Can you walk me through your journey with computer animation? How did you get into it?
Growing up, I was always the art kid. I always had sketchbooks with me and I drew a lot. But one big problem I had was drawing in perspective. Drawing perspective really threw me off. I've always been the type of person where I'm like: let me try to find an alternative way to deal with these things. So I quit drawing and immediately went into clay sculpting, and realized that was more in my lane. I also played a lot of games and wanted to know how they were made. Upon looking into that, I found a free program called Blender. Literally most of highschool was me leaving all my classes going to the random computer room, and spending the rest of my time on Blender, trying to make models and all that stuff. I did that for four years, so I was self taught from 2009 to 2013. After I graduated high school I was still on the fence of what I was gonna do, it was either go into this or culinary. I did not go into culinary obviously. I ended up going to community college for three years, and after that going to SVA for four years. In total it was about 11 years worth of both formal and informal education.
Since you spent so much time learning everything, is there one thing that you'd say is the best thing you ever learned or on the flipside-the worst?
Well…Hmm. Best thing I ever learned is a software called ZBrush which is a digital sculpting program. As soon as I picked that up I ended up really really diving in. I was raised in a medical household, and so I was exposed to a lot of anatomy books, so I've always ended up having a natural affinity towards that. As I started sculpting and all that stuff, I started gearing more towards the direction of photorealism. Trying to make people as realistic as possible. Originally, I was going into the industry for games, primarily character creation but that industry is crazy so I just ended up going with the flow. Worst thing? Uh…Worst thing I ever learned, or I guess had to deal with, was animation-ironically. Normally in this field, animators tend to have to know a lot, and typically what a lot of people notice is that most people who are animators only do animation. If you do anything else typically, you do everything else. I primarily do modeling, texturing, look dev, and rigging. Everything except animation.
What's the difference between modeling, texturing, look dev, rigging, and animation? How would you explain it to someone who knows nothing about it?
Okay so, think of modeling as actually creating your physical object. Models are entirely made of triangles and quads, and so as a modeler you're essentially manipulating a ton of triangles and squares to form whatever object you want. It sounds more complicated than it really is, granted it is really complicated. But when you're modeling, you're not really thinking about triangles or quads, you're just doing. A lot of tools especially, if you're sculpting, recreate traditional clay tools. So you're really mainly pulling on your artistic side, and combining it with the software to form what you need. So yeah, modeling is essentially making your object. Flat object, no color, just your physical object.
Texturing is adding color to that model. Essentially, that model will be unwrapped which is what we call making UVs. We are taking that 3D object and laying it out on a flat square image. Every point on the flat square image will correspond to a point on the 3D object. Now you can color a little square image, and when you apply that you'll have all your different details and colors appear on your model.
Look Dev is the next step where now you have your model and your textures, and then you want to tell the software how you want light to affect your model. So, the light is going to put out a ray against the surface of the object, and it's going to see that this object has, for example, a red texture on it. When the light returns to the camera, the light will return red. If the ray bounces off the environment, it'll now take on the color that it reflected on the object. Think of it like when you're wearing a bright red shirt in a dark room, and you go stand in the sunlight. Then the whole room lights up red, that's what you're doing with Look Dev. Making materials and telling them how they affect light.
Rigging, you know like stop animation where there are puppets with metal skeletons that allow you to move them in certain ways?
Mhm.
Rigging is that but digital. We are taking our models and putting a skeleton inside of it, and giving it controls. That way an animator can grab those controls and make it move. Then animators have a movement they want to do and they will use a rig that someone like me would have made, and they'll make it go from point A to point B, whatever they want.
Is it like a personal preference to do all but the animation or is it something else?
It all depends on the individual to be honest. I am a generalist, and I do have an affinity to take on a lot of different aspects for the pipeline. Typically, generalists are able to be super flexible and work on many different things. They also tend to not specialize. However, having a specialization alongside being a generalist is being more sought after. But also I think that tends to come with time. If a person starts out wanting to be a generalist it's probably not a good thing. Starting off, you should stick to one thing and then when you're ready to learn something else, start planning that while also incorporating whatever you learned before.
What is one of your favorite projects you've worked on?
I've done a lot of projects. The projects I tend to be most proud of are my character focus stuff. I have one that I did back in college that was a combination of a human and an ostrich, and I set them in a world where humans had evolved into these ostrich beings. Like they modified themselves, and now they run everything but present themselves in this very elegant and tribalistic kind of armor and stuff like that. Most of the body was visible but I had it completely wrapped up in beads, and jewelry. The armor plate had a crest, and it was covered with long bird feathers, white and gold.
Is that online? Can I find it somewhere?
Yeah, I can send you a link. I honestly don't post half the stuff I work on. Other projects I did work on… The human-ostrich being was more of a personal project, but jobwise I did get to work on a trailer for Beat Saber. It was a Beat Saber and BTS crossover. It's on Youtube. For that, I was mainly responsible for the city. I fully set up the layout, I did the cars, the lights-everything moving. The other thing I did on it was the shaders that are on the little BTS chibis.
