ArtBlast with Vitaly Bulgarov

yay we're doing it hey hey guys we're doing another one this is i mean it's always a special one for me but this one i think we have italia with us today and i've been a vitally fan for for many many years so i'm very very happy that he's like man thanks for having me it's my pleasure again uh exciting to finally chat with you with your camera zone i know we talked on social media but never like this so that's awesome and i mean just the fact just the opportunity for me to be able to share a little bit with the with the you know with everybody else i know you have a lot of wisdom and you've been sharing your wisdom for many many years like even myself like i look back on all the things that i kind of gather or pull from yours your own experience like i'm sure we can talk a little bit about that because maybe not everybody had a chance to experience what you have experienced in the past i know you've been through a lot already in your career uh to where you are right now like for those who don't know like vitali is right now like you you say you're the co-founder but i know co-founder of me means a lot of different things so i'm i'm sure we go into that and kind of know a little bit more of what you've been up to but you're working on uh moto shell that's correct yep and uh it's been amazing all the stuff that you guys are being putting out there the team is you know thanks yeah it's been an amazing team effort yeah i'm very blessed dude very happy with the just you know the team it's all about the right team so yeah yes uh i don't i don't know what how you want to do it but i guess we can start with a bit of a background how i ended up where i am uh yeah yeah i don't do this kind of talks very often so it's always kind of hard work for me i know we have like about an hour so i'll try to get somewhat quickly through how i ended up where i am today uh i am from originally from eastern europe small country called moldova and it's a small town i grew up there doing you know art for myself and was pretty uh at the time you know like as you had some other guests on on on the podcast where you know guys talk about the good old days where you know there's no internet you just have to kind of find a way to do this stuff yourself was kind of the same same thing uh the one specific thing about like the past experience that i think influenced me was you know i'm from the family of doctors both my mom and dad so my early look at the anatomy was more of a functional medical anatomy and growing up and as a kid i was always surrounded by medical books and that was kind of like where i saw this stuff that influenced me so i guess you could tell like this was sort of the presence of the mortality as the theme was always there like among like 30 medical books one of them was just like uh on forensic medicine something like this and it was like it was uh up for grabs like if i find the book and i just go through this i was like okay this is what happens when you know somebody gets shot at that range or something that's pretty up and whatnot so uh and then you know my my brothers they were into heavy metal music and they really inspired me on that side so i guess like kind of that kind of maybe explains the the reason why i do stuff i do you like combine those two things like somehow yeah like you know and it's the reason why i bring up the medical stuff is because uh the functional anatomy and this is how i ended up doing robots eventually because i liked sci-fi and hard surface and mechanical stuff at the same time as i was like and also dark fantasy so when i was in high school and if you look at my some of my textbooks or whatnot you could see like a fighter jet or a tank drawing on one page and then you have like a fantasy sort with skulls on it on another page so it was never really for me sort of a question what i like more and it's only when later in career i i i came to sort of realization i really need to focus on one thing and see if i can build sort of a brand around that and maybe make potential clients to know more about me from that point of view this is where i can sort of made the decision to shift more into heart surface and sci-fi but i i kind of like a bit of an uh off track there but like basically what happened is around um when i was 19 i moved from moldova to moscow work on a science fiction film and then also video game and i was sort of all over the place just trying to learn everything i could in 3d i started pretty early i think the first half i was doing was like quake 2 half life maps like mods just like you know uh home homemade maps and i was into those games i played starcraft 1 diablo 2 uh counter strike 1.6 that was like three of my favorite games of all time yep yeah so like making those maps i think that was that i was maybe i was 14 or 15 i don't remember but we also had technical drawings cool which is a kind of a remnants of soviet based education you know so i don't know so everybody could draw bombs or something i'm not sure why but like it was kind of the thing in the school i think i was the only person who actually enjoyed that because you have to be really meticulous you like make one marker like with a pencil and you don't pass so everything needs to be super precise so i freaking love that thing and at the same time i started doing this basic rudimentary 3d for video games and i think this is kind of how i started doing the first freelance which eventually led me to move to moscow i never finished university i want to get supposed to get a degree in computer stuff like i was like programming and computer science and whatnot and since someone from a more of a conservative handle it was important for my parents that i get a degree i was like don't bring a shame on this family and stuff you know it's like you're supposed to get a degree pretty old school uh now it's all good it's fine they they're very supportive they've always been but i mean at the time they consider like getting a degree is what really separates you from becoming a criminal hobo junkie that just murders people and does drugs between the normal decent human beings and stuff like that so it was a very hard sort of decision for me to decide to sort of never really finish university uh funny enough though i did manage to stay there just enough to get my visa later on to move to the united states uh when i got the o1 visa to move to blizzard it was just enough i think it was like three years and this is qualifies as some kind of incomplete degree i forgot the specific term for it i think it's something like that yeah yeah and that and it was i guess i just really got lucky there because this is when i got a real opportunity where sort of like all right it's time to really start doing this more seriously and i moved in the middle of summer i just never came back never finished university and i got lucky on the timing there so from that point of view i started pretty early and this is when i really realized i really like doing characters started working on these mmorpg in moscow and also doing freelance and this is how certain like the first freelance for western companies you know some companies in europe and some companies in uh in us and just fast forward three four years uh when i got an offer to move to us to work at blizzard start working there as a character artist and and this is a thing where things get really interesting because traditionally i'm not i never had a strong traditional background in traditional to the art and i was always i always felt inferior because of that always feel like okay this is something i need to catch catch up with i still do like this never really goes away but like in general i'd always realized like this is something that i need to be working on so always on the background i tried i did i was doing like this 2d stuff like 2d fundamental studies when i moved to us i was doing like the classes figure drawing and always trying to do some sculpting but mostly it was about 2d because from the get-go always wanted to do concept so even though like my first jobs and like first decent jobs where i was already doing concept in 3d it was just traditionally it's like you're not a concept artist unless you draw or paint at first and you do it fast and then you do it in 3d or somebody else do it in 3d right uh things have changed since then you know since 15 20 years obviously yeah but at the time it was still sort of like a different path a different sort of career outlook it's funny it's funny you mentioned that because like even i come from kind of a very similar um i guess story in terms of like well how you made a transition to to the us and all that but it's funny like all in even all these years there's still the same path right that people are taking i know you you you did a lot of like challenges back then to like get your work out there i remember the days of the dominance war and and all this stuff that you guys were killing it um then now it's making its way back we'll talk about that you know yeah that was a fun chapter too yeah i know it's awesome uh but yeah it's cool it's cool just to hear that and i know you stayed at blizzard for a while so how was that experience yeah that was awesome i think that was really uh a life-changing experience for me just career-wise and it was a combination of a lot of good good things i think i had from early on even on the day one i had one when i had my interview it was already a question uh for me from the people who hired me it was i think nick carpenter at the time asked me if i want to eventually do like this sort of bridge the gap between uh concept and 3d modeling and when i asked what that meant because i had my idea it was actually matching what i had in my mind because i love modeling i still do and it's always like how can this be more directly involved in in concept art because there's so many things that's lost in in from when you go from concept into 3d there's a lot of things to be explored in 3d there's all the things that are even that make more sense to do three especially now with like doing cat for uh hard surface design a lot of things are even faster and uh once really supports the other so i had like my sort of vision on or where the industry could go uh but i really didn't see a lot of uh proof in the industry where this has been like done really seriously really successfully and i think the first time i really saw it down in 3d where i got excited about it was was it the making of it was two movies was transformers and the first one there was something else and i think it was josh sneeze's video tutorial like normal tutorial where i saw him doing stuff on uh reusing some of the uh like you know some some kid bash stuff that are like based in the real world like parts from the cars and things like that and he would integrate this kind of like it was like a one step above from like this generic rebel kit bash and it was like more realistic stuff and this is where sort of like hitler was like i wonder if make that really make custom parts and use establish this as a language uh use that make this stuff as your own sort of and start building and using that and at the same time at blizzard i would you know we were always hanging out with the guys who were like you know our directors there and they're they're a very awesome mixed bunch in terms of media and things that the guys like you know uh foster martini uh also you know also from brazil and yeah uh superhero in the field and like you know you get jonathan ruby uh you know joe peterson uh matthias rehassel that chris tunic so they're all like they're like they are directors on their own like projects and stuff like that so they were super influential at some point we were starting doing like the studies when we were trying to start doing designs and and just for the sake of really pursuing design and i think this is where we really grew at least i can definitely tell for myself that i that was a growth in terms of design because we were inspired by different things and we find like appreciation like one somebody would push for like here's the realistic design in terms of the proportion this is more stylized what if we combine this and that it was it was a very pure r d research that lasted for really long on top of the just day-to-day projects because day-to-day projects they were sort of figured out in terms of the style you know there's an established style at wizard i worked at for those who don't know i worked at the cinematics team uh for almost four years on pretty much in all the major franchises of issues like diablo 3 starcraft 2 was world of warcraft expansion i started as a as a cinematic artist and it was uh senior one senior two and i left when i was a lead on co-lead on some of those projects um and uh and yeah so this is when it was like this perfect timing we had a bit of a downtime where people could like take some time off and do their own project and this is where i knew it was like okay you know what i really want to do concert part but i want to somehow utilize 3d as much as i can and this was parallel to working on robocop which was like this funny experience because i started doing 2d there first and then i did something as a 3d and production designer so like why don't you just do that why like stop doing 2d you suck at it anyways like he didn't say that he just said like why don't you just do that that's but that's how i read it and even if you said that i would be totally fine with that that's true but like basically i was uh it was interesting to me because it was i never thought about it as like just doing 3d only as the only media for console part and it was because mostly 3d is just as you know it's more expensive and long as the process to take it to the polish where it's presentable to your clients and this is where the paradigm shift question really forms like okay if i can somehow find a way to really make it faster but keep the quality high and this is how i think the whole also the whole heart surface came to be it's like okay you know what this is there is a re area where it's really unexplored in terms of like design and and and in terms of like mechanics uh sorry not mechanics