Creating High-End CG Characters - Interview with Alessandro Baldasseroni

i'm a firm believer that it's better to do something in a shitty way than not than not doing anything like waiting for you know the right moment or the right technique or like you know whatever it happened to me so many times that i model things and then looking at those like a few months after i was like well i should have done it the other way well that's good next time you're gonna do it like the proper way alessandro is a prolific character artist that has worked at some of the top studios in the world he spent eight years at blur studios creating high end characters for their ridiculously good looking game trailers then he spent three years at riot games working on league of legends and most recently the mill on various vfx projects he's unquestionably one of the top character artists working in the industry today which you can immediately see when you browse his portfolio it's just insane uh the level of work he's able to consistently produce so in this interview that you're about to hear he gives away vital knowledge specifically for those of you that are self-learners and are looking for ways that you can improve how you learn so in the interview he talks about why you shouldn't be scared of learning new software what tasks in the 3d industry he thinks will be automated within the next five to ten years how he got his first job why doing something badly now is better than waiting for the right knowledge why some artists shoot themselves in the foot by focusing too much on the technical and why you should be utilizing asset libraries in your work and speaking of asset libraries this video is sponsored by our sister company polygon a library of textures that include all the maps you need for photorealistic materials they work in any 3d software and there are thousands to choose from so with polygon you can create bigger and better environments architecture characters you name it so sign up for a free account with the link in the description and try out some of our free materials there's no downsides that i can see so now sit back and enjoy this in-depth discussion with the expert character artist alessandro baldaccironi alessandro why don't we start at the beginning how did you find your start in 3d let's put it this way i never really like attended like artistic studies when i was a when i was younger so one of my biggest regret was to not learn yeah you know to draw basically i studied like science of information and so um and then like i found a job basically in you know a computer engineering company and like a coworker of mine basically gave me uh a copy back in the days we're talking about 1997 of 360 max yeah and uh and that's how i started i started like a completely like hobbyist basically i was doing like a cat job during the day then when i was going back home i was practicing with the with residue max and it was intoxicating i was having so much fun just like doing simple objects in 3d like a christmas tree or like uh you know a table with like glasses or an ashtray and stuff like that and uh you know at the time we're talking about 1996 1998 cg was kind of like pioneeristic in a way to make like uh you know kind of like nice renders and every day was a different discovery and that's that's how i started just like playing with a software so an engineer gave you yeah a first copy of three of mine um okay he noticed that i was doing some uh uh you know rudimental 3d stuff with the limited at the time like possibilities of uh autocad 14 and i was like why don't you try something something like this you know why don't you try trading studio 3d studio 1.0 which is more like oriented to um you know 3d rendering yeah and and i started practicing by myself you know yeah and do you recall uh what it was specifically about it that you that drew you to it uh i think i started playing with like some primitives and i was like and i was clicking render you know placing a light and stuff like that i was like oh my god this is amazing it was moving around like lights in the in the viewport and i was seeing i know that it sounds stupid you mean compared to what people can do today we can do today but at the time it was it was simply it was simply amazing it was just like mesmerizing to see like you know that a software was actually giving you the possibility to do something visual in a matter of like seconds even if it was like simple you know because remember that at the time the only way to achieve something like that was to actually either use photoshop or to actually draw it yeah by hand but in a second you could have like a fully rendered like you know sphere with shadows and uh and it was a very impressive at the time you know it sounds funny today but at the time it was like the kind of thing that uh in the mind of like a young a young guy was actually having an effect you know i mean so he was the wonder of a software it was like almost like magical you know i mean today maybe something something like that could be comparable to you know a plugin that makes like amazing things that have never been seen before yeah and that's the kind of like feeling that i had at the time like the feeling of like discovering a new world of like possibilities especially for a guy that always wanted to um to do like artistic stuff i was good at drawing when i was a kid but then when i grew up i didn't like follow my uh my passion i got into like science of information to become a programmer but that interests always stay in the back of my head to make like uh visuals like you know images do you recall a time when you realized that this was something that you could do professionally yeah there was a time in particular i was in this company and you know we were making like electric uh wirings and stuff like that and uh my boss was so nice that uh it was allowing me to use this software like this 3d studio software at uh at work you know in the um in between project basically let's put it this way and i made an image it was like uh it was just like a vehicle like you know running um on um on a truck or something like that and i posted on a website called the 3d cafe and they gave me an award it was like it was mind-blowing i was so excited i mean 3d cafe i don't know if he's still there but at the time was like one of the few points of reference okay for people interested in this like very niche kind of like um so that was before cg society oh yeah yeah it was wow i know i'm not sure it was before maybe it was contemporary at some point but yeah it was one of the few there in this like limbo of uh you know internet computer graphic resources so they gave me an award and i was like oh my god maybe maybe i can make it make a living out of it the problem was that was that there was not not much to do in a in a country like italy at the time it was not like a solid uh industry so i started looking around and i figured out that there was like a gang company called uh called milestone and they're still there they still develop triple a racing games and then at some point i submitted a portfolio just made of like very simple images made in three studio max 1.0 and i got an email back saying that they were interested and i completed switch career at that point i was you know it was just like jumping in a black hole of like uncertainty because working in video games at that era i'm talking about at this point like early early 2000 was completely uncertain it was like i don't know i mean i don't know what's going to happen i don't know if i'm going to have a job in like three months from now and i was coming from a very good like uh full-time position in that company you know so to me was like literally follow what you like to do and try it you know nice why not and so so you found this hub of people online and how did you how did you learn how did you learn how to do it without schooling or i i learned by myself just like practicing practicing with the software my goal was always like hey i have something that i want to do like uh like a sword like a piece of a an object coming from a comic or a movie or whatever and uh i need the tool to do it the tool is my software which at the time was like 3d max so there was no zbrush no other like you know um other like additional software or anything like that they were just like you and the software and you need to find you had to find out like techniques to actually make like simple things like these objects you know and there was nothing online either i mean there was not much at all to be honest there were like a few tutorials written by some uh some very passionated people yeah but that's it so most of the time you were just like you and the software you just like endless uh trying and trying and like you know learn from your own mistakes spending hours just to do maybe like a stupid like chain revolving around the spline and sometimes you have to figure out how even how to do it because it wasn't obvious at all just like you know opening the software like i don't know how to do it and today sounds ridiculous but at the time you had to you know to go to go on like um online and look for tutorials how to bend the chain along a spline you know i mean even today is like that but at the time you were lucky if you could you if you could find something like that because sometimes like nothing right yeah figured out you know um yeah it was very it was very limited in terms of like resources that you could find but you know in a way it was good because it was pushing yourself to actually try things you know to be like flexible when it comes to the software to understand like the tools they're using to a deeper level probably you know to just play to just play and and be and be fascinated about what you can achieve sometimes you could achieve something just by just by mistake and you were like oh my god this is so so interesting it was opening new possibilities you know i mean what what do you think it was in you to become a tinkerer somebody that would would be prepared to fail continuously in uh in software um compared to to some people who who can't see a way to to to do something themselves they need the tutorial what was it that uh that it was the fact it was the fact that it was not nobody to help me i mean i knew that there were like people interested in the same things that i was interested like computer graphic but it was very hard to reach them you know what i mean so i i had to do it by myself i had to like spending literally hours and hours in my spare time you know some people in italy they were maybe like i don't know playing video games i was playing video games too but i was dedicating a lot of time to computer graphic or they were like hobbies like soccer i was a nerd at the time you know i'm not afraid to say it so i was spending so much time in front of the computer doing this kind of things and the the thing is like to me the goal was to make images so there was no like side thinking of like i want to make a living i want to make money with this because there was no possibility anyway you