Do you have a lot of creative freedom in your work?
Creative freedom is rare… Rare. But it's the nature of my current job which is in commercial advertisements. So I don't often get the opportunity to truly be creative on my projects. But once in a while I do get to be super creative. Oh wait, I have my old demo reel… Which is completely incomplete… Here you go, this will give you kind of an overall overview.
I have a short film that I am currently working on that I do have full creative freedom on my shot. It's a short film criticizing the pro-life people, and I have a shot that has a bunch of fetuses that are inside gel bubbles that are being saved from a fire. I am essentially doing a full CG (computer generated) shot of a bunch of these babies in the gels on top of heat lamps. One is medically accurate, and one is inaccurate. They are supposed to be 12 week fetuses.
I'm trying to get back into traditional work but most of my stuff is digital. I have been trying to get back into traditional stuff in search of creative freedom, as well as resparking my creativity. As you can imagine, doing a lot of your work digitally, if your brain is not wired for it a certain way, I feel like your natural creativity can be limited over time if you don't flex it. And due to the nature of this field being very technical, you can kind of get lost in sauce… and there's too much sauce. As a result, I stopped practicing my core of fundamentals. So there are aspects of this industry that are great-you can work on a lot of creative things and do a lot of interesting things, but yet feel like you're not doing anything. It's a hard field for sure.
Are you glad you picked it over culinary?
Yeah because I can still cook for myself and not be pissy about it. “Turn your hobby into your career and you'll never work a day in your life” is a lie. Turning your hobby into a career, takes away the hobby. So at least cooking can still be a hobby for me.
That was my outline but I'm down if you want to talk more.
Well I mean, I ain't going anywhere, I've got time.
Hmm what else would I want to know… Oh! Is your industry very collaborative or are you often solo?
Collaborative, it's very collaborative. There's a mindset that kind of develops while you're in school, one of competition because it's such a competitive field that everyone seems to lose sight of the core thing: we're joining teams of people to work on grand projects that need dozens of hands, hundreds of hands, thousands of hands. So it's highly, highly collaborative even when you're fast with something solely on your own. It still feels collaborative because at the end, whatever you make is going to be put into a larger piece, or you're working on something and you need to utilize something that isn't in your primary skill set-so you might need someone else who specializes in it to help you.
For example, during Thesis, a lot of people were working on films but they're not character modelers, so they will reach out to underclassmen or fellow seniors and say: oh, if you work on my character, I can do some animation for you. You're both working on your individual projects but you're still collaborating with each other. Also, if there's no direct work being done, there's teaching and knowledge sharing. You run into a problem and you don't know how to solve it, and you need another pair of eyes. That other person can give you suggestions or have a brainstorming session to come up with something grander than the original idea. It is highly collaborative even when it seems very isolating. I think it's only isolating due to the nature of starting my career right when covid started. So I was directly working from home. I haven't had too much experience in the studio/in person, though we do zoom calls and all that. When I started at the studio, I was an intern and I got to be in person at the studio for like two months before covid.
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I'm trying to think of more positive things since I think I've been sounding more negative. Let me focus on some more positive aspects! Sorry about that.
No worries!
Okay so…What's a positive thing… Ask me a question…
Hmm, so I know for some people the process can feel grueling but the completion of a project is very euphoric, or vice versa. Where would you say you fall on this spectrum?
It's kind of like the first one, I think it really depends on the project. Some projects are like two hours, and you're in and out, so there's not really enough time to get enjoyment out of it. But, there are these longer term projects such as the baby example which I've been working on for months. I have full control over my shots so I'm able to work at a relaxed pace, and really consider certain elements that I like. Like bringing in some interests, like they're on a heat lamp so light is going to be shining through them. So I want to show like mini baby bones showing through the skin. So the model, I have the baby sculpt, the skin sculpt, the skeleton layer, and little guts and eyeballs, that way when I shine the light through you can see all that going on. Projects like that tend to be really fulfilling during the process because I am able to just do whatever comes to mind, and with no, like, oversight. I mean, I'll render my shots and submit it to the person I would be doing it for, and they'll give me some notes. Like: oh hey, maybe we can turn down the brightness or change the hue. Small things, edits, things that fall in line with the vision. I just have the freedom to do whatever I want to achieve that vision. Sometimes having an open-ended assignment is kind of a struggle. Like personal projects , you made it and started it, but you never finished it because sometimes you lose direction, lose focus or you don't have a clear idea what the end goal is. So it's nice to do projects that have creative control through a job because I have one end goal, and I have freedom of doing whatever I want to get there. It makes it easier in the way that I don't have to question myself. Just ask myself: does this fall in line with the vision of the creator? If it does then I'm in a good direction, and I can keep going.
Everything can be so chaotic and complex that you get lost, so it's nice to have that little guide trail. I always adore any project that allows me to do something different or make me learn something new. You tend to need to learn random things that you never really think are going to be useful but then it is.