techniques you know the tools and and i really felt like there's so many things that are being underutilized i was like 2010 11 and later 12. so i took like a sabbatical i was like a six-month sabbatical where i started to reinvent myself it was also the time where we sort of like you know everybody on you know our friends and on the team sort of collectively lost our minds on how to really get better we're like starting to really devouring all those books and time management you know and a lot of the core habits the form there became sort of almost like this religious very very stringent very strict sort of modus operandi that still present to this day it's like this this was the time that we sort of all went to some kind of buds navy seal training and uh to test you know really how how much everyone could really do and how bad you really want it like how bad you really want to grow how bad you really want to learn more and um sort of like you know this thing where what's your long-term goal and how much of the short-term suffering you're willing to tolerate to really get there and when you have a group of friends like that and you you you generally trust each other you're okay with uh you know making yourself vulnerable to each other meaning it's like you know what tonight we're gonna try this i'm gonna try to draw or paint this i never done this it's gonna suck and we're gonna laugh at each other and it's sort of cool then maybe we're gonna go have a beer it's fine too like it's this part of the mix of the culture and the genuine pursuit of becoming better that that was a very very healthy dna and this as this idea formed and as i took the the six months off and sabbatical where i would try to really it's like okay after this i'm never going back to i will never be a 3d modeler i would be a you know only concept designer only be doing this even though i was already doing that but it was never really like sort of on paper except i think it was some projects or some films i was doing at the time too but it was not like that it was not really like a standard or was not really that's what's on my resume so i tried to really sort of shift from that and uh so those six months were really sort of pivotal in in both a mindset but also tools and developing a way to like really become better but the main the critical thing that was the critical shift was this mindset and sort of like where i have to design stuff in my mind first and then when i sit in 3d it's like this a la prima execution time and this was a very fresh coffee for me at the time i did want to talk about that because i remember the when you took that time i actually just remember when you came back because it was like holy like oh look look at what vitali is doing and i think you had some friends that were talking about that as well so i just so like i understand because i was i was kind of confused at the time and you just kind of explained a little bit of that as well where you kind of took the time from from blizzard to focus on that it's kind of like a transition moment for you what kind of planning did you have going into that into like okay i have six months did you have like here's everything i'm gonna do it and you know each each month is gonna be this this thing or did you go in knowing you you had a you had a change and you just went for it i planned everything for three months because frankly i was a bit sort of intimidated i didn't know if i could pull it off because when i did this in the end of the session when i did 10 days of mecca was still to the days one of the hardest things i've ever done psychologically yeah it was straight up my hell week like no joke it was really really difficult psychologically because it would be 12 14 and i think like 16 hour working days where all you do is like you try to model as fast as you can and also try to design as fast as you can and for like no real break and you would go to sleep and i would be like this is my only time to really think about what's next what i'm gonna do next day because tomorrow it's like go time and it would be like this thing where it's like what the did i do like why but i have to finish it and so i only planned for for like half of that time first because and for those who don't know i actually moved to hawaii with my wife it was like a good bargain i guess like you know i was in hawaii but i was never going to leave my house you know it's like very strange i wouldn't i would go like i think like two times a week like i would go like do like an ocean or run or whatever but mostly it was just me sitting there and uh you talk about that that that kind of mindset the planning like okay i'm gonna go to hawaii yeah three months i'm gonna do the next because i don't know if people yeah so yeah so what what happened there is that i wanted to build sort of the foundation where i would be like you know what i want to make sure that when i get to this self-examination thing that then doesn't make there is no way i can fail and from that point of view i was like okay what do i really need and i would start to really record and put time on everything how much time takes certain things so for example i remember under really under uh estimating how much time rendering takes and it would be like this puzzle i'll be like oh you know i'm done with the model like i can just like render it and it's fine and then i would because physically to me psychologically it's not as difficult your mind doesn't register that that this actually takes a lot of time on and factually takes a lot of time and as i start writing down how each how long each step took i would be like holy i'm wasting so much more time here but i'm not feeling it because it's that i'm not considering it work like i because i love rendering and to me like okay the modeling and design it's always heavy it's like it's like weightlifting it's always like okay oh my god like you do these 10 reps it's you always feel it you really feel the the fatigue when i'm rendering i'm i'm not really feeling that uh not because uh it's not as difficult it is but because of the type of work i do maybe you don't have to go to the same level like you know plus when you have tools like keyshot or octane or very whatever like you can make things look amazing because the computer does the math and if you have some like basic understanding of like what makes a pretty image and stuff like this it's not to me you at least it's not as as was as psychologically difficult and but when i start writing down turned out like i was really spending way more time on that and this is when the whole thing's like okay what do i need okay i need hdr maps i need this to be ready i need materials to be ready i need like presets of decals i need like everything that sort of would speed things up and this is where sort of like a key i also need a bigger like a stronger computer and i ordered this like you know some people at the time would buy new cars and i just bought it like i bought a new computer like and legit invested you know all the free cash i had on this machine that was like 196 gigs of ram and liquid cooled dual xeons and like it was just like this monstrosity of machine because like i don't want the hardware hold me back like i want to make sure there's no excuse at the time where it comes to the execution it really it's all about how i well i know the tools how well you know if things are executed i do things like like the still serious keyboards where you see like a kind of a heat map which had keys you press more and now so like i would press this hotkey away more often but it's like f11 so it's like a long stretch so i'm wasting some milliseconds here let me move it like so i move my f11 hotkey to q and things like that so i tried to really optimize i think at the time was i don't think it was a book it was an article about this guy who trained like an olympic was it the cyclist team or some kind of team they trained i don't remember the sport but the the basic premise was that the the coach knew that they can't really compete with their top competition because they're just the team is not the same they're not don't have the same experience but he thought like what if we try to across the board to improve everything that we can by one percent then then like collectively maybe you have like a stack of like you make this build out of yourself that's sort of like this mutant build that shouldn't work but it's working and i get really obsessed by that idea so i started thinking like okay i need hot keys then this then uh i started doing this thing when you look at the i would look at the mechanical part i would look like let's say so like close-ups of apache helicopter and i look at it for three seconds and i close my eyes and i try and my mind replicate what i see and i realize how much you actually don't really store in your mind and i start to really practice this sort of mental library of of solutions and i realized like you know what you can't really do this the only way to really learn this it's to do like a studies and just like when you do 2d artwork you do this master studies and you either master studies or studies from from from life i would do the same thing like okay three hours timer go like you ran you like model this piece of apache helicopter and i think this is what really taught me the most about the perception of language rather than design itself the scale and how i think the mind uh like our our sort of general audience mind and myself including works when we see something that's futuristic but it feels compelling a lot of it is not really just function but a lot of it because when we see a certain size of balls or certain certain patterns how you have things connected between each other like the plates or seam lines you associate with with the specific design language or engineering language that actually works in reality and that sort of helps to sustain uh sort of like take this disbelief that you know this is a sci-fi fake design so that was like this was like one of the things and this then was like okay now the hardware issue now there's this thing and then i read this article about like this oxford professor whatever like when they had this underwater thing like in the pool where they would do like not free diving but they would do like underwater swimming and stuff and then then there was this study came up that holding like you know hold your breath and then you know on exhale like there's a brain stimulation and then because your body thinks it's dying it actually pumps some more like chemicals you get a bit of a boost there now there's way more study on that too but like i started doing also just holding my breath like every day and i started like i couldn't do it for like let's say 20 seconds then i did like two minutes and three minutes whatever i don't remember i think the maxim was like four minutes just in the pool and it was like this whole like very very strict regimen because i just wanted to see like okay what really the sort of the mind is capable of like what are the real limitations in terms of what i can do because i also felt like you know what i'm not i didn't feel like particularly talented i still don't but at the time it was just like this thing where okay what is something that's really in my area of control that i know that uh i know when you know sort of the time comes i wouldn't say that i didn't do everything i could or i didn't try something that i didn't try it was this sort of like this critical moment of this extreme ownership of sort of my faith like okay this is i need to do this or just don't even bother like you're either or lean or you don't even bother uh and so anyways like kind of a fast forward what happened there is while i was on my sabbatical and already did the 10 days of me i started working on the new and the new mini project this is when uh ben ben procter which reached out i was i was trying to remember whether ben proctor of jeffrey b crawford because ben proctor was working on as our director on transformers and jeffrey croft was a production designer so one of them reached out to me first about transformers and uh and they asked me uh if i want to work on this and i did some very like i did oh i'm gonna do like now the same thing what everything that i just learned but i'll try to do like this quick test uh for for myself without even like starting officially and i did this like three day thing where i did like this character where i was like okay i'm gonna spend one day and just making parts that are in that universe like you know like little joints and getting myself accustomed to that sort of language and then another two days i did like this new character and then i send it to them and that's like okay this is what i do this how long it takes this is what i would fix this is what i don't look don't like about it and whatnot and they really liked it that was like okay so this is all 3d it's like yeah well this is cool we could totally use something like this so i i never really finished the sabbatical as planned as planned because i started working on transformers so when i got back from blizzard i did this presentation for the whole department like showing this is what i learned and i talked to some of the leadership on the department about that i'm in this point of my life where i really want to pursue the direction in terms of the style and things that i do that are more realistic and i don't know how that really fits into what we're doing there at the blizzard because certainly there's there's a different style there like ozone cinematics and we i think with the time just finished starcraft to another cinematic and started working on the overwatch and i started getting this opportunities to work uh well first of all i was i gotta i got an opportunity to actually keep working on the transformers and then because i was already like doing stuff for them on the side ilm got interested and this is how i moved from blizzard to ilm and it was funny because like from there and i even though like i officially started working on lm i only started working in the presidio in san francisco only like a a month and a half or two months later after the day because first