. If this guy is able to get useful production out of this deal he’ll be developing a lot of important management skills and, I bet, not doing much less work. If he’s trying to cheat and get off easy, he’ll just going to get some silly pictures that won’t help him much.
I think the whole architect-as-one-man-army thing is definitely not the only, and probably not the best way to operate.
mdler,
good comment.
there's one guy in our studio who seems to be of independent wealth who almost through a fit because he got his balls busted for not having plans pinned up for his crit. he thought the request was ridiculous.
hey dudes...this guy's paying "up front" thru may
take him for all he's worth
btw, michael benedikt was telling us how at the university of the witwatersrand in south africa it was tradition for the elder students to "hire" the younger students to help with their work...real-world training in school
use whatever resources you've got. if this guy wants to spend his cash, then so be it. I mean, it's not that much cash in the big picture of school loans, not to mention that there is less model making going on (I spent fortunes on basswood in undergrad, spend almost nothing on materials in grad school).
In the end, the design will be stand on it's own merit. The only variable is how good the guy is and how much he contributes. Surely, at a good school, really nice renderings could actually hurt a project.
my undergrad school had a similar apprenticeship of underclassmen to thesis students, most people didn't use the help, and if they did it was just for the last week of school (after underclassmen studios were finished). i helped a thesis student out while i was in first year - making a site model, photographing models and rendering some hand drawings - i learned quite a bit about representation, craft and got to work on a project that was way more complex than i could wrap my head around at that point. the experience definately changed the standards to which i held myself.
it does set up a strange hierarchy though, since it is never a collaborative process, but rather manager - cad monkey.
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