know so it was about like it's fun i want to make something visual everything was oriented to that so it was the purest kind of like um feeling when it comes like to to create things you know i mean there was no side side goal like no no economic benefits no nothing which is fun i think that was the main drive that actually pushed me to keep trying and trying and try despite the fact that i was doing shitty things you know i mean what i was doing was like ridiculous but for me was everything for me was like i was so proud i was showing this like i don't know this ashtrays to my to my friends and they were like wow they were like wow this is fascinating because they had no idea how that was done it was it was that pioneeristic that was it was that like um innovative at the time you know yeah today everybody's like somehow exposed to the fact that everything they see in like movies especially like you know blockbuster is somehow done with the computers you know so people have no sense of wonder anymore except for like amazing executions you know but back in the days people they didn't even even know that you can do that you know with a computer and a software you know i mean they were like how is this done it's like a photo some people were saying is this a photo nobody would say that that the crappy things i was doing at the time they were like photorealistic but back in the days people are like wow this is weird what am i looking at yeah right the idea of like computer generated images was still something was still like a novelty at the time you know in like late late 90s let's put it this way you know yeah i mean we had movies like you know thrawn and the visual effects industry was where was slowly like creeping into the uh the vfx plus but blockbusters but it was not like uh in the general mind of people that you know you can do that kind of stuff like you know within computer graphic so yeah so do you remember uh the first time you you were your first paid gig related to 3d the first time someone gave you money to do something in 3d oh well yes it's it coincides but when uh when i started working for um for that game company uh milestone in milan when i had like regular paychecks i was a generalist at the time so i was doing um basically either like tracks racing tracks or or vehicles vehicles yeah vehicles so i had like regular paychecks and i was feeling amazing i was like wow i can't believe somebody pays me too you know to do this kind of things that you know um yeah it wasn't a regular job at all it wasn't no not at all so it was a casual no no i'm saying like it wasn't like a normal sorry it was a normal job at all it wasn't a common job at the time it was very very specific very high tech in a way you know people were basically saying i mean maybe they still say that today to people that works in video games they say oh you saw you play games all day that's what they were telling me or they were saying like oh when are you gonna give me like copies of like whatever game i was like no i mean i i do 3d i'm an artist i mean saying that you were an artist at the time in italy was ridiculous so nobody probably were ever like in my position saying that that came later you know you're just saying oh i work in this company you know we do we do video games yeah but you couldn't really be too specific because people will never understand yeah right my dream was at some point to work on something like that like one of those like products one of those like cinematics with those people so yeah but it was like always in the back of my head it was nothing really it was abstract abstract like told it wasn't really you know i didn't really have the drive to be like how can i move myself to do it you know what happened likely is just i've been lucky let's put it this way because yeah yeah i mean it was oh all my all my career has basically been on a rail somehow because to me was always like fun to do these things and then i started posting these things online and i got and i got a lot of like recognition online first by users and then i realized that a lot of like recruiters were also like going online to like forums and portals to actually um look for people to hire yeah and that's and it was really like the the online popularity that at some point got me some uh some contacts with like people and company outside of italy and these people started asking me to freelance mainly you know and that made me realize that it was like a broader industry outside you know it was like a bigger picture like a bigger war when it comes like to to computer graphic and maybe it wasn't that hard to actually do what i really wanted to do like high quality stuff of the caliber of this like blizzard cinematics basically you know yeah um so yeah i started getting like some some offers in terms of like freelancing and then uh who is that from uh it was like different companies like guerrilla games flagship flagship studio um next like it was blur you know um yeah tell me about blur yeah blur blur basically came to a point to a time when like i was doing a lot of like personal work so i was working in this like video game company doing like vehicles or trucks but nothing really related to characters when it comes like to my daily job but on the side in my spare time i was always like trying to push my true passion which was basically like making high-end cg and most of the subjects were like characters you know i was posting them online and then one day i got contacted by by blur studio that noticed some stuff that i posted on like it probably probably was like cg talk at the time which is the actual cg society and uh they were like well we like your stuff online and uh we were wondering we we are wondering if you would be interested in like um doing some freelance work for us and that's how i started um i started like freelancing from for blur and uh and it was a lot of fun i was freelancing for them and i was the same time i had like a daily job at this game company so i was basically working for blur after my working hours after like 6 00 p.m and like keep going till like uh early hours in the morning of the next day you know it was it was that intoxicating the funny thing is that the job that actually blur wanted me to do was much more fun than my actual job that i had like you know uh in the during the day so that was my drive that was like oh my god this american company which already even at the time they were doing amazing stuff in terms of like cinematics you know he's asking me to be a part of it and i can't really say no it wasn't even my body's tired it was it was that fun it was that intoxicating to keep pushing me to to do it you know how long did you continue that that freelance i think i freelanced for them for about i don't know maybe like one year and a half and then at some point it happened that um probably some people left at blur some characters modeler so blur asked me if i was interested in a full-time position at their studio so they asked me if i was interested to relocate and honestly at the time i didn't really have any strong bounds with with my you know with italy except my except my family and uh i tore a body and and i accepted that was the problem of the visa of course because you know you need to have a working permit so it took a while for blur to to figure out the right kind of visa for for people like me and then when the papers were ready i basically moved to to venice to to blur in uh october 2007. can you describe how it felt walking through the blurred doors for the first time oh it was amazing it was just like it was unbelievable because i knew that i knew some people that they were they were already working there for a while through like you know online popularity and seeing so many talent like condensed in the same place to me was like incredible it was uh it was humbling it was like fascinating it was like uh i don't know it was very hard to describe what it means for somebody coming from uh from from a country like italy where like the industry is very like it was very like under developed to a place like that and be part of such a such a reality you know i mean is there much of an industry in italy nowadays it's it's a little bit better there are like i mean there are a few more companies that actually you can choose if you want to like you know work in computer graphics so it's definitely better right compared to 10 years ago yeah yeah but i can't really tell that there is like a flourishing a flourishing like computer graphic industry i mean anyway nothing comparable to what you can find here in uh in los angeles and the surroundings you know i mean or the united states in general you know so for me it was a an amazing opportunity it was like okay i mean just there's not much more than this for now you know i mean and it was fun it was definitely a lot and lots of fun at least at the beginning so so blur was basically sold on you so they didn't really have to do an interview or anything like that because they already knew you were good well no yeah exactly like uh at the time when i when i stepped into blur for the first time i had already probably like a solid you know almost two years of freelancing of experience with them so they knew what i could deliver but to be honest like there was still a lot to prove because when you work as a freelancer for blur from abroad it's not exactly like the same thing of like being in-house there's a lot of like technical things and like processes that you don't really see working as a freelancers and that i realized they were like extremely important and valuable you know when you are actually an employee you know i mean so i wasn't really seeing how the sausages were really made when i was in uh when i was in italy and my work and experience when i came to blur after as an employee was way more like complete and enriched compared to when i was a was a freelancer when i was a freelancer i was only caring about making something great like visually you know i mean but the technical side of it for me was kind of like nebulous and that was because like a lot of people were taking my model that was that i was uploading on ftp and actually polishing it correcting the bugs correcting like a lot of things making like workable for the pipeline so i wasn't aware of that process which is huge which is actually huge is maybe like a good like 40 percent of the actual times you know i mean so other people are actually doing it and i thought i was badass but i wasn't i mean i was like doing an okay job you know when i was in italy but then i realized wow that guy fixed that stuff oh wow that guy like made this like workable animatable breakable whatever you know so when i came to bloor i realized that i was just like hitting not the tip of the iceberg but i wasn't really like aware of what was really going on in kind of like pipeline and uh and character modeling process when i was just like freelancing you know right how did it feel working amongst so many artists that are way up there in skill it was he was a he was intimidating at times you know i mean