i was directly working with michael bay in his office because he was like just called me say hey dude i got a spaceship i'm like of course you do and i just went to his in his office for like just uh one month and a half or two i don't remember but it was it was a month or more uh working with him directly like testing all this pipeline it was super exciting because it was like wow really like i've because you know you have all this self-doubt you try this thing and i'm and i'm always sort of questioning yourself whether you're just over complicating things or you don't know if this is going to be working and what was really exciting to me because i went through this training that i imposed on myself uh out of just a curiosity and just pure pursuit of like this becoming better and now there is an actual world like there is a project there in in the world that's movie project that lets you test this and it was awesome because it was an awesome experience and i was doing some stuff on the side so that this is what eventually led me to wanting to do industrial design because at the time like i was working and this is like another i i mean i think i spent a little bit more time on this that i spent but just a bit of a context and why i think this could be interesting and important is like you whatever you have your long term whatever you have your goals it's good to have this overlapping trajectories and somewhere you have like this one arc overlaps another arc another arc because or i was already at the time thinking like okay well what do i really want and i really wanted to have some free time to just do personal art and and figure out like what is this really fun for me because i was always working when i'm working uh was when i was in sabbatical i wasn't getting paid which is actually a really good thing in terms of the pressure like if you can bear the pressure that really puts like a sense of urgency on you that you up like that's on you there is no like a half a year unpaid sabbatical that's especially you know for for people who have families or you know it's really tough like and it's i'm thinking about one day i should be able to do the same thing again but it's like okay it's been what was that it's been eight years and i still couldn't do the same thing again uh so i'm thinking like okay this is this is tough can i make somehow that i work for clients less uh i still fulfill my goals uh let's say financially but i have more time to do my own stuff and this is how this idea came to be like what if i uh don't work like five days a week or six days a week or seven like i work like let's say four days a week for client and then i have another three days work on my stuff and this is where while i was already on transformers this is where this idea started forming and then when i started working for intuitive surgical which is the surgical robotics company doing concept design industrial design i already started working okay i'm gonna work a little less i'm really fast and uh i can do this stuff quicker and then the design aesthetics it's more about the the function there's it's like it's a different set of uh priorities there and when we discussed they were okay with letting me do this this thing and from there on i tried to cut one ear every two oh sorry one day a week of working for client every two years eventually where to the point where i started working mortal shell i was working and still do only one day a week for for clients and this is kind of like how high eventually sort of led me to sort of this path where i need this room for for my brain to to to experiment to grow to learn new things and you know try other other stuff how did you manage the the financial side of of things did you because a lot of the questions that i usually get and the things that we talked about as well is like having that space for you to work in your own stuff but like you mentioned right like there's there's bills to pay and all that stuff did you see a difference as the more you invested on your own time kind of the the skill level went up so the kind of prices went up or is the experience level yeah so it's a combination that's a great question thanks and by the way i did like i tend sometimes to like start speaking faster so you just like feel free to interrupt me like i'm doing it so yeah it's really good thanks yeah so this is a great question because it's a combination of things there i took a lot of risk because it was i had like a period when like there was let's say two years where i didn't really see financial the growth in terms of my earning ability but i saw a spike in in my knowledge so i knew like okay a year after this i'll be able to really utilize so this is kind of a slow burning stock investment but in when you said you invested invest in your skill and this this sort of move takes it's a risk and it takes courage because it might not work out like when i think back i feel like i got really lucky in terms of when i started doing what i'm doing in terms of the people i met along the way and making some right calls of because of based really on intuition that i think like looking back i uh like yeah i got way more lucky than i than i than i would think like let's say 15 years ago so like going back to your question is that uh the initial sort of transition from like working less for a client it was purely from increasing my rate because i would just show things that i can do and i would show things that um uh i would just show like the time it takes and i'll sort of lay out to my client the whole math and show like okay it if this is what you guys need it makes more sense financially to to work to work with me and then i would i would sort of try to pitch down the whole the whole sort of approach and this is maybe i don't know this is a sound bit of advice or not but basically whenever you look for a team or company or project you want to join it is generally a good idea to look at at your feet in terms of like what kind of problem i can sell how can help to solve there don't just like okay you know what i'll be helpful in general like not try to be as least abstract as possible you look at something and you and you first of all you need to understand whether you what you consider a problem is being a problem because maybe it's only you think maybe what the the if you talk to the company to talk to their leadership you realize this is not a real problem like they actually achieving their goals maybe they're even overachieving you just where you think you take the project is not necessarily where they would take the project so it's good to really learn where is the overall trajectory and because it might be also the case that uh like you don't want to be a dick about it you don't want to come like oh you guys you know what this is all sucks i'm going to come and make this better because a lot of the times you just don't have a full picture you don't know what's the leadership overall strategic is where they want invest their uh resources or maybe you don't even understand the the full picture of why they did they're doing things in the first place or maybe this is only a minor subjective so usually first step is like okay i've seen the team i've seen a project where it's really appealing me for whatever reason right when when it was the industrial design what i really liked was it felt like this whole new world of just possibilities because i'm seeing people making things that that work and i feel like okay you know what like this is a very exciting time where we can get closer to the future make things appeal also to aesthetics of you know the higher human spirit and where are we going you know making the future more exciting as it is as there is a sort of going to be and this was and this is where you're sort of like okay i want to work with these guys and you're trying to understand what's their goal and what was funny is that it was it had a few years there where i would work at the same time was on movies and i would work also on on on real pride on real products and you would get this sort of feedback for for films you try to make things look more grounded so when audience watches this stuff in the movie theater or netflix or whatever they like feel like okay these things actually works and you work with the on on the product they're actually trying to tell you go a little bit more crazy or like the leadership of the company is like how far we can actually really push and see if the engineers get inspired and then let's you know let's go crazy first and then we rationalize and like an example of that would be when i was at intel working uh a new device group on this uh like a sort of like a way like a sci-fi watch device that they were pitching to another company can really say much but basic idea was that you could make it let's say 16 millimeter thick or 12. or i think it was 16 and 10 it was like pretty big pretty big jump and we knew that we couldn't really go as thin as everybody would wanted to and i made a few variations like okay here's what we do up to the package and this is what we do what we can get if we really sort of don't obey the constraints of physics and whatnot but this is how cool it can be and uh quite often you would see a reaction they'll be like oh man we really can't build this but how cool is that can we maybe split the difference right they're like yeah let's work for another month and i think this is really really cool this is when you feel like as a concept designer you really have your sort of uh job done well like getting people inspired and then from there i would transition more into actual industrial design where you would work very long on one project like really make it up to spec and work on the internals and i found that to be uh not as exciting for me uh and uh just i guess because like i like doing designs more and then staying on one project for a long time it's it's a different level it's like you have a i like the comparison of someone who can run let's say 100 miles versus someone who can run really fast but a shorter distance and they're different different stamina says different builds different different right so i like i have huge respects for both and uh it was at the time i was like i really wanted to like learn as many things as i can i wanted to stay abroad and move fast and try different things but yeah um so the first stage of this transition was purely because like i showed this i can do this you guys like this if they do this would be my rate they'll be like okay this is pricier than we usually used to but considering the speed it's actually kind of the same what we other other like what we would usually pay and then uh at some point it's sort of like it kept progressing to a certain amount until it sort of certainly becomes a little bit trickier for for uh for the clients obviously because it's just a little too pricey and then uh i try to like okay how can i expand the value what can i do more than just uh you know it's not just concept and this is sort of like the part of the reason why i started doing more industrial design and trying to learn more about things like okay how can i make the the company ultimately win more value out of this and this is how going back to the movies doing let's say when i was doing stuff for ghost in the shell a lot of the because a lot of the assets they are figured out in terms of the geometry and stuff there is more valid than just having uh one image of something like because you can already you can already render it even if something becomes a sub d model that's purely for production at the end having the geometry right away like that's a huge plus so depending on how on target and how close you are to the final design the not like the concept available and high poll it's the same thing like i think if what we see on the screen now it's the same thing that everybody else sees right yeah so this was like the concept but it's also high polish so once the concept is done like now we can send it to uh to the artists who does the the asset who would return like this and but again like this stuff is really hard to do let's say in a bigger company where you need to go through multiple levels of approval where risks are high when you know like if your game needs to sell let's say 10 million copies versus we're an indie small game we don't need that so we can try we can have some creative risk or do some wacky things or things that we like but we don't know everybody else will like yeah uh like we can talk about this stuff later as well but yeah so in general the progression was trying to output as much value as you can and then when you reach a certain threshold there where you have to be reasonable obviously it's really investing realizing that you take some financial hits but you invest that free time into something that you expect later on will benefit you whether it's regarding like the skills or the quality of life your family whatever that is right yeah yeah i think so two things on that because like you just brought up the 3d as being part of the design and and even for i think where the industry is going right now it is very it's been very challenging to keep up with the quality of assets and the concept at the same time so we do see a lot more of the the 3d back and forth in in most of the aaa studios where you need to get that to that quality because the assets the final thing that you see of course and sometimes that a lot of things get lost from a concept to a 3d so there's been a lot more of people adapting the 3d as part of the process for the design because the quality most of the time ends up being better when you get when you start for that back and forth and and in terms of like the the you know taking your time and i see you do a lot of that of like just kind of and you just just say like just show it that you can do it or your value you just have to take your time and do it yourself but i see a lot of people wanting to work on places and do things and uh but they don't actually it's that always that challenge of like how do i find the time to do it you know and most people just get kind of stuck into that one job so yeah sometimes like i took a lot of advices from