At EA Orlando, I am a lead rigger working with animation on Madden 08 and Madden 09. In my professional
opinion, I would critique it and be brutal. For example, if an animator is using lousy technique and twisting a
clavicle in Z as opposed to in the X or Y axis- common sense things that were a common problem there- I became frustrated and would be brutal in critique sessions. Some of the animation supervisors and animation leads are professional and realize that I am having an intelligent Siskel and Ebert type discussion- others took it personally and behaved immaturely. I am on facebook and linkedin with people from that studio. This affects my demo reel. Lucasfilm/ ILM looks at this. At one point I told people there that I wanted to involved the personal trainers at the RDV SportsComplex that train the Orlando Magic to have them critique the football motions. I am dealing with an animation team and animaiton management team that are from Michael Eisner's Disney studio that were fired when the studio closed or from Motorolla. These are traditional animators that have worked on Brother Bear and Over the Range and have not been exposed to computer graphics before. I have come to find out that I actually critique like a typical ILM employee. We are a lot like Simon Cowell- professional but honest- complimenting as much as giving bad work our true opinion. That's how you learn. I don't get personallty attached to my work. I know that when I put it up, it might get destroyed in a critique session and I have to fix it. ILM often times brings in physiologists and researchers outside of Lucasfilm to assist. Robert Bakker was brought in on Jurassic Park. The year I worked on Madden it got an 8.9 on IGN. Madden 11 got a 7.9 and Madden 12 got an 8.0. This title, in my opinion, is going in the wrong direction.