because sometimes like i knew a lot of people through online popularities but there were other people that were completely unknown to me and then i slowly learned that the worst people were like legends and they were like so good and so experienced and so like calm even in like stressful situations you know what i mean that was an aspect that for me was completely you know unaware i was only taking care of like doing things that were like pleasantly looking but there was totally another aspect when it comes like to commitment to endurance to like um you know relationship with co-workers you know doing your same job that for me was completely unknown and these people to me they're being teachers in a way they've been like inspirations you know i mean not to mention people that actually gave me a lot even in terms of like artistic knowledge and you know and told me how to look at things how to observe things how to be how to not fall in love with the first thing that i've done but like keep iterating you know what i mean um the value of like doing paint overs you know i mean that's that's something that i learned at blur explain that what's what do you mean painters well like before i was basically modeling modeling things but based on like references but blur basically told me the importance of like for people like me to execute really properly a given a given concept so usually what happens is that we start with a concept right then we do the 3d model how do you how do you judge when the 3d model is like you know good enough basically you have to compare it with the two piece of concept art but somebody needs to do a paint over on your 3d or basically you want to overlay the 3d on top of the concept artist and see the differences i wasn't really like methodically doing that before going to blur but some people told me hey you know what if you don't do this probably you're not gonna go like move through the pipeline that was the kind of place that blur was it wasn't about like kind of like you know um matching the concept it was almost like religiously follow some direction in order to you know to accomplish a specific vision you know i mean so um so you were taking other people's concepts and modeling them yeah that's basically my job i'm uh i'm an executioner i'm not like a concept artist so i do i do for production uh 3d models based on like concepts most of the time but i don't really do design but even there even if it sounds like somehow like limited there's a lot of things that you need to um to take care of which is the likeness to a given concept and by likeness sometime i mean like hey the confidence is in 2d you have to do your best to actually translate into in 3d to the point that sometimes when you trace your render on top of it it almost matches that was the kind of place that like blur was at the time they were so religious about the concept and what they liked in the 2d and they really wanted it to translate it into 3d in the best possible way so paint towers were like done like a lot of times like you know and some people were really knowledgeable about it and i learned a lot through that like through observation through um the errors that i was making you know the importance of like collecting like references to really like train your eyes to a certain like um sensibility when it comes like to matching like farms and silhouettes and stuff like that you know and this is just what you learned being around other artists that were yeah artist artists and like supervisors artisan supervisor because the bar the bar and character modeling at the time it was so high because like the people around me my co-workers they were doing specifically my same job like director modeling they were so good that uh you really didn't want to you know to deliver something in the pipeline that wasn't it wasn't really standing there in that like threshold of like uh good quality you know what i mean so we were basically like inspiring each other it's not that we were like giving feedbacks to each other every day because the only feedback we were having was from the co-workers but maybe you were looking at the characters done by another guy and you were like oh my god how did you make such a great like scouting or such a great uh metal shader or you know and you were going to talk with this guy and he was sharing his experience willingly you know yeah and that was that was simply amazing it was to me it was like wow this is such a huge vault of like valuable information that i can just like reach anytime like so easily you know at the the distance of like a few days there's this guy that can just like share his stuff with me you know and before that i was just like you know working in my room in italy with nobody else to talk with except like online guys you know doing my same job my same like not my same job but having my same uh passion you know so at that point was like oh my god i have so much like things that i can like learn from people around me and also the fact that they were amazing honestly you know blur was not hiring people that they were not like exceptionally good right yeah it was they always had like uh um you know their policy has always been like quality first and then like we don't really care where where you come from you know your nationality your education as long as your portfolio is great you can find a place here and uh i've noticed you are feeling proud of it you were feeling really proud of like being part of such a elite let's put it this way you know yeah they they basically at the time they did have like no no interns no there was no place to i mean there was no uh chance to be trained in blur if they hire you it's because like you're already good from the start you know what i mean so yeah yeah in 2007 they were no not even now i think like they they were not basically accepting people with the idea that they maybe will they will grow in the company like junior if they were hiring you they were good that's it you know so blood doesn't hide genius maybe maybe this day they do i've been missing like blur for the past two years so maybe they have like you know some junior i'm not sure to be honest like but at the time it was very it was very direct it was very like hey you just sit at your desk do your things you have to be autonomous you know i mean you can't ask people like how to do things because there is no time it's not it's not because people would be like no i mean i'm sorry i can't tell you you should know it it's just because there is no time the the schedules were so tight the turnaround of like character was like so incredibly tight at the time that you better know how to do it in a fast way and without relying on other people you know right and the quality you need to be high so it was very it was very hardcore you know what i mean but hey uh it's gonna be perfect at the time i already had like almost like two years of freelance with them it was just a matter of like getting used to my new desk to my new amazing machine and stuff like that but you know what do you um what do you attribute blows exceptionally high high uh because you watch other trail like because they do primarily video game trailers for those who don't know who blur studio is right that's that's their primary bread and butter is video game trailers it's a big part of their of their business but they do a lot of like uh commercials too they do a lot of like they do a lot like they do a consistent part of visual effects as well you know so i mean it's it's a it's a it's an animation studio right at the end of the day you know and they at the time when i when i joined they already had like an oscar nominated like short film like um gopher broke and they were doing their internal like short short films it's another it's it's an amazing studio to be honest when it comes like to um what they can create in a very short amount of time with a very high quality you know i mean and through the years they diversify their their business model somehow but yes at the core they do a lot of like game cinematics of course even today yeah what if you had to i don't know so so blur was say in l.a was it one of the top studios like pixar i guess is always the top i was i wasn't thinking yeah i wasn't really thinking that way to me was like i was so fond about as a gamer at the time about what they could deliver in terms of like game cinematics my desire wasn't really about like being part of a movie or anything like that like that to me was about hey i want to do characters was it i want to do this the kind of character that they have in their cinematics that kind of like complexity you know so as a challenge as a challenge like but also i like them i just simply like that i was you know i was into fantasy i was into sci-fi uh i'm still am moderately not as much as before but at the time i was like i mean this is the best place ever i mean the variety the variety of like project that they deal with is so big and that i can't do so many characters and the turnaround was so fast that in one year you could easily have like eight to ten characters in your portfolio and they're all different i mean kind of like in the same ballpark of like fantasy sci-fi soldiers whatever but it wasn't boring at all it wasn't boring at all at least like the first the first years you know what i mean and also like the clients were basically giving us like either concept or very rough models to start with just to have like a general idea what they want to achieve and uh and our job was to make amazing things and we were always like somehow impressing them and impressing our audience or you know the gamers too with the quality we were delivering then through the years like of course like the the game graphic in video games got better and better so for us was getting a little bit like um more difficult to have like a strong ownership when it comes to 3d models because we were already receiving like amazing 3d models from game companies and when when you get like an amazing scout from a from a 3d company you feel like oh my god my job is a little bit more like limited i can still do like texting and sharing but i can't have like full ownership on somebody that has already been like uh amazingly modeled you know what i mean so going back so you were a young fellow in italy found your way into la uh working at blur and how long were you at blur for uh it was about like almost eight years i left uh i left in uh may 2015 okay and um were you looking for a new chat where did you go so what happened basically like my my arc in blur i started as like character modeler just like doing characters and then pretty soon i started they asked me to be to be lead lead character artists and projects which meant basically like having a lot of like responsibilities in terms of like managing teams and and doing in a way less art because you have to manage people you know to direct people to you know to take their asset sometime from people that you know they're not even in the studio like freelancer um looking at them putting in the pipeline so a lot of like