from your experience of like how did how you did it of like you know scheduling and then you know the focus the focus thing i know you talk a lot about about that like how do you focus you've been so prolific that i i knew was like can you can i get some advices back now it's all you so you know cheers mate yeah a lot of that i think it was crazy thanks so um okay so just to go back a little bit on that we'll see you uh you you took some time and then you start working for movies and stuff like and i know you did uh robocop was one of the the first ones if and i'm mistaken right um and then you did um the transformers stuff and uh ghosts and it was like i think the best examples would be of that approach would be battle angela lita and gus michelle because i think this were the boss in terms of the subject matter but also me being prepared skill wise i think this is where i was really sort of sort of much better prepared and knew what i'm what i'm doing but also how long ago on those projects like how it turned out because i think uh there was a bit of uh on and off on i think on both but on elite it was less than ghostly shell on elite i think it was total maybe was it five months on and off like two three days a week uh and with first two months i think they were pretty pretty dense in terms of like i was just on it like almost all the time because it was that thing where um i knew everything that i was doing would be seen by john landau james cameron and obviously uh rodriguez robert is the director but it was really like knowing that i can't just show the stuff that's uh sort of half done or to tell them like this is where it's going but now this is rough and this is one of those examples where i knew if if the 2d work was done and that's we sort of know where everything's going this would be easier to make the jump so luckily uh i mean it was you know ben proctor is an amazing production designer so he already was had a pretty pretty awesome and clear idea where things could be going he also knew where my strong sides are and in terms of like if i focus on this thing so for example like if i would show him a rough zebra's block out of where i'm think i'm going and he could commend early on but he was just like i just showed it to him and then after that i would do okay now i'm making like a super detailed hand that i know everybody's gonna like it because if we we know where sort of when i say we i mean like as an entire team and you know all the art that was done before because you know i'm not sure how you know but like for for battle and gelato a lot of artists in the light storm they did a lot of amazing art like back dating back like 2005 i think was it like james klein or uh like one of the first cases and obviously the original manga you know where the sort of the foundation is like it's not like sky is the limit it was pretty clear where we're going it was really finding the this just right language and the this is how i was like okay i'm gonna just make a hand but i'll be like okay do you see the hand do you like it if so the whole body is going to be of this quality and this was like this is what helped me sort of like it started like okay i would show only the hand i would i wouldn't even show the rest and this is i know it kind of sounds crazy but i guess it was because the team was right the conditions was right like ben knew what i can do he saw the world blackout he knew like it's not going to be some crazy surprises in proportions for example or it was really about the language so and uh yeah so those two projects and the same with the with the ghost in the shell because i had like this folder of like i don't know 500 images that i sent to rupert sanders the director that this is where i'm thinking we should we should take the designs on ghost in the shell and he had his own and then mache had like a huge also machekeshar had like an awesome collection both of his work and other stuff so it was pretty pretty uh sort of clear what to explore what was exciting about ghost in the shelly was that it was i think the first film project where i was like okay now like everything's it's all out in terms of the skills i'm gonna use cad this is i was using my 3d even though before that i was only using the cad software for engineering stuff so and this is where we like okay i'm gonna do like straight up make you know augusta shell tank using the same software engineers using so things would look like there can be machined right because it's exactly the same approach it was sort of a novelty at the time uh still it was not as widespread i mean people already was doing the stuff for and i think in fusion 360 it was it was picking up but not something that you would see it's done on a big scale uh movie and it's also integrated with other techniques because i would do the zbrush first and then it would take that block out and i would re-top it on exercise to get this clean sub-d shapes or muscles but then i would do the skeleton in moy and i would just combine it all and then you look at this it's like this festival of shapes they're all down different way and and you can see like okay you can't really do it in other software so like very crisp cad shapes you can do this obviously in in you know in zbrush or there but it's not going to be the same and or not the same speed or not the same final finish so so that was always exciting for me like i started in cad also because i wanted to get faster while i'm also learning with the like doing industrial design how did you uh how did you merge those two things together because i know you built like a huge library of things to to like to you know speed up your process and then when you go to the different software is it more do you lose some of that some of that work or is it just more a new tool that you're adding to the well i'm still assembling funny enough i'm still assembling everything and it's it's going to sound the same like 20 20 i'm assembling everything in soft image xsi which is like a software that's discontinued i mean like it's uh yeah like it's a whole other discussion but if anything has been outputted eventually in polygons i would build i would assemble it there but then depending on what what's which stage i'm on i'm in and i would do that stuff in uh like another software and then i bring that stuff in there's like good exporting tools in moy for example and zbrush is especially like a later version has awesome tools for like automatically retopologizing stuff with the decent topology and i would like do that stuff and i would optimize now sometimes use that as a base level for sub d modeling and then would extract that that was actually done all of the muscles like exterior shells and western shell was done that way uh and this is the only way it was really to to move fast um yeah the one question i have for you is and uh and i guess i see that throughout your career and i'm curious if it's more of a conscious thing decision or if it just happened because i know you went through like some of these movie projects and and then you started doing more of the uh the industrial design and you have some opportunities to work on the mac the mechs and all that like more product stuff not real a real product but it's still that that uh kind of workflow was that like something that just happened naturally or would you make that conscious decision to go that route and and why did you decide to kind of then stop working on movies or are you still working so all the transitions are all of them happen consciously and that was a decision and always come with like with a certain price tag to this and when i say price tag i don't mean like i lose something it was more about like is this considering is this really an opportunity cost here am i really losing like a potential growth in one industry because like as like now looking back there's like three uh distinct in terms of just how the final products are different from each other three industry rights which is like video games movies and the the real product right and it was uh a part of it was trying to find whatever that is that that keeps me interested and sort of the most authentic obsessive way possible when i'm just entertained like really what i'm trying to do like whatever i'm doing i want to be interested as hell in it like i just want to be staying interested and passionate and at this point i think this is really sort of the highest priority for me in life because i realized this is the only way where everything else in life really falls in place like if you like there is like for me there's like a hierarchy of potential benefits that comes out from the work and let's say if you if you plan to be like okay i want to make let's say x much x amount of money then if you plan for that you're gonna get everything that comes above from that hierarchical structure of the goal setting but if you plant like okay i want to do something that keeps that makes me absolutely freaking obsessed about it where this becomes like a kind of almost a problem where it's like i can't really think about anything else then i feel like the chances are that that thing will get me to do something that will also be rewarded so i'm trying to find this alignment where whatever i'm doing i like it so much and all that you also becomes a thing that is rewarded in terms of the career so the the interesting thing here and this is totally sort of the zeitgeist thing which is like very reliant on the technology that's been used is it i started with the video games because it was this thing where i generally felt like okay this is a transformative media because this is the only media where you're actively interacting with it like you know when you read a book you really and there's this it's it's a contemplative process you watch a movie it's a contemplating process and it's beautiful it's awesome but when i look at the games as being a kid i always saw the games this is an evolution of all of this media as an art form because this is the one that requires the feedback and input from the consumer and this is where you could really make something where uh like you know like they've been i'm just gonna take like a side to the side and then come back like they talk about the brain plasticity thing where like anybody can really shape your sort of mind to learn new languages learn new skills and also like change your character or whatever that is right and i felt like the game the video games are really this transformative media where it can be even more powerful than a amazing piece of literature or more powerful than an excellent cinema and this is when i was you know a kid playing the older games and as i transitioned into first like it was cinematics at blizzard it was like okay this is the movie sort of movie industry but within the video games i start to gravitate more to the video games and the main reason at the time was because you can only do like what is it like 10 000 or like 5 000 polygons per character whatever your visions for the game is at the end of the day the art just couldn't matter as much as let's say as gameplay matter or storytelling you couldn't really do storytelling as soon as you have the character let's say full screen and it talks and it's just like the break moving hello like that you can really do this let's say 20 years ago and then i sort of like okay i'm just i want i want the technology to really support my imagination in the way that i don't feel it's just trained and this is how i start moving into movies so the the thing that's was sort of critical there moving into products was this juxtaposition of me working on transformers and being sort of really tired of arbitrary design where i was like it was like a long session it was like six or nine months where it was this designs of things that are sort of like i don't want to say everything goes but there's pretty like it's it's more about this direct uh sort of sensory stimulus of like overloading with details and overall flow and aggressiveness whether like design as a function and i think as i was also getting older it was just not wouldn't keep me as interested it was before i was like you know it's like as your taste and music evolves you used to listen this kind of music and now you listen back like yeah i like it but it's kind of just like this loud noise i want a bit more can i get a bit more sophistication there so i guess this transition in h was like i started to look for meaning more than just this shallow superficial loud detail and also i felt like as as i was getting as the art was becoming less about of like this ego thing to show like look how detailed things can be look how fast him or whatever it was less about that and more about does this particular project or job gives me meaning it was where was i was at the peak of like doing transformers stuff and started really feeling pretty like getting tired of that this is when i get a name getting an email from mike hanushick of uh intuitive surgical who's the director of product there who saw i think he saw my uh uh like this ambulance smack i did on the 10 days of like the the the black phoenix project and yeah i think you saw a note or maybe even i think he saw that and then he heard like something like a clip from like a podcast with ashtor me talking about this and he saw like i'd said like i'm coming from a from a comp from a family of of uh you know both my dad's or in in medical profession and he's and he's like hey dude if you're around because you saw i wasn't uh sounding i was in california if you want to come around to silicon valley check out we have this medical robots and i had no idea about this remotely controlled surgical robots where for those who don't know it's basically you have a console with arms and then you have those little controllers here that you control like every all of your motions kind of sort of like they become like uh 10 times more precise because like of the this reverse scaling thing and then you can do some really insane minimal invasive surgery on people remotely and like instead of like opening the chest up you make these smaller incisions and at the time i remember like i just wanted to go check it out that thing