Let’s start with the bad.

You could say there is no such thing as bad QC, because any feedback is good feedback. However, sometimes quality control can be rushed. That’s never a good thing.

Working in VFX is stressful because everything seems like it needs to be delivered right away. That stress can often feed into how artists approach their shots, or submit dalies. From an artist perspective; if you know that your shot is a high priority, and the supervisor wants to see something the day of, you might quickly submit something. Without checking it over. You might suddenly look at the time, and panic knowing you only have an hour of the day left to complete your task. If this is the case: slow down. Quality control starts at the artist level. You need to train yourself what a good take on an effect looks like.

- Start thinking like your supervisor. What type of note would they leave on a shot? What movement in regards to pyro, particles, or animation do they like? Are your emitters visible? Does your effect have proper timing and energy in accordance with the scene? Things like that. If you can plan for what your supervisor is going to say, then you can predict the mistakes that will get flagged in your work.

You also need input. The best thing you can do before you submit something is to have someone else review it. By having another set of eyes take a look, you can flag any issues before you submit your work. Or revise it once again. Some studios have buddy systems for this, others have the HOD(Head of Department). Sometimes HODs take a look at everyone's work before it gets submitted for review, and flag anything that needs to be sent back. Leads can also do this as well. But you can always ask a coworker to take a look.

- QC doesn’t end at the artist level. From a technical and pipeline perspective, quality control procedures are extremely needed. Checks need to be put in place to make sure effects and assets are published correctly, and that they make it to the compositing stage in one piece. You can’t fix everything in comp, and relying on that is completely unfair to everyone involved.

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In a perfect world a studio’s quality control system would look something like this, depending on the pipeline:

Every department should have their own QC process. For example, animation will have witness cameras, pre-post roll checks, ground and interaction checks. The FX department might have QC passes to check motion blur. (Don’t count on it) Finally, the rigging and technical animation department might have something to check rig intersections, skin and tissue layers, and animation tests with the rigs.

Most of these processes would be set up by TDs.

For example, animation TDs might set up a system that checks an animator’s shot to make sure it has pre and post roll for the character movements. Or maybe even create setups for double checking cloth intersections.

Usually, whenever an artist publishes an asset there should be an additional system that is triggered. This system should create a render to preview how the object looks in motion. This QC system can then verify all the necessary elements are there, and that motion blur is working.

Another important system TDs might make is to create a system that will double check models before they are passed off to FX. This system might make sure that the assets are functional, can be exploded and fractured without any issues, or show how it works in test simulations.

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In an even more perfect world, production and supervisors might have a post mortem after a production has wrapped, and talk about what did, and didn’t work. Then use that feedback to improve quality going forward. However, if this does happen in a studio, quite often the feedback is forgotten. Which isn’t very helpful. Realistically, in your career, they might not even happen.

Supervisors can have their own level of quality control as well. Sometimes they have meetings to find which assets can be “locked for lighting.” This can be a meeting where all the department supervisors. HODs, production managers can meet and talk about which assets are going into the final stage of their development. This is a great way for all the higher ups to decide what assets could be better, if they have time to fix something, what cannot change, or if the production just needs to move forward.

Some studios even have QC specialists. These jobs are focused around making sure the company protocols are followed, auditing departments, overseeing procedures, making sure every department has QC procedures, and much more. They can also work with HODs to solve asset problems.

Some studios, if they rely solely on their artists to grade their quality control, make them do occasional questionnaires so they take feedback correctly. Which never helps because no one pays attention to a questionnaire. So I don’t recommend encouraging those methods. Even if you make them watch a series of 15, 15 minute long videos about how to understand feedback. They more than likely will be watching Netflix in another tab, or talking to their other coworkers about how much watching videos like this is wasting their time. It’s alright to have HR resources and training, it's another thing to make them watch generic videos that are not job specific. It’s better to have your artists have hands-on quality control training, than leave them to their own devices.