technical and like managing responsibilities and that somehow i wasn't that interested into you know i was still doing it because i mean i love working in the studio but in the long run doing that for years i get i guess that somehow that you know affected me in the sense that you know that wasn't really what i signed for in the beginning and uh as i said like even the industry evolved through the year so it was harder and harder to have like a strong ownership when it comes to to characters for me in a place like blur yeah and uh this managing this managing side of like of the work wasn't really too too appealing for me and i've been doing that for years um so i started looking for other opportunities and uh mariah offered me a good one actually and they asked me only like you know to do what i was interested in doing which was only like characters on a limited on a limited universe because of the universal legal legend but they have so many characters anyway for me was somehow um refreshing you know so you worked on league of legends at riot i don't work on the game i work on on a basically cinematic division of riot that basically um i can't go too much into details because we are still in like you know but basically we do like uh um shorts basically based on like the universe of the of league of legends that's our like one of the main goals you know i mean to provide the uh player content basically you know right like stories yeah star is related behind the character there is the game then there's like a whole reality of these characters the player the players are interested like who are this player this sort of these like um champions these like characters outside of the game so we try to explore this like you know universe through our stories you know i mean but basically uh it's a cinematic division so the way we operate is pretty much like the same as any other um animation studios so we have like you know character modelers concert artists up front we have like riggers animators lighters uh people that do uh compositing and and so on you know what i mean yeah so to me hasn't changed too much compared to to blur in terms of like um technicalities you know i mean yeah um i have a better schedule for sure because blood was very tight and less variety in terms of of you know characters but uh the core of my job is basically the same you know i mean my workflow except for some software hasn't changed that much you know i mean hmm okay so working at ride games um and you've been there since two or three years ago yeah it's uh i started in uh i think this was october 2015 something like that okay i'm curious actually with the uh the difference between a game asset and something for a cinematic asset what's is there much of a difference nowadays i never really work on game assets i mean except when i was working in uh in italy in that game company i can't really speak i mean i don't really want to have you know um it's not really my experience to do like characters for uh for games you know what i'm curious like the the uh is there a big difference between like do they go low poly and then high poly for the oh yeah yeah i mean these are like this the basic the basic like you know uh the basic difference is that characters for games of course that need to to run into a real-time engine you know so the basic geometry i mean you start from a higher sculpting and then you bake those like geometry information on a lower cage you know a lower cage mesh so generally speaking the models that we have in blood are way higher in like polygon numbers that the game model of any other game i mean most games let's put it this way you know and and the technicalities behind like games are way higher than those compared to you know studios like uh you know like blood or even like or cinematic division because in example um in games you have to pack the taxes like properly you know in like you know packed attacks on like uv sheets you have to do memory saving like uh considerations and stuff like that we don't really have this kind of like limitation we didn't really have that in blur you know we're doing like textures of like almost any size any reasonable size any number um the organization is totally left to you and render engines like v-ray or arnold whatever they completely managed the situations pretty well you know so in a way it was more i think is way more like free than like a gaming environment when it comes to the creation of of characters you know a cinematic environment like the one i'm working with i heard it is it true that um if you're a game artist first it's harder to get a job doing like offline you know like cinematics and things if you're a gamer a game artist because i've heard that the the level of detail that they work with is much smaller compared to i don't know i don't think i don't think that's it it might have been like true like few years ago yeah but in these modern days a game artist is usually like an amazing modeler an amazing like digital sculptor you know and then maybe like when it comes to texturing he might have like different skill sets depending if it works like in a more painterly game or more photorealistic games but to be honest like game artists today they are very very solid cg artists let's put it this way because they start from like very high-res models you know maybe a lot of them they don't use like sophisticated like uh you know shaders like the one that they use like you know for uh vfx productions but it's something that they can learn but today in games i mean honestly like the amount of like craft when it comes to artists it's totally comparable to people working in the uh in the vfx industry totally you know i mean it's a different skill sets a different kind of software that they use but in terms of like skill set i don't know i i i mean i met like so many like game artists these days they're like way better than a lot of people that i know working in the vfx industry right absolutely absolutely because it's that the industry changed a lot through introduction of like software like zbrush they are widely used by by game artist so the assumption that you know game artists these days are somehow of a lesser profile compared to like you know people working in films it's not that true anymore you know i mean it's a different kind of like skill set in some areas but definitely the two the two things are like converging due to the fact that like game graphics even these days is becoming like increasingly better and better you know i mean that makes sense so the amount of details that game art is deal today at least in the stage of like uh high-res scouting it's quite comparable to to you know the amount of details that put the people put in places like blur you know i mean the difference is that in blur usually you don't do the extra step of like baking the high rest information on lower mesh you know what i mean and then you build like photoreally as much as like photorealistic shaders as possible i usually in a game environment you're like just like you know bounded to whatever engine they give you but sometimes the engine is amazing and the bpr shaders that they use are like great you know i mean maybe they are not like extremely futuristic but game artists are already in the mindset of working with the ppr shaders you know i mean do you pay much attention to the the rendering engine crazy market crazy market oh the the number of renderers that are out yeah it's really crazy um not really i mean what do you use well these days i've been using like uh vf i went through like i went through manta ray i went through v-ray now i'm using like arnold because we use arnold in uh in riot right so basically for my personal stuff today i use like equally both like vray and uh and arnold you know i mean so um i mean my experience is that they're all amazing i mean the competition is so high today and the features are so like you know equivalent in a way that i'm not probably like the the right person to be to talk like specifically sure what would be the best you know i mean i think it's just a matter of like the software you have been using for years than the one that you are comfortable with if you want to use the gpu or not you know i mean honestly today the possibilities of like gpus with things like octane or redshift are like amazing you know i mean uh i haven't approached that yet because i have just like a stupid laptop at home that doesn't like mount create video cards so my experience with those like gpu renders have been limited but i can see like an extreme potential of course you know i mean and probably is going to be the future yeah do you think there are any software in the next five to 10 years can you foresee any software replacing any jobs in the pipeline anyone that should be worried well that's a very interesting question like i've been talking this a lot with my you know co-workers with my character modeling works back in the days the fact that you know just like scanning you know i mean um scanning things like scanning actors like deprived us somehow of a lot of like uh artistry when it comes like to sculpting faces and stuff like that and we can totally envision a future where her job is not going to be the same as it used to be in terms of like meticulously like sculpting a lot of things a lot of things there's going to be even now it's happening a lot of things get like scanned and then get right topology so the contribution of a character modeler gets like hey assemble all these elements coming from a scan kind of like nicely tweak them polish them add in some little details some realities that are already like that you know and then yeah i can totally envision like software that like in the future will make the process at least of like making digital doubles easier and easier and easier you know i mean when it comes like to stylize stuff still the human contribution is very it's very present you know what i mean but when it comes to humans and in blur and example we were doing sometimes a lot of like semi-realistic photorealistic characters uh yeah i mean you get companies that they give you like amazing job i really like scan faces with like correct apology all you have to do is like applying i mean it's not it's not that simple i mean there's still a lot of work to do if you want to achieve something extremely photorealistic but the bulk of the job is already there you know compared to the days when you are starting from like you know a sphere or like even a simple base mesh and you want to match a certain likeness there is an obvious between that and getting like a scan you know what i mean yeah so yeah software are definitely like exponentially making our job easier i'm not sure i mean at least not in the the next five years we're going to be replaced completely but definitely uh if you think about like libraries like uh mega scan you know for environments and stuff like that it's amazing how what you can do in a very short amount of time with which such tools which such like libraries and tools to actually combines these like assets you know i