just so i can tell my my my dad who's a retired surgeon is like dad check this out future right because he uh he knew about this stuff but he never saw that you know in person he's retired in a small town in moldova which is like a very poor poor country so anyway so i'm going there see like i don't i didn't get a degree but look what i'm doing right yeah exactly oh yeah that's you see this is just trying to me like uh to have a full-on clothes that flip on my insecurities to my family trying to win my honor back dude this is hilarious never thought about it this way it's totally it i'm sure yeah so i'm going there we have this awesome day there and um and he [Music] uh like mike in in the company in interior surgical they showed they were doing and instantly we started brainstorming on ideas so he liked that i was thinking not about how things look but also how work like whether this is comfortable like this is the candle from user experience standpoint like when you grab something is this in your way and then we went to an operation room and i saw some like you know how they do the testing and it was like holy this is a whole new world i'm doing the transformers here and there's people actually saving like these people you know making all this stuff that actually does good so he felt like this very exciting thing and he mentioned a few designs they had in mind and was thinking what do i think about them and i came back and it's same night i started working on them just as a test and next morning i sent him some 3d sketches and i think because traditionally this was not really approachable to industrial design you would usually like there is like an ideation sketches you have this you know flavor pages with like stuff and where we go and then you go 3d just because in general cad was a bit more expensive to do at the time too and i showed him what i was doing and he was he really liked the gesture and also they liked how fast it was because it meant we could go through those iterations quickly so doing 3d doesn't mean like you commit to something and it's an expensive project so to them it could be still cheap enough to when you have 40 sketches like that like i think if i look at my intruder surgical folder like i gotta have it like at least 800 images there maybe more from just working there on for for like a year and so so that was this transition where so i guess to answer your question i think that so that particular transition was somewhat of an accident because i didn't plan on it because i didn't know that wasn't even possible i was like i took the opportunity at the time but uh i never thought let's say a year before that this something that i could actually do one day uh and and somehow this made this a whole chapter of my life where i make this is a living yeah yeah and so and then from there i thought like oh you know this is it i'm just going to be doing this then uh the company in korea from community technology happened when they became a principal designer they're working on this huge four meter tall mech which is like was its own adjourned it was like that was a really like i think one of the projects where i learned the most when you actually have to like you get like a sort of a list of range of motion and there is a freedom requirement and you need to hit it and it's like we need to get 60 degrees here and like i said you realize when one by the time you make something that looks functional it looks like that's like i mean when not looks function when it is actually can work just based on the clearances and fitting the everything it's really difficult so that was really like oh my god and this is also when i started doing stuff for boston dynamics i did some stuff for military here uh did some stuff that did some stuff for nasa which i think i did stuff that was ended up being like one of the pitching for like nasa projects for some of the remotely controlled and some other like stuff that i can't really talk about that that's mostly about like taking a concept and making it uh part of the presentation that looks appealing as it looks like a final product so there is this there is a spot there and and then uh and i think this is when it happened where i started when i felt like you know what now if i do movies it would actually be something that i can just bring something that's different because of the knowledge that i got from this industry and this is where it becomes like you know what i won't i will not make let's say same amount of money that industrial design i would but i would make something that's really meaningful for me and this is kind of how ghost michelle and both and battle angel happen it was just really projects that are meaningful i grew up a huge fan of this uh ips this is like something that's part of the what made me today who i am like you know what this would be an incredible opportunity that i wouldn't want to pass on right so and i think and this is how we make all of it back to the video games because it was a long period maybe like five years or so that i didn't play any games maybe even more than five maybe like six seven years i just didn't play any games at all uh because i was just so hardcore about my time management it was like you know life is suffering you're if you're suffering you're not if you're not suffering that you're not working hard enough it's like how can i pack more productivity in one day so it was a long period of that and this is when i took this time it was like a christmas vacation and and me and my wife are considered like what kind of maybe we should play video game just see what's out there what's what sort of new those new games are out there and uh i played witcher 3 and that i was just i couldn't believe like these are the games now and that was like the first open world game and also the first game in like sixth year that i played and i just couldn't believe the the emotional side the storytelling side the overall quality the sense of adventure it was really feeling like you've been taken to a different place and on the other side you somehow come out as a better person right and i was like hmm interesting so video games actually wow fine it was like we would joke i think with friends we're like finally we can go back to video games now huh it's like like we like start a while making movies and stuff now it's now it's the time yeah to make the games because you can do this stuff and but really i think what really sort of me up was uh dark souls 3 just because i didn't realize actually the game make makes you can make you feel a certain way like in the in the terms of like overcoming the difficulty and the satisfaction and like finding beauty in in entropy and things like sort of decaying world but you find like it's it's it's a it's like a therapy session really like beating their souls is not really playing a game it's a very therapeutic experience and this is where i went all the way back to my initial thought as a child as when i felt like okay games could be really transformative they're not just entertainment and and this is when i was like you know what while i'm still working doing product stuff and all the other type of movies i just started like i was i was becoming more generally interested i started playing games again where i made it part of my schedule like i play the game and this became like sort of also a good way to balance my life because i started to feeling burn out after like doing same schedule over years and this is i started more and more interested in in the games so i think this is now a sort of getting like a sort of fuller picture there hopefully yeah dude no of course yeah and it definitely tells i'm surprised that you didn't play games for all that long and you guys came back did you play bloodborne at all like oh yeah i beat it like i don't know like four times or yeah it was this was this thing where uh because i was it was a long period when i made like a conscious decision i was like i deleted the games for my computer it was like a long period so when i came back my backlog was insane like all the hit games that and it was like amazing wonderful new world another sabbatical let's go yeah yeah yeah yeah actually that's not a bad idea so how did that whole thing started because you mentioned you kind of working with friends like um kind of once once a week or or i guess you're doing client work once a week and yeah working on that i have like a one day a week when i still do industrial design stuff uh and it's been like it's a stable steady job that essentially like i usually try to do it on the weekend so i do my weekends do my actual job just trying to be down with it yeah i want to say a day it's like it could be like day and a half but in general like i'm on over the weekend i do my work for clients and then full work is just only game right and i know you took some time to like you did some some of your own projects as well like in game i remember seeing some of the kind of early like the dog side scroll yeah yeah that was the one where uh i initially didn't plan to make it like a game but i wanted to sort of get up to speed to see where the technology is and when i first tried out on real engine i was just really impressed with the blueprint system that you don't really have to be uh like a classic coder with writing lines of code like of course you need to be programming a programmer in this fundamental sense in terms of logic but it was like really liberating to see that and i got kind of excited about it in terms of like i wonder just wonder what all of this means what can be done and i started just going through i think at first it was uh i was doing like one hour every morning as a sort of like watching random tutorials on youtube on official unreal channel i was just really amazed at how things progressed it was like it felt like you know you were like somewhere in the cave and then you get out and then now there is like smartphones but you were like close there for 10 years like how does this thing work and i was just really just generally excited to know it was no real plans to make it into anything and i started to because because i already had i didn't wanted to make a focus i didn't want to focus really a lot on the graphics or art i really wanted to focus on just learning how engine works and this is how i was like you know what i have all this uh all those designs and for black phoenix that just they're just sitting there not doing anything what if i do the i'll do something with them as like just learning unreal and i was scrolling through that just by folder see like okay i'm gonna make i really like the you know size scrollers some of the older size scrollers from like 90s and i wanted to do something like simple and sprite based and but i was like okay what if i take a really detailed model and i render all the sprites and animation like an octane like make them just a little bit less like three pixel but you know make them four pixels so and i was crawling that and when i saw the dock i was laughing because like imagine there's just dog running it's like a robotic dog and then the head opens up and it shoots like rockets out of the head and it all felt like funny uh like a fun thing because i might i just wanted to learn and then i remember when the first time i set up the sprite i set up the blueprints and i added like the i think that first you were just like i added like these boxes that explode and then and added some i think some music on top that was something like a terminator one like really just dark up sci-fi like like menacing and everything is dark and you just run around and you're shooting the boxes i was like oh my god this is fun and i just couldn't believe like i actually did that it was just fun and and this was become like the sort of research and i start doing more and i think after like four or five months of just doing that on the site as a sort of just thinking like certain i think and learning this is when i thought i wonder if i make this into something that's actually like a game like a small little game and also a friend recommended me to check out devil daggers which for those who don't know it's like a really crazy sort of one arena one life uh survive as long as you can serve shooter which gets like crazy intense really fast and it's like i think the world records like you can only survive for 18 minutes but when you try it yourself i think it's hard to survive longer than 60 minutes 60 seconds on your first try it's like insanely difficult so i wanted to and because i was under a toxic influence of dark souls i really wanted to make something super challenging uh and i started to make that as a game until i make the prototype and and this is where i think the really fun like the fun part in terms of like the whole game things became because i thought i'm going to make it a prototype and then if i let my friends test it out see if this is fun and then if it is i try to find some help because when i was doing like all of the animations they were like everything looked kind of like stuck like stop motion like even the sprites are pretty and so but you can only get like pretty screenshots as soon as you start playing it looks really clunky and so i try to get uh uh like somebody to help but then i really wanted to sort of keep uh like keep it small and i didn't really want to approach any publisher or anything like that so i just wanted to just finish the game on my own while i was working on the robots and other stuff so this was just like this fun fun project so it was like two guys that started helping me uh like i hired a programmer i hired a rigger who was also an animator but because we were using a lot of the stock animations like kind of like unreal marketplace animation it was really more about like rigging the robots where they're not you know stretching and things like that and i think he like he like final animation for like the dog running he did that and other stuff too so it was like a mix but in general it was like me making this whole prototype and then when the actual programmer looked at it he's like dude your code is all this is fun here you can uh even though i was you know i was in university supposing