Quote - but if i were looking to hire someone i can say i'd pick the person who doesn't reinvent the wheel and uses the easiest, quickest, cheapest and most effective way possible to achieve spec.  frankly, that's a skill in itself, and if you only know the long way, it's a more expensive hole in one's knowledge than the other way around.  i consider my propensity to build rather than customize a great, great weakness of mine.

This works both ways. A person who only knows the short cut will be in a fix the first time they encounter something that is outside of what the short cuts handle. Someone who knows only the long way usually has a deeper understanding of the work and can often cobble together what they need from scratch, while the other guy is standing around scratching his head. Which is more expensive depends on how badly your system is screwed LOL

Quote - i mean, i looked at every page of the preview of the "essence: the face" book by ballistic.  every single piece looks so much like v3 i can't see the point.

You are not alone, other people were also complaining about the book at CGTalk. But the publisher donates part of the money from sales to run that site, so it can be somewhat excused i think.

Quote - i shouldn't get mad because i spent ages trying to get a  material and lighting correct, because i could do the same thing they did and chose to make my life harder.  that's not something i feel i should be proud of

I understand that you want every work to be judged solely on what it is and not where it came from But IMO in CG, the process is just as, if not more, important then the result. Because it's only the combination of process + result that lets us judge a work fairly. If we only use the result, then how do we discount the powerful hardware and software that is helping the artist, and get to the artist's skill itself ?

Or do we really want the richest artist with the largest runtime and the most expensive apps be the one with the most accolades ? Or the one most capable of deceiving people ?