mean and those were simply like unthinkable maybe even like five years ago you had to model these assets or maybe find them on turbosquid but with limited possibilities of actually arranging them and placing them you know so yeah i mean today is definitely we are definitely going the direction of like uh making the process of like creating things like way more and more like automatic in a way you know i mean so i believe that the human contribution in the future will be at least like for my job would be much more relevant when it comes like to stylize things or things that are now strictly related to a photorealistic environment you know what i mean mostly you know either like cartoony stuff or semi-realistic or you know whatever is not super close to a digital double let's put it this way yeah yeah i saw actually recently um this tool called rap3 have you heard of it oh that's the one that basically what is the one that creates the topology based on a scan yeah yeah i saw it yeah i saw that yeah it was like you get a scan which is horribly noisy and all that stuff and then you get a base mesh and then you overlap yeah and all you do is pinpoint like where are the eyes where's the mouth corners that kind of thing i didn't use it but it's pretty it's pretty impressive yeah aggressive yeah for somebody that makes digital doubles like you said that's that job's no longer required yeah and consider and consider the fact that i mean there are techniques today that are fairly economic so you can do your own scans you know i mean it's not like you know like 10 years ago that scanning a face was something available only uh through like big companies that spend like you know hundreds of thousands of dollars on like very expensive machines you know today's you have like portable scanners and uh even like students they can get like decent scanned base of like faces with through like portable scanners and they if they have that knowledge they can use that you know right yeah to start that work you know what i mean yeah so yeah i mean definitely we are going in that direction you know i mean how much importance do you put on um staying ahead of the the new tools like do you oh it's i think it's extremely important sometime i feel like i feel like a dinosaur because like i mean i have a workflow i think i'm decently fast for the things that i do at work but sometime i i i feel like i'm losing content sometime with the with the evolution of the tools that i use just take an example like zbrush yes so many amazing tools and sometimes i see techniques that to me they're just like mind-blowing and just because i lost contact with it i need to do things at work so that i really have time to explore some function of zbrush i don't really have the physical time to actually try them out and then when i when i have some some time i just look at these tutorials and i'm like wow this is it's like mind-blowing i had no idea you can do this in zbrush you know what i mean so i randomly picked like you know pieces of information here and there through like youtube and whatever you know or if i need to do something specific i just look online but it's i can't really like like i was back in the date it was like meticulously every day look for tutorials online because because i work in a company i work for production you know i mean so sometimes probably i have the feeling that i do things in a in a way that is probably like slower than it should be but but it's reliable because i know it's gonna work you know i mean yeah yeah and then in the back of my head i have like you know a post-it that says well just look at that tutorials for like whatever you know yeah right right so it's it's really easy to stay to stay on track on the modern state of like tools today you know i mean yeah because there are so many softwares there are so many like fast releases of uh um of techniques you know i mean yeah let's consider an example i do characters right so um characters sometimes some time a lot of time they have like clothing i always been sculpting clothes like you know by myself like you know looking at references and then it came out like marvelous designer right and then at the beginning i was skeptic because you know at the beginning marvelous designer was kind of like uh it was not the same software it is today it was not that easy as it is today to make like great results but today honestly the result that you can achieve in marvel's designer if you know what you're doing it's not even comparable to what you can do with sculpting at least what we do the result is so photorealistic is so natural that's that for people like me you better you better consider seriously that software in your workflow i mean you can still sculpt the things you know the old way in zbrush you know taking references but first you spend a lot of times i mean you have some satisfaction of course it looks good but hey there is a software there specifically specifically for this and the learning curve maybe is like a little bit like steeper but in the long run it's going to help you out so my knowledge and example of like marvelous designer is like okay or definitely something that i want to push in the future because i've seen things that honestly like blows my mind you know what i mean and that comes to other software as well you know what i mean i have i use like maybe five softwares in total for my um for my job but i can't say that each one of those i have like 100 like deep knowledge you know what i mean i have a fairly good knowledge of each software specifically for my workflow you know i mean yeah but i don't think it's realistic that you deeply learn each software um just because like simply there is no time at least like for people like me that work work in the industry you know i mean right so most of the time just like learn the software for the things that you need to do yeah yeah what do you say to artists because i've had this a lot like uh like i realized the other day there's really no point today learning to model a tree for example because speed tree is the industry standard and that's if you need to create a custom tree and if you just need a normal tree that everybody has in the background you just purchase one off turbosquid or whatever there's almost that there's some jobs where learning to do something by hand [Music] is almost irrelevant i think well i think it's irrelevant for people that work you know i mean let's put it this way if you're working in the industry on a specific project and you are in charge of like doing an environment you don't want to model a tree you probably want to rely on a library you want to speed up the process you have a very limited of time you have to see the big picture and yes that's like it's wise to go online and buy and buy a tree because you don't want to spend time on that you know if you're a student that's another matter if you never approach like any sort of like modeling you probably want to go through the process of like modeling a tree even if it's your like personal project you know maybe modeling one tree one time is gonna give you like something in terms of like inside in terms of like high sensibility for like farms and everything you know i mean so it really depends on the context of where you place yourself in the in the industry you know i mean yeah so that's true that's that's that's the context you know what i mean yeah definitely if you are a production artist you don't want to go through the process of like doing a tree unless it's a very like specific tree like a magical tree based on a given concept i need to have like a specific form there's no there's no way to go around it you have to model it that's right if it's just a genetic tree part of like a forest whatever no there's no point there's no care thanks god we have libraries just because we have libraries for that you know because it was tedious that's probably one job which is which has been replaced in a way is modeling just basic stuff that's in the background like back in the day you said you made that you had to model everything but now it's like turbosquid yeah like mega scan like whatever you know yeah or then after a while you build your own libraries each studio has have their own libraries i'm curious about that like so if you yeah you recycle a lot of course but what it it does the studio so if you make a commercial for a company and you make some assets can you reuse those assets in the next project or do they own the rights well it depends how specific they are you know how recognizable how branded they are i mean of course you can't like you know if you use a digital double in one project you can't really use the same digital double to another because like it's the face of somebody it's the face of an actor you know i mean so there are like specific ndas that don't allow you to do that but if it's something generic like a prop like you know whatever like a door like a genetic door like an object like a table yes of course like of course you can reuse that you know as long as they're not like specifically branded studios like reuse assets all the time you know it's just just common sense you know right yeah it makes sense unless unless they have like some specific like contract with the client so that like whatever assets they built for them it can be used anywhere i frankly don't know i mean it's not my you know it's not my branch but what i can tell you is that from my previous experiences in working with studios they tend to recycle as much as possible in order to speed up to save time because the time that we have is very limited you know what i mean so if you already have like a text or hand you're going to use it the same hand using a project to another it's it's a no-brainer nobody wants to remodel a hand unless it's a hero hand and it's going to be like this close to the camera you know right exactly yeah um if it's just a hand of a genetic character who cares right somebody did like a text running job for me already i'm going to reuse it it happens all the time happens all the time sometimes you start from an asset as a base and then you tweak it yeah super common as well you know what i mean yeah leather jacket take it from another project and tweak it and you know change the shaders uh make it specific for another project but it saves you so much time to have like the base geometry already done that it's like a no-brainer is like invaluable you know yeah right yeah do you um i was going to ask about the mindset of what what you think separates the the great artists like the superstars from the people that struggle to find work is there anything you can think of a character trait or uh anything that can contribute to someone's success i don't know i like to give talking about superstars for me just funny like in an industry where i mean even if you work like as a professional in the industry it's like the status of like superstars i know what you're talking about it comes from like online recognition and social media amount of likes i guess but at the core i mean they're just like they're just like