to become like a you know programmer i only did this for a year and i only know like the fundamental stuff so i don't know the actual good practices of doing the good code it was a complete mess i did a lot of things wrong and it was at this point where it's like okay do i really want to make it uh do i want to redo it what do i want to do with that and i sort of put it on hold and at the same time like as as you know like i think i ended up having like 500 hours in like dark souls 3 when i realized it's like okay maybe i should play another game i do something else i started doing the behemoth the historical european martial arts thing was the actual sword so i think you can see here like the two practice swords so i was doing that just sort of like trying to i got really into just medieval stuff and i think this whole thing was sort of like this over correction from doing sci-fi for so long that i needed my brain to to switch a little bit um and uh yeah this is what like i'm a little bit like all over the place her but yeah this is a chance for you your question about that that game the machine i think about the dog so what happened after that like did you find a group of friends or or people how you're talking about like mortal shell or on the machine instinct about the dog i guess the after after the the machine like when you start working more rochelle yeah yeah so yeah so for mortal show uh for those who don't know like so mortal shell is this deep action rpg uh you can see it's it's very much souls-like and um it's coming out on august 18 on pc xbox one and playstation 4. so the game because it's not out yet uh you know we don't know yet how much it was successful will be and so and also i'd rather you know have this conversation deeply about mortal shell like after the game is out with all my partners and teammates who are thinking about doing something like this so i can probably do like a sort of a quick um sort of quick run through how we ended up doing this and all sort of like my biggest lessons from that because i think this is really the most interesting part of that because i i should say that the last two years they're really been life transforming for me like in not in terms of like learning new stuff but just in general i think the fundamental personal growth it was really it was really this project and sort of overcoming you know fears and energy inner demons and stuff like that so it was really awesome like the big one is that you know there's always this thing that you want to do everything yourself and then i always had this thing it's like i had to just i want to do this by myself and have this um sort of being this this extreme ownership and overly resourceful just doing it for yourself like when i was in school like i wasn't really like i liked sports but i wasn't into team sports so like if you want me to like to run by myself a jump i'll do it but if it's like a team sport i was never really good at that and the the machine instinct by myself was really this sort of a pivotal moment was like oh man making games are hard like making good games are even harder and how do you find a balance uh i mean i'm sure you're aware of it even more because you guys probably make like the most polished game out there or one of them was published so it's insane like making it to bringing it to like a certain 80 of quality is one thing and finishing the last 20 it feels like an impossible task it feels like it just never ends and it's it's and this was the the moment where i really i knew that i wanted to do something in like sort of dark souls kind of realm and uh i i wanted to like i was really getting excited about like doing something medieval i was sort of taking a break from sci-fi and stuff like this but i had no clue how to really approach it to the point where it's really a game that's playable and so and it's an interesting story there because while i was doing just sort of like a collection of art with you know dimitri parking you know him and then friend animator and then there was another friend another programmer we were doing like this prototype that was mostly like about art and sort of initial peach uh anton who was also my friend and anton gonzalez and i used to work and i used to rent and work with him but also rented an apartment like 15 years ago in moscow uh he with his friend they were doing a prototype a demo that was actual sort of vertical slice because another so just to sort of like give a quick i'm not again jumping all over the place but um so i'm one of the co-founders with the anton gonzalez andrew murray meet your parking and while me and michael were doing this one thing that's was more almost like this like a dark souls fighting kind of game mostly character focused and anton was also helping with the environment stuff uh anton was also doing like a vertical slice that was more way more gameplay focused and actual something that you can actually play with with andrew because andrew is like uh he's like the super genius who is like who can program design right lower and and and anthony is another freaking assassin that can animate and make character and level design like he's like so they essentially they build this um vertical slice that's working and the time was called dungeon haven it was a much much smaller game then you know what model became but at some point because we sort of we knew each other and like in and even in there and sort of tried to help each other so like for example in in dungeon haven vertical slice and prototype and their damn their main character was something that was done out of the parts that dmitry immediate for like the armor had which is like a kickback star so we're already trying to help each other and and and in terms of the leverage like if okay if we're experts in this area we're going to help you guys here you guys can help us here etc and so at some point it just became sort of apparent then why are we doing this why we're not just make one game together like our why why are we sort of uh and wasting time you know just makes someone but much better cooler on every front and wizard merge and this is how it even became like so the studio is called cold symmetry and it's like the guys had the company called cold war studio and we had you know black sky symmetra so we just merged together it's like kind of cold symmetry sounds super dope we would have liked it yeah and and it's it's been amazing because of uh like as i said in terms of like that when i say why the last two years were really this transformative experience i'm not really trying to exaggerate but really is like learning the some of the fundamental lessons and how uh like team is absolutely everything it's absolutely the most crucial thing and i know like it's it's been said a lot around like it's everybody say that but i think in terms of what exactly that really means i don't really hear a lot being explained or like i read a lot of like i like books you know leadership and self-improvement and all all the good stuff that help you in life but somehow i didn't really hear that much of that when the whole the magic sauce and the formula is so difficult to come by because like essentially it's like this you need these three things that you you lose one or one is not really good enough everything falls apart and it's like one you need obvious alignment on the goal the final goal if one of the key players is just having a different goal like it's not going to ever work so being having this alignment strategic alignment and like day-to-day sort of tactical alignment and how you get stuff done is absolutely crucial for the speed efficiency getting things done just keeping the momentum right but also like where exactly you ended up at the end so like being this alignment so having like oh you know it's important to have good people and good team what what the hell that means exactly right and in reality like it's this super magic formula of three things and at first like you need this alignment right but then then second would be uh like you want to have little overlap you want to have a lot of overlap in your goal right and ultimately but little overlap in the actual skill set and and technical expertise and i feel like this especially is true for like smaller team and you know small approach or um i guess i should say any team that's just starting out and you need like a solid foundation because you need to have some overlap in terms of understanding each other what everybody does to you know for healthy safe checks and balances and just keep each other accountable understanding and being able to effectively plan things together and budget and all those things but then you have you need to have as much open sort of non-overlap where everybody can sort of run with the idea and execute and make something great out of it right and really i think this is very healthy because everybody has the peace they there's like honor and the people can like claim their creative ownership and and fulfill their creative potential while we're still doing something great together and we're trying to really sort of uh i don't want to i don't want to say like pioneer but we're really trying to do something that i didn't really see like working like i didn't really see examples of that industry before we're like we're all sort of in this together as like we're co-founders and we decided all the high level things together where we do next and and we constantly sell each other on things we do so if somebody is not in then we're just not doing that and we feel like it's both a combination of keeping things really in check and you know almost like how uh like you almost like like how a good constitution should work sort of like when you know there is no over um i don't know what's a good word like when somebody is mutating somewhere and it becomes this thing where it's essentially not good for the final product and and because we have so we have the same like we're all equally like we're all passionate about souls games we all love this kind of genre right so when it was pretty clear like this is the kind of game i want to make but we'll have a little bit of the differences in like little details like okay like i like oh i always like like this kind of class i like this kind of playing this class and because we have we have just enough of a big overlap but have enough diversity in terms of like what everybody sort of backgrounds and and and uh what everyone's aspirations in terms of what kind of thing they would like to play and we try to capture all that we'll also make something that's on one hand is is niche and authentic but at the same time it covers a broader audience so i think we also even think like just business-wise it's also so smart because we while being very focused in one gender one market we think we can cover in a broad enough audience that like if we like if we generally like the core team likes what we're doing we're sort of okay we think other people will like you too so we're like practicing this we constantly sell each other on ideas doesn't matter what where they coming from and then when it comes to executing them we're just leveraging whatever skill set everybody everybody's got and like obviously everybody has their core strengths but because the team is so small uh you know throughout the last few years like everybody has to saw other things like you never did before like i had to like do like voice over like casting auditions for for actors like how do you even do that what do you start like and things like that and everybody had like their own experience of doing things they had never done and we have to sort of develop our wings on the way down but because we're it's a it's a small team and we really and this is why you know like even when it comes to titles we just say like okay if somebody is a co-founder it's more than just let's say somebody is a let's say like a lead designer or game black card director or whatever because now you feel responsible for the end product equally so this sense of ownership is that there's always pressure on everyone that it doesn't matter what's what's your expertise if you see there is mess in this corner and nobody noticed that like if you can fix something go and fix it you don't don't ask permission to it's a it's a very interesting dynamic because if somebody would tell me let's say five years ago that something like this would work i wouldn't believe it but somehow we managed to do this over the last two years over achieving every milestone we had we did like way more of everything in every department and it's been it like it's kind of unbelievable because i wouldn't really believe that we would do this and everybody was passionate so like so this would be like number two right i said three things so we have one that's really the the alignment of the goals right when we talk to like how to find the team and i think like especially for artists out there it's really important to hear uh because a lot of ic art is teaming up with exact same artists so that there's like a lot of redundancy instead of finding someone who complements them then rather like there is the same a clone of yourself right so you want to laminate goals but the second you want have a lot of non-overlapping expertise so you can cover uh as much of the the the territory as you can to actually make the final product and then number three is absolutely crucial is trust and it's it's funny it's almost like sounds cliche you need to like trust each other but it's without it you can't really you can't really do you can't really operate and especially like now you know like with the whole kobe thing everybody's working remotely uh it's hard to to have this eye to eye day-to-day you know being in the same room interaction right so having i feel like having the trust is even more important because a lot of the time uh like for a few days you just sort of act in vacuum right and like you just need to do what needs to be done um so like i feel like this is something that's really been really really kind of eye opening to me and you know you you don't want to build don't don't look for employees looks for part look for partners and and yeah check