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Managing Assets in Final Fantasy
skia writes "Interesting topic with an even more interesting backdrop: Tracking Assets in the Production of "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within". From the article: "Creative processes don't have clearly defined paths... therefore, the attempt to give a static definition for such process has to face the tension between divergence towards the creative possibilities and convergence towards the pre-defined mechanical process that databases can handle." It also links to Beating the Averages, which is another must-read for /.ers."
I used to work in Multimedia in a large Internet Agency doing Director CD-rom productions for clients in teams ofusually about 5 or 6 people. The problems he describes in the article are exactly the same, on a smaller scale, to be found in most productions where you have management (the art director), designers (graphics, video and sound), project managers and coders. While coders and project managers want to see structured plans, directories, storyboards and timelines, each creative person usually has his or her own way of working with files which is often coupled with the fact that not many designers can communicate their wishes well to coders and coders seem to make interfaces that designers cannot use.
On one especially long hard project, we had several mishaps and lost assets because the designers forced us to work with a non logical file naming system, and at that time I wished for a tool that would enable designers to have their certain flexibility that they need but would still be structured enough not to hinder the coding process.
I'm still waiting today.