professionals you know what i mean and whoever has like an attitude of like you know taking themselves like too seriously to me just like laughable so i don't know um let's say these people let's say let's talk about like professionals that work like you know consistently in production and yeah prolific artists yeah and uh the main difference is that the professionals have metabolized a lot of like uh methodologies and processes that probably a student is completely unaware of so the student is exposed to a world which is the world of like social media and youtube which is not really like the reality of our industry so sometimes they're like concerned about things like topology and like hey is my mesh is not good for like animation and all they have to do is like making a character maybe you know what i mean so there's a lot of like confusion sometime in these people in the students and what they don't really know or get is that the only thing you have to do is to make like pretty good looking pictures most of the time you know i mean and then all the technicalities behind they are so specific to the kind of like environment where they're gonna go work with that is totally secondary so most people that gets hired in a company is because they have an amazing portfolio you know what i mean it's sometimes yes they have like decent idea in terms of like topology and technicalities behind but that's not most of the time the first thing that recruiters look at at least like for my job when it comes like to character modeling for a regular animators i can't talk but for my job most of the time people look at like let's put it this way pretty images characters need to look good what's behind the hood like topology and the way you did it it's fairly secondary it's fairly secondary you know what i mean unless maybe you work for you want to work for games in that case like maybe they're going to look at the you know the low poly cage and stuff like that and the way you pack textures but for my job i've seen like so many situations where people got like freelance gigs in very like prestigious studios like blur based only on like images that they that they made you know what i mean images by images i mean like character sheets or like character renders or like you know key shots sort of like style illustration and stuff like that that was enough to get it together to get like an entrance in this kind of like industry or to get like a job to get like a freelance gig you know what i mean so the mindset is basically for what i can see of a lot of like misconceptions a lot of like people feeling like overwhelmed by the huge amount of information that is available today because everything is really available online if you want to dig it's really hard sometime to actually uh pick up the really great stuff from the things that are you know maybe somehow available in terms of like um learning process but not that fundamental you know what i mean so the inflation of information make like students sometime like confused and like stalling or like hey what's the next step what do you think my i mean what do you think i should do what should i do on my character and i'm like wow there are so many renders online what do you think you should do i mean what do you think you should fix you already have a bar outside online on amazing like works already done so your problem might be like technical so be specific when it comes to that but most people are just like genetic because they don't know how to formulate what they should do in terms of like next step because there are way too many information i believe these days so it's really hard to pick up like whatever is valuable you know but they're like schools they're like youtube tutorials online courses you know and what where do you choose i i'm a still believer i'm a firm believer that it's still possible to learn a lot of things by yourself these days if you have the will the time and the passion you know i mean but you really have to to have fun when it comes to these kind of things and if you have fun you can go through the process of like trying and trying you know without asking people you know i mean because it's fun you know it's your it's your passion it's your drive it's your hobby you know what i mean but if you stall and you feel like stuck because you can't find things online that's already like uh in a way like a failing attitude to me you know i mean you should try to do things like the best you can and then like move on to the next project or yeah of course like you can confront with people but you can't really feel like feel stuck because there is so much things online the information is just there and then it's up to you to to do it you know i mean sometimes sometimes i feel i feel in the situation that i'm like even in my daily job i'm like oh my god i don't know how exactly to do this thing in a fast way so when i when i like finish all the possible like options i'm like i have to brute force it brute forcing mean like maybe like spending four hours doing some stupid let's put it this way some very stupid task you have to brute force it but that's the only way to get it done i need to get it done because somebody is like tapping on my shoulder like hey are you done you know i mean my attitude was the same even before it was like if i don't know how to do it i'll do it the best of my possibilities yeah but there's no way i'm gonna like stop and stall and ask for feedbacks and if i don't get the feedbacks i'm not gonna finish my character you know what i mean right i see a lot of com incomplete stuff in example from students or people that approach like uh computer graphic in general they show me stuff and it's clearly incomplete on a lot of levels and they wait for feedbacks you know what i mean and that's to me is like you know it's it's it's uncomfortable to give feedback on something that that's true you know what i mean i know you mean at least like if you show me something that is not looking great but at least like you say hey this is finnish what do you think to me is way better than saying like how should i what i should do next you know what how should i model the belt uh should i like you know sculpt the scalp like the boots should i scalp the pads like yes yes you should of course you should but why you do it before like asking me why are you asking me you know what i mean you have like so many references online already so many examples you already have in your mind the quality bar you don't need validation for somebody like working in the industry i feel that it's some sort of like inertia or like laziness in a way based on the fact that maybe with with the modern society and social media everything is like reachable easily like through a click or like you go on youtube you find a video you know what i mean so people expect to find like resources like pretty fast you know and if they can find it in like one or two clicks they just like okay let me ask somebody you know i mean sometimes just like spend your time like dig it or like maybe make a shitty work and move on but just put it there as like you know uh as an experience somehow you know what i mean it goes like through yes it's part of your learning process even to make mistakes you know i mean yeah right it's not like that granted that you need to to make like a great thing in a very fast like turnaround time it takes like a lot of time you know i mean and the answer doesn't necessarily like need to come like right away right you know what i mean yeah you have to go through through this like learning process of like doing and redoing things by yourself you know do you think that's important the the experimentation even if it's the wrong method totally totally i'm a firm believer that it's better to do something in a shitty way than not than not doing anything like waiting for you know the right moment or the right technique or like you know whatever yeah yeah to me it's like it happened to me so many times that i modeled things and then looking at those like few months later a few months after i was like well i should have done it the other way well that's good next time you're gonna do it like the proper way you know i mean but at the time you know i was right to do it that way because they i need to do it that way in a certain amount of time i wanted to get the job done especially you know i mean i want to achieve that in my portfolio that was important at the time you know i mean i could have stalled at the time you know waiting for inspiration references or or whatever so i'm a firm believer like brute forcing things sometimes or let's say like doing the things the best you can with the given tools it's better than just like not doing anything and a finish work is always better than a work in progress all the time i've seen so many portfolios and i i don't know i have like an immediate rejection when i see something that is labeled as like work in progress and to me it's like why are you even showing this i mean you're showing this like to people that are supposed to to hire you you know what i mean so they're going to evaluate you for most people are going to evaluate you not for your potential but for what you can give you know what i mean so i can't really i mean i can see sometimes that you have some potential but i want to see what you can do like you know as an artist right now at the full spectrum of your capabilities you know what i mean so that's why i encourage like most of the time when it comes to portfolio to show only like final star whatever final means for you you know what i mean yeah i'm curious about your thoughts on um because you're mentioning before uh you know working to completion for a piece of artwork um i think there's also some value in uh calling something finished and moving on to the next one when what when do you call something finished because there's a certain point like if somebody was very new to characters for example i wouldn't suggest them to work like three months on like one character why not yeah i mean if you if it's your hobby okay and nobody's like giving you any deadline just push it as much as you want i mean like why not i mean what do you have to lose it's your hobby supposedly it's supposed to be fun for you so polish it as much as you want that's what i will do if i work on a personal project of course like even of course like today my approach to personal project is somehow like affected by the fact that i have a working methodology uh based on my years of experience in the industry you know i mean so i know how to to cut corners and stuff like that much more than back in the days but still for my personal project i take all the time in the world that i want you know what i mean but when it comes to my professional job no usually i have a limited schedule so my recommendation when it comes like to personal work or for pieces that you want to put in your portfolio just take the time i mean unless you have like some i don't know some deadline of some reason because you have to submit your portfolio within a certain time i mean just take