your ego at the door and ask yourself what do you want now versus what you want the most and like once you realize that uh whatever makes the final product better then it's that you should think about that right and by say product i don't really mean to make it as a sound commercial i mean like whatever that is game movie creation right and then obviously the trust so so let's say like yeah don't don't look for employees look for partners don't build corporations build relationships so oh dude no audio no audio for you oh sorry sorry my bad uh it's funny you say a lot of those things and and uh a lot of these things is very similar to what we go through like even on at sony and like bigger studios of course when you're dealing with like 400 people teams it's like i don't know can you tell me more about that it's a different it's a different kind of uh chemistry but like to the core of it is very similar to what you were talking about right where the leadership group is a very core kind of group that has a lot of the the the things that you you're just describing of like the leadership roles and overlapping and a sense of responsibility and a sense of culture which i think is one of the the other thing that's like super important especially if you're building a studio where there's hundreds of people in it and a lot of the decisions are made right there so that's why like to your point it's very important to have that set of uh goals and and understanding that everybody's on the same uh the same page right and then when it come you know it trickles down to like hundreds of another set of leadership group that if that core top is not aligned then of course you're going to start seeing a lot of the whole the whole building start to crumble like that's why the foundation needs to be super just rock solid right because of the whole trickling down yeah yeah yeah the one thing that for a project that is always kind of interesting is just looking at the the leadership itself like who is directing and because you need that final voice when there's a lot of voices in the in the group yeah which is like it's it's probably a little tricky when uh when you're directing a game with like four or five different different uh people in that role like how do you guys how do you guys play that role yeah i think this is the way we approach things like this is all comes from like the leverage is built into the core competencies of each individual members so at the end of the day when we have sort of like hmm there's these two things that i'm 50 50 on let's say and the guys are also 50 50 on and then okay well let's say uh three of us or none of us are were born and raised in the english-speaking country and we're talking about like the names or lore and then we have andrew miro who actually published the book and wrote book i was like if he likes the name i'm like i can sleep peacefully at night and the same thing let's say i don't know like i'm designing something i'm designing a sword and then uh i say like hey i really think i think you should grab the the palm oil here for the leverage on the even though like i'm not an animator and let's say like antoine was animating and professionally for three or four years and remember exactly but even though because like it's i think so we try to use this thing where whatever the leverage is it's built in in the competence and experience because at the end of the day uh we still value like we're sort of biased for action and getting things done and the one thing that we all agree on uh internally is that we don't want to get stuck and would rather make a mistake and then correct the mistake then you know get stuck and not being able to make the decision yep so being able like you know like don't so like the the the the answers are not not in contemplation they're in action and when there is time to think and plan and contemplate we do this but when it's time to execute we try to execute and we're thinking now because we went through like a pig with quite a bit of growth there as well in terms of the team member like we have the core the super small accord team and then we expand it to sort of 15 that's sort of like we stayed on the 15th for quite a long time but at the big production we had to bring in some like short-term hires for like specific jobs like now we need to re-top a lot of models so we would grow even more to that like let's say to 40 for a few months and then go back to 15. so there is a there is a bit of there's always this uh challenge how do you onboard new people in terms of again as you said culture culture is super critical what kind of product we're making what kind of game is it what what's really important and uh as you said at the end of the day it's up to to the leadership to really inspire people to to educate uh newcomers on like what do we think what's important but also have an open mind for whenever someone new comes in and they have a cool idea or they have like a fresh outside perspective quite a lot of things that become they became really uh important at the at sort of the final game they came in from because people had like fresh perspective so i think this is really i think that would like to keep going in the future as well is to have to keep both like being pretty clear how we what do we want right have a very clear vision uh being authentic to the vision but also keep an open mind on being flexible and how do we get and you know certain things evolve during the process which they always do if they become better than great it's it's awesome yeah and you guys you guys are doing an excellent job and i know the game is going to do well so i hope we can do another one of these and other guys so we can that would be awesome yeah to everyone yeah yeah i feel like already more than i planned to it's just kind of but then it plus the game is not out yet so i don't want to jinx it but so far yeah thanks been pretty exciting journey and i just want to give you my two cents because when i saw it when i when it first came out we first kind of saw like that first trailer and and everybody was like our minds were blown of like the quality and it's like of course it's like vitality's working on this thing and you have dimitri and all those guys and it's like you know this is like more and it just shows like how the technology is evolving enough where we're gonna see more of those projects hopefully you know in the future say that it's really technology enabling you know artists and uh but also i think also just game designers and programs on every level there's more things that people cannot do in smaller teams tools than than it was possible before yeah and then i think also just uh yeah just just in general i feel like there's also room for any kind of game out there or any kind of movie you if it's if it's done with uh with your your heart and soul and authenticity to it that that you know you yourself would let's say play that game or watch the movie or do that then chances are you'll find people who also like that as well so yeah yeah you know hopefully we'll see more people because in reality too a lot of people don't realize it but even on a big studios the people who are making the game is like a handful of designers and artists and and they're making like the core of it but then like for a big production like like a triple a you just need a lot more people to execute on that like to like propagate and polish it up like you said the polishing of that of a game that big is just a mind-blowing amount of work right i feel like as soon as you scale just a little bit in terms of let's say level of polish right or the amount of content you suddenly you're no longer it's not like you double the team like you need to quadruple the team and then because like every one of us was like both the executor of a part of the project let's say of a core certain something that's important to project right but then they're also producers and they're leads at the same time and this is something where we try to deliberately exercise the delegation getting closer to you know the end of the project where we know like the approach is becoming a good shape to exercise to learn how do we prepare for that when we actually uh you know get bigger and scale because at some point uh i mean i don't mind to just do the same thing all over again but i feel like we just everyone is just more um everyone's in a ways like perfectionist we want to do better next time whereas it's just we need to get better also at uh becoming maybe more effective and better team together uh sorry don't you get with more people yep uh so there's obviously there's so much so many more things that needs to be learned and evolved so from you know from big big boys like you know i wish i wish you guys can do that in a kind of a in a healthy way you know because that's kind of the trick when it starts to become that big and hopefully the game will do amazingly well and you guys are going to have a lot of wealth and in you know a bright future that's all i think dude you already gave him like way like a lot more than i was expecting so this is thank you thank you for that and i hope everybody can kind of take a little bit of uh of what what works for them you know throughout this conversation or you had a lot of different phases on your career and uh they kind of show like how you kind of matured and evolved and you were already like very uh like even in the beginning you talk about your blizzard times which is like 10 10 years ago 10 12 years ago i don't know how long it's been i remember that day actually i don't know if you remember but when i visit blizzard and i match you the first time when foster was still there and i did it was like 10 12 years ago i don't know time goes fast man it's crazy you know what's like kind of crazy like to me it doesn't feel like that was a long time ago somehow uh i don't know why maybe it's just the weather here in this part of the states because like that you don't really have a change this season yeah but i felt like yeah i'm looking i'm going back and just my sort of memory lane everything that was before moving to states and i can see like okay there was this period this stage and now and here like i remember like blizzard was like yesterday you know still talking to you know the guys in france who either worked there already doing something else and i can't believe this was actually i think i left was it eight or nine nine years ago it's yeah it's been long and since then you know like i changed one industry and then the other so it's it's it's kind of crazy where are you where you are right now i used to in long run actually that was i was going to say that but then i lost uh track of the thought because when you were asking about in terms of the whole balancing of uh you know like that when you start to make less or like if you do like less work and things like that i moved out of california precisely for that like i actually live in las vegas in nevada oh nice uh which is not the place you would expect like you know some like somebody or like an artist who does freelance would move and that's not your first choice but the the main reason i consider leaving california was like taxes and cost of living and because i never leave my house like i would like you know instead of renting a very expensive one bedroom in california we sort of made this decision like we could have a house here in las vegas and at the time the market was still kind of low and things like that and uh and at the time i was like traveling a lot outside the country to do work and we're trying to find a place like hey where can you where can we live where it's close to the big major airport but uh so like you can like go and fly but it's not like in the middle of the city and and it's also sunny you know so you know even though like it gets really hot in you know nevada during summer but at least like it's never like depressing cloudy i guess because i grew up in the part of the world where it's always like always depressing cloudy and rainy uh i wanted to like stay in the area where it was like kind of like in california it's sunny and we looked the place and now friends actually moved here and then we came to you know also visit and check it out and turn out this is if you don't go downtown on the street for all your cuisines everything it's it's kind of like california just a little bit more hot in the summer nice i've been to vegas once and hopefully you're not gambling no every weekend and stuff no i'm not into like that that's what it's like if you're into game like you're not supposed to move down here that'd be a problem so i don't care yeah well next time you're down here i know that's going to be this whole thing but it would be awesome to hang out let's do it they'll be amazing yeah so let's let's do a couple questions i know you uh you're kind of like one an hour and a half already oh wow we are damn that went fast yeah questions sometimes you have some time let's do it we'll do it a couple of years for sure awesome i think one of them that kind of got repeated a couple times was uh for someone that that's starting right now and it's kind of pursuing the like concept in 3d and that makes and i know like 3d there's kind of like a big uh learning curve right just to get to that point different than just kind of uh doing in 2d and cost concepting and all that what kind of things do you recommend for people who want to pursue this type of career and starting now yeah so i think the the best way and when i say the best is really to not spend like 10 years and not really get anywhere in terms of the time investment would be still get a at least a decent foundation in 2d uh because until i saw progress in 2d and foundation just comes apart just you and you with a pencil you know on a piece of paper i didn't really see a big jump in concept design so that's that's fundamental and the reason being is because of the speed of iteration uh it's like one of my friends told me this comparison when they had like one day of surfing and one day of snowboarding and we're surfing like you go there you wait for the wave and then you know the waves comes in and then you you totally not make it