NDA Work

[glorybound]

How often do you guys do NDA work? It kind of takes the air out of a project, doesn't it? It's hard to be motivated to do great work if you can't show it as your own. Or, maybe the money should be the motivator.

[Neilg]

nearly everything we do has nda's, we cant even say that we're working on it until well after it's public launch. it used to bum me out a bit but you get used to it for stills, you find new satisfaction and rely on your own opinion more.
I'm still not used to it for animation and longer scale work though, it's when you spend 6+months on something and cant even share it with your family or on facebook - you sort of have to forget about it and move on and to not have anything to show for such a massive stretch of time is kinda sad. our 432 film was finished 18 months ago and we've got no idea when (if ever) it's going to be public.

[glorybound]

I guess I can chose not to take jobs that are NDA. It doesn't really matter how "cool" the project is if you can't share it; it almost doesn't exist.

[voltron7]

most of mine are also private/nda

[Da_elf]

i do it all the time.

[Neilg]

I guess I can chose not to take jobs that are NDA. It doesn't really matter how "cool" the project is if you can't share it; it almost doesn't exist.

Thats kind of a weird way to think. Is the only reason you took this career in the hopes of getting admiration from strangers on the internet?

[glorybound]

I feels that it almost becomes about the money. There are situations where it makes sense, like new movies or games, but houses; kinda lame. Nobody will steal a house design from a rendering. However, in my case, I think they want my work to be from them. It's a moot point, I signed the agreement.

[glorybound]

Thats kind of a weird way to think. Is the only reason you took this career in the hopes of getting admiration from strangers on the internet?

not at all! It's about doing good work, which leads to more work. It's also about being acknowledged for your skill and hard work. It's about not busting your butt making someone else look good. I think it's pretty normal to think like this, no?

[glorybound]

It's a small part of what I do, so no big deal. But, if I had to chose between an NDA project and a non-NDA one, I would chose the non-NDA for the reasons I wrote.

[Neilg]

our long term nda's are about the work getting public - we can still show it to potential clients and get more work from it. it's still our work, nobody elses name goes on it - it's just keeping it away from children writing articles about it on buzzfeed because that harms the impression of exclusivity with potential buyers.
competition nda's only last a week or two when we cant talk about the job, then after that we can talk about it but not put the images out online.

[alexyork]

It's always a bit of a drag. We have a large number of images we produced over the last 7 years that were done under an extremely tight NDA and the world will never see them, unfortunately. Lots of competition images and plenty of "out there" middle-eastern and Asian projects that were primarily done to massage the egos of a few very wealthy individuals who never really intended to show the project to the public. But that's just how the business is and that's fine for us, really. For every project we can't show we have 3-4 that we can. You just have to try to forget about the ones you can't show, as someone further up in this thread mentioned.

One thing we've had a lot is that we can show the images/animation but we can't refer to it by its official project name or exact location. People often ask me why we have so many projects on our site called "London House", "House in London", "The House", "House in Notting Hill" etc. and that's the reason!

[glorybound]

That was my understanding; not naming it by name, but they don't want me to show anything. Oh well, I think I am over it.

It's always a bit of a drag. We have a large number of images we produced over the last 7 years that were done under an extremely tight NDA and the world will never see them, unfortunately. Lots of competition images and plenty of "out there" middle-eastern and Asian projects that were primarily done to massage the egos of a few very wealthy individuals who never really intended to show the project to the public. But that's just how the business is and that's fine for us, really. For every project we can't show we have 3-4 that we can. You just have to try to forget about the ones you can't show, as someone further up in this thread mentioned.

One thing we've had a lot is that we can show the images/animation but we can't refer to it by its official project name or exact location. People often ask me why we have so many projects on our site called "London House", "House in London", "The House", "House in Notting Hill" etc. and that's the reason!

[Morbid Angel]

Its fine, 80% of what people do is NDA restricted and studio who contracts this stuff out reserves the right to let you show this work or not.

[Vizioen]

95% of my work is NDA unfortunately, the only satisfaction is my family and friends get to see it when they come over. It's not like they can do anything with what they saw.

edit: the thing that actually sucks; i want to create a portfolio website but I can only show one project that I did in my very little sparetime, because I want to go fulltime freelancer. But a portfolio with one project isn't really much of a portfolio

[glorybound]

edit: the thing that actually sucks; i want to create a portfolio website but I can only show one project that I did in my very little sparetime, because I want to go fulltime freelancer. But a portfolio with one project isn't really much of a portfolio

That's exactly the dilemma. It's hard to do your best work when it's benefiting someone else, too.