your time polish it put love in what you do you know what i mean every single bit of like enhancement to me is totally worth it you know i mean i mean i can think about if you want to add like pitch files on a realistic character take the time to do it if you think that it's gonna add like 0.5 percent of like beauty to your job why don't you try doing it some time people don't do this kind of things out of like laziness because it can be a tedious process and because maybe they think no he's not gonna add that much well my question is like did you try before maybe maybe it's gonna give that like five percent more of like realism that you need or like spend your time on shaders why did you why don't you spend like time to actually nail a certain like skin shaders or metal shaders why don't you put like lovely scratches on a clean metal surface you know i mean yeah you should definitely put the time to do this kind of things because it makes a huge difference when you sum all these elements together the difference between like one month work and two months work is probably substantial yeah if you spend time on it you know what i mean yeah um so to me the question like why should i spend three months on a character as like well what do you also have to do i mean if you have like i mean if you have a side job maybe sure but if it's your hobby yeah yeah don't you like doing it what's the problem like spending three three months of time i mean what makes you think that three months of time is a lot is a lot of time compared to what i mean sometimes people like spend three months of time working on a character for like films you know i mean can't you do it like on you on your own with your limited amount of like knowledge yeah depends it depends what you do in those three months you know i mean it depends what you do what you add or i mean time when it comes to these things is very it's very relative to me you know i know people that they can do amazing job in a very short amount of time some people can do the same amazing job in a longer time time is really like you know a factor that goes in unfortunately when you have a schedule you know i mean when you have like money into the equation yes you have time associated but i will technically honestly take all the time in the world to do something that i like if i don't have like any any restriction like you know somebody paying me or whatever i do i work on it when i want as long as it's fun i don't care spending like weeks or months on it i think it is part of the recruitment process though like they want to know how long something took to create really oh man i don't know i don't know what kind of like recruiters these are right any and if and if that's really a requirement i wouldn't be comfortable i would per i wouldn't personally like that kind of like company because like to me it's all about the art first and then like hey unless it took you like one year but if it looks amazing i wanna know why you spent one year on this to me it's always about the art i know people that are very fast but they kind of like the the work that they do is not even like clothes the kind of things that they whether we want example blur i never asked anybody how long it took to them to achieve something in their portfolio they were just assuming you know what we don't really care how long it took you this is the time that we give you when you come here and you're gonna make it work trust me if it doesn't work it's not to work for you but in the beginning asking how long it takes to me is so like i don't know there are not important right i mean what if he took him like six years six six or three months but maybe he worked only one week each month you know what i mean oh sure it's so it's so like um you know um unspecific in terms of like quantifying what goes in the mind of somebody that works in 3d saying how long it took you know i mean because three months of my modeling probably would produce like a huge amount of like detail compared like of three months of another guy you know i mean so it's it's not really interesting as a data to ask how long it took to do this you know to me is always about like this looks great okay can you do this for us you know what i mean and then i'm gonna tell you how long it's gonna take if you can make it in that time that's great if it's not it's not gonna work but usually when people is confronted with time they're gonna make it work they're gonna make it work yeah you know i mean so even if it took you like one month and somebody asked you hey you have to do it in 10 days well you know you're gonna cut corners you're gonna like do overtime and it's a reality of this industry you know i mean so i to me coming from my recruiter asking you how long it's going to take you especially if it's your like i don't know your first job it's a very unfair kind of like yeah i think so isn't that something norman teaches like part of their uh noma noman i'm not i'm not sure honestly oh okay but yeah i don't know i mean of course there is a value in making things fast but they need to look good yeah you know i mean yeah if they don't look good i don't really care like how long how long it took you know what i mean to me i never really asked like how long it took to people to do it that just just so irrelevant to me you know when i see something amazing that like catch my attention online it's the last of my thought to think about how long it took you know i mean yeah really like people adapt easily you know but the artistic skills those are really hard to find generally speaking you know what i mean so the time factor associated to that to me is really is really relative you know i mean especially considering that it is kind of like tough industry sometime you know so starting from the beginning with the idea that you know your work is so related to a certain amount of time to get done it's very discouraging in a way you know i mean especially especially when you're a student you know what i mean that you already start with the mindset that time in time is in the equation you know and i never never ever had that in the back of my head to me it was fun to do these things and the more you do them the more you get faster you know what i mean but if i had known since the beginning that what i was doing it had to be done in like maybe half day and i was taking months probably i would have been discouraged you know i mean i would have felt like oh man i suck no that's not the point i was doing good stuff for the time and i was taking all the time in the world because i was doing that for fun you know my little room with my little computer with my stupid hardware you know i mean so i would strongly discourage like people to be concerned about how long it takes you know to do what they do you know i mean to me it's like hey nail something first now you can think about how long it took you but trust me next project is gonna be faster and next one even faster you know what i mean it should be yes that's important um that it gets it gets faster yeah because i guess the i guess the thing that the students are sometimes unaware of and why it's asked as as recruitment is like yeah if you want to get a job and uh and then the first gig is like make this character and then they go they're gonna give you they're gonna give you a certain amount of time i need six months to do it and they're like you've got three days they don't want to hire you um well i don't know i mean honestly like six months they could be it could be like a fairly unrealistic amount of time you know what i mean because like a lot of things happens in six months you know i mean but all i'm saying is that students shouldn't be in the mindset of like being fast in what they do you know what i mean especially when it comes to the things that i do which is like production models they should be in the mindset of like hey you have to nail certain artistic like goals you know i mean so quality comes first then let's try to cut corners after but first i want to see something good so take your time take a reasonable amount of time because if you take one year to make a character maybe like you have been lazy let's put it this way but if you work like consistently every day probably like it should take like longer than i do but as long as it looks good we're fine yeah you know yeah so talking of uh it's the same thing like are people super concerned about topology and stuff like that you know like oh when you when you're gonna do the the right apology on this character i'm like dude i first when i hear the war red apology i want to puke because like i so hated to do it the written apology so even when a student tells me when are you going to do the right topology it makes me like itching it's something that i hate doing i really don't care what's going on under the wood i never did this is something that is necessary to make things work in the pipeline right but for the kind of job that i do i get so scrutinized when it comes like to artistic stuff first and that's my main concern so when a student that clearly never really achieve any sort of like artistic like greatness in their job ask me about technical things like that to me it feels like this shouldn't be your first priority you know i mean same as the time same as like oh man like took me like 15 days i mean do you think i'm fast enough like dude the problem that you have is that it's not looking great this is the main problem it's not that you took your life right yeah this is the main problem that you have to work on same as topology what's under the hood in the wireframe is not as important for people like me as the fact that what i see in render looks good then we can work on the topology after we can work on that after yeah topology also like is very relative because it's like strictly depending on the studio where you work for you know methodologies pipeline software whatever i mean there are like some common sense like rules but generally speaking i've seen things like in blur in terms of like topology they're like so crazy in terms of like people that are like purists when it comes to that you know what i mean you know back in days like triangles were the enemy you know i've seen so many triangles and deformation errors in in blur you know that i don't want to talk about it but that's the reality of the industry we don't care that much about these things as people people might think you know what i mean and that comes from the fact that you know there are a lot of like online courses and schools that they really push on these aspects and they're right to do so but maybe the importance of these elements should be secondary compared to you know um achieving a certain kind of like artistic skill first so craft comes first and then like technicalities in my opinion at least come after yeah cool we've only got about 10 minutes left but i wanted to ask quickly what would you say if you had to train somebody up to be hireable as a character artist and they were a beginner they want to work at blur one day they want to be a character artist and you