you like crash and then it's like you wave another wave and somebody else can do so like three hours passes and then you have like three attempts at the wave or something so you didn't learn much because you didn't had actual trying time that much and then you go snowboarding you get on the snowboard and if it's a big ass mountain you know you have like it takes some time to get down by the time you're down you already got way more time to actually learn how to snowboard and stay on the board and balance versus like a week of surfing for example like i'm i'm not good at both some i could be wrong with this analogy but the basic idea here is that try to get as much quick iteration time as possible uh to really learn the fundamentals because you could spend literally days on modeling something designing something and then see this is total and then there's time time spent i've been there so many times and it's been one of the most fundamentally frustrating things to experience in doing 3d design because of the cost of the doing something so finding a way to approach this and dissect in a way where you learn lessons faster and when i say learn learn lessons i really mean have a factual understanding of okay like you know a good example would be uh certain proportions and you let's say you design a mac and you you the proportions could be let's say good or not good whatever i'm not gonna go into like the whole what makes him good or not but then the lesson that you get from a cert from a trial and then you have a certain like okay you can make a note that this doesn't work that this works like for example this dividing something in half is not as dramatic as deciding dividing like a port like a like a model like a one third to like two thirds like a golden ratio because you could read stuff on what golden ratio means but until you actually try it and you internalize the knowledge that knowledge is not doing anything for you so the internalizing the knowledge comes only through practice and you need to find a way to make as much as dense and as as as sort of uh as many of those dense practices as possible so that's why like learning to do it fast helps you to go through a really shitty face faster because like you can do it faster you can fail faster having hot keys you can do it faster you can go through that and then i'm not saying to rush it no no no like take it please take your time but what i'm saying where you can speed things up and speed those uh trials and errors it's totally worth doing that but again like fundamental 2d or or sculpting clay anything that allows you to learn fundamentals of just art and quality what makes good art this will be always a good investment whatever you want to do after this whether it's robots or transportation design anything you need to get those those hours and eventually like essentially it's still going to be this time that you can't really um skip that whatever that is like you know five to ten years it'll still be that but there is a way to come out on the other sides much better than if you don't do those kind of things consciously yeah the uh it's funny you mentioned that the speed because the speed is something that you practice to like get faster so you can make mistakes like but it all comes down to like practicing and like you've done hundreds and and that like different hundreds of things of same thing that you've done that you do right now right it's just more of a matter of like you're getting better and you can start visualizing things you know as you as you go yeah and i feel like there's also this element where i've seen this in the past and it's is that you you give a certain advice and people take it to heart too much like it's a rule you don't break and i think this is also a mistake you want to be oh you want to be self-aware and being always grounded in reality you are like you you know okay am i going too fast should i take some time to reflect what exactly am i doing this is also important so the self-awareness is is also essential skill uh to know where you stand you know like okay where where am i doing what's the goal here what's the what's the sort of long-term goal and deconstruct and like try to really dissect like the thing that really helped me is to really dissect everything to the point where every little piece i can understand this individually and then if i don't understand something big i try to deconstruct it again and see like is there one thing that's missing so taking this analytical approach taking notes like i've been i always take when i make a design i always make a list of notes of things that i understand about things i want to do things i don't understand like trying to really find a way to organize your thoughts in a way that that promotes your self-awareness is really really useful that kind of pings back to this one question here that uh jay is asking like how do you know when you spend too much time on something like do you have a kind of a strict rule or a way to like give yourself to figure out a technique or it's just a feeling that you've hit some kind of a wall huh um i don't have a strict rule i think this is all individual you want to build an intuition by overdoing certain things it's like was a documentary on the free diving where like at 60s they thought it was like you can't really dive deeper than 40 meters deep or something and then every like i think five to ten years they were break records adding like another 30 meters to it or something to the point where it's like eventually eventually like 200 meters so no one really knows where the limit is no one really knows how much is too much uh the question is really what's your goal because if your goal is to prepare yourself for the industry and then you need to be clear what kind of industry we're talking about what kind of position in this industry like you need some kind of reference point when i was uh approaching concept design to me it was this great like crazy fear of how in the hell can you ever compete with the 2d concept part because you need to be just as good quality wise but then you also need to do this in 3d but then uh you don't really need to pose the question this way because there is benefits to both like 2d art is not going anywhere the three art is not going anywhere uh so there is no need to sort of over dramatize things this way like as long as you learn fundamentals and you keep putting the healthy pressure on yourself i feel like the good example not a good example but good practice is to be whatever you do when you don't know how long it takes just record the time like i mean like make a mark i'm like yeah tomorrow i'm going to do this thing i have no clue and this is it's just straight up budgeting like you start a new new department new project you don't know how much it's going to cost and then you need to have some kind of record of that for the future reference and i did the same thing as soon as you start doing the same thing with art and it it start to become a little bit easier to navigate you spend let's say on this phase design you spend let's say okay i spent this two hours on this okay well i know this takes me two hours and then so that way when you spend let's say six hours and you get something that is three times better you're like okay nice so i see a certain scale a progression but then because nothing really is linear then let's say you spend something two weeks on something then it becomes okay this is clearly too much but then it's always the question is like too much relative to what exactly because what if your goal is to come up with something so just something that wasn't done before that you don't even know what it is that there is 99 of the time is r d and search for something like you need to be aware of that which part and again like i think this is all boils down to be to have the self-awareness which which stage you're in because i remember i was and i was still a blizzard at the time i was doing this personal artwork that i think i it was the longest personal artwork that i spent on and i think i never finished it i never published it it was like three months of doing something that i ended up hating and i remember that it was one of those example one of those things where the r d on that thing was more than the work itself it was no i don't i didn't have a clear goal so the clarity is really the key you want to have a clear goal what you're trying to achieve and you want to have a metric around this whether where you can evaluate yourself like evaluate your own performance whether how well you are on the track of achieving that goal so it's like okay you have a project then you need to split this in my micro milestones for this even if the project is let's say something that takes you two days make micro milestones meaning it's like before lunch i need to do this before that and if every time when you're super off like when it's so off they're like wow i thought i'll do it in two hours but it took me two years and then you need to evaluate the whole system okay something's definitely not right and then you get like a whole sort of okay let's look at everything something's definitely not right because i'm so often my estimates then like i'm clearly the and they're i'm not matching my expectations with reality and then something else so you need to sort of re-evaluate everything again if that makes sense it does it does and i think it it also goes for like whoever is starting right now you can always break it down in in that sense of like hey man i want to execute on this and i think it takes me a couple days but it takes me a lot more so like break it down where it's falling apart so you can have smaller goals right you just need to have that final goal of like oh maybe i just need to then kind of supply this part it's taking me so long and learn it learn the tool a little bit better and just break it down to smaller goals yeah 100 yeah all right man let me just ask you this one thing because if i don't people are going to get angry with me because a lot of people are asking what software's you you're using to make all this ah okay i'm sure you get the software question yeah yeah all the time but i mean find out like it's a good opportunity to address like on a broader scale like so xsi forever someone just put it on yeah exercise forever true i mean at least it's forever for now until until i find something better like the way i approach my software is uh i need a good soft i need a good sub d tool right i need a good tool for cad modeling i need a good sculpting tool this is just to create 3d models and for those three things i use three different software so i use soft image i use zbrush and i use moy3d but it doesn't mean you have to like i feel like today anybody who comes in in the industry like fresh or not even in industry just like a student a lot of things you could just do in zbrush like it could be one of the packages like it really depends of your entry points or where where your background is coming from so for me the three main software creation let's say uh like a model that's that's you know this is a complete design i always look at those three things together and even on the design you wouldn't expect that so we like you saw the slides show some of the mortal shell stuff like you saw swords like some swords and some of the uh armor and stuff i did i would do things like i block out of a you call like an armor set like a chest plate in in exercise i convert the sub d to cat take it to cad add details to it and then take it to zbrush for detail i would like i did all the weapons on mortal shell in cat first and then i detailed it in and even though like they're medieval like amazing swords uh like they're all done in more emoji first moi 3d first and then detailed in zbrush so a lot of them were actually bypassed excessive together they never made it to soft image so this is when it comes to modeling design and then in terms of the presentation and what happens after that obviously depends on what industry we're talking about for product and for movies i would render for the last few years everything in octane before that i would use keyshot they're both good so whatever you can afford whatever you like better they're both great so i use that and for the you know the game project that i'm currently on we i would used i would use soft image for re-top actually still for metabolizing because it has a good uh snapping tool i did it at the beginning before we could afford actually hiring uh people to do the in-game assets i would return my own stuff in in soft image but then for baking and painting maps and textures with substance painter and then obviously it all goes in unreal engine perfect awesome good again i hope we can do this again i got and we can talk more about the project i have a lot of questions and i know you guys have been jamming in to get to get it done and i i can't wait to play it i've been checking out the betas thank you so much i appreciate it yeah it's been a hell of a ride for everyone on the team for sure yeah it's going to be awesome and i'll say it again you've been an inspiration from the beginning of my career you know that already told you that so i do appreciate you taking the time for us to chat and hopefully the people who follow my work and can also take some sort of inspiration from your kind of career and i know you have a lot more to go and i can't wait to see what you do next it's going to be thanks and then just want to say you know goes both way likewise seeing what you've been doing both professionally and you know personal work always inspiring so uh i feel honored to say that because the energy flows both ways and really appreciate it man thanks thank you so much and guys i hope you guys appreciate it uh we'll try to do this again sometime soon and uh yeah sorry if we didn't get to all the questions i know next time next time next time all right man thanks everyone thank you appreciate it bye guys cheers

Channel: Raf Grassetti

Views: 52,257

Rating: 4.97682 out of 5

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Id: S8KeTYXdaQ0

Length: 107min 25sec (6445 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 08 2020