had to train them and you only had one year to do it one year one year what would the training regime look like the training regime oh my god what would you start with and these people never touch a 3d application let's say they got the basics they know basically the basics yeah okay well well you need you need a starting points which are i mean sample steels of like blur characters are widely available online these days a lot of people have them in their portfolio people like me or like previous employees blur so that should be the bar first of all like the render quality should be the bar and that's value for anybody who wants to work at blur hey look at the people that work in the past the blur or they're working now look at their portfolio look at the quality of their character that's what you need to achieve in the first place you know i mean and then when it comes to the training it really depends on the starting level this person you know i would definitely start with like hey let's take a concept and you need to match this concept so you don't make a character out of your head i'm gonna give you a concept of a character taken from like whatever reference like comics or movies or like you know why is that important because that's what i do oh as a job right yeah for my job that's what i do i match somebody else's concept or maybe like there's a specific version of batman coming from like uh whatever like comic issue and i want to match that specific version of batman so i will tell this person hey this is the goal is to match this batman in this style with this time you know and then i would just like observe the process and go through that and whenever like you know i will tell him what i will do if i wear him you know start with like blocking out nailing the proportion taking the concept like you know putting side by side with your render fixing the proportion proportion comes first all the time yeah basically steps like this you know what i mean the detailing always comes later you know at the very end i mean at the very end after after the proportions are are nailed it's basically the same thing i would do if i would have to do it in in production you know and i will do a lot of paint overs for sure so whenever he is ready to provide me something in terms of like visual i will do a paint over based on you know look at the actual concept reference what do you mean paint it so you would get this paint i will take his render i will just oh photoshop i will do a paint over based on the trying to match the concept yeah okay okay i will change like maybe the silhouette i will change maybe like some forms i will play with like the positioning of some elements in order to match the concept you know what i mean the concept is like you know it's the main point of reference the concept sometimes it can be like lose but most of the time there are elements like silhouettes proportion mutual mutual relationship between the ratio of some elements that needs to be conserved in your renders you know i mean right and the only way to make people understand what they need to do is to do a paint over because you can explain them and say hey can you make like the eyes like last round or like more narrow blah blah blah you can say that with words right but your idea of like narrower eyes is probably different than my idea so the only way to talk to artists is to actually show them show that you know i mean to make a paint over that's all i'm saying i've seen so many like people that even like supervisor through the years they're like oh can you make like this metal less reflective or oh can you make like the shoulders like bigger or like the hands like smaller in my experience when i when i ever had like to to be a lead artist actually to direct people yeah sometimes i say that but most of the time i take the renders and i tweak it in photoshop to show them because we are all artists we like speak visually so if i want to if i want something specific i better like show you what it means you know what i mean so if i want something like less blue or less red you'll demonstrate i'm gonna demonstrate in photoshop and show you what that means that's the kind of like specificity that we do in our in our job in example you know i mean it's it's the only way to guide somebody to to train their eye sensibility to things and at the end of the process believe me when you see like your first render and your final render going through the through all the process of this like paint overs you'll be shocked about how much how much you have improved and how much you couldn't see at the beginning i remember i was working on this project it was a simpson simpsons ride and i had to model this like it was a whale for the simpsons universe it was like a very cartoony whale and i was still freelancing in italy so this supervisor blower dan rice was in charge of the process of the project so i did this like whale very fast in like five days i model it send some renders to blur through email he looked at it and he was like dude you're not even close it was shocking to me it was brutal because i was coming already for like from like months of freelancing for blur way more like sophisticated characters character with like sci-fi elements like you know gears and blah blah blah i was like this is just what do you mean it's not even close it's just a stupid whale so what he did was to take the renders overlapping on my renders and then i was like oh okay i see what you mean yeah i mean like the line is not exactly the silhouette is not exactly the same but that was making such a huge difference and my mindset at the time was like well it's close enough to the concept this is a whale this is a whale in there so you put the concept on top of the render okay in blur they probably still do that all the time and that's what i will do even now if i have to evaluate somebody that asked me does it look like the concept i don't know let's see let's put it on top and see what's the difference is the only way i mean you can you can be good enough with your eyes to be like move this up and down but but the very valuable things to do is to actually overlap them and align things you know what i mean so move the gear let me move the belt up down shorten the legs whatever else needs to be done you know what i mean and then what did you say well i was shocked i was like i was like do you really want me to follow the silhouette almost like tracy in the concept it was like yeah what are you thinking like oh okay and it wasn't easy at all because at the time there was no zbrush you had to do that through poly modeling and i was like are you really asking me to match the silhouette one to one and he was like yeah why not i was like okay it was so important because especially when the lines are few for stylized characters you know a difference a minimal difference in silhouette can make a huge impact in terms of like um how you're gonna recognize and like the character if you think about like omar simpson or any like simpson characters are literally like a bunch of like very few lines you know what i mean but every lines has a specific purpose in a specific place and specific ratios are there you know what i mean so if you don't nail it in 3d it's not going to work it's not it's not going to be likable sometimes there are problems due to the fact that the 2d concept is not that easily translatable into 3d still you can make a lot of effort to at least match one of those views then when you start rotating the model you can be like okay we need to do some compromise at this point but first you need to do at least like the effort to match as much as possible the concept in one of the views in terms of like silhouettes you know i mean that's what i would recommend to anybody and that would definitely be part of my training it might be like maybe to to nazi to like you know too strict but i'm my first believer that you have to go through that when you go through that you would understand that i mean concerts are really important there are like people that spends like months trying to figure out this design so you can't really take them for like whatever they're just like an indication you know i mean no sometimes they are not an indication they are very specific and that's exactly the feeling the vibe the gesture that the directors advisor want to see in 3d you know yeah right so it's really better for you to actually try to follow them as much as possible you know yeah and then when you get into this mindset you're going to achieve like a sensibility when it comes like to forms and shapes that is really oriented toward like you know main farms first details come after you know because a lot of people especially because of the nature of some software they tend to to put a lot of detail since the beginning just because the software allows you to do it pretty easily think about zbrush maybe maybe you model like some not very realistic looking pants and then in like two seconds you go to noisemaker you make this amazing like that in pattern that goes all the way up you know i mean he's like well it's pointless to have a denim putter if you don't nail the main farm first you know what i mean right that's the 90 of the job then the detail is like whatever right you're going to spend way less time on this you know what i mean but first you have to go through like blocking stage nail the proportion nail the ratio between like the elements and then we move on until we achieve that you're not gonna move on then we can stay maybe like a lot of time on the early process but then you have like a solid foundation for everything that follows after you know i mean yeah imagine like characters like uh like a knight or like a soldier with like overlapping armor you start like modeling like things on top but if the proportion below are wrong then it becomes like a problem right in the process when you have like a bunch of things on top you know i mean it's just like let's nail the proportion first and then we build armor on top on a solid foundation you know yeah yeah so yeah that would be my you know my regimen in this like in the a year here is a lot of time i hear somebody that never done anything like that maybe will lead to two or three characters probably you know yeah but maybe yeah so getting the form right copy the concept and then do details yeah and at the end like when you have a render you can you compare it to like to the 2d concept yeah and they need to match at least in terms of like gesture silhouette you know then you have all the you know all the embellishment of like 3d renders and surface detailing and uh realistic shaders you know i mean yeah but the essence of the concept needs to be needs to be there yeah yeah i would be very intransigent in transition about in transition you'll be what very intransigent about it oh okay yeah yeah got it cool all right well we have got to fly off but uh thank you for your time appreciate it thanks for an interview thank you you

Channel: Blender Guru

Views: 217,339

Keywords: characters, design, 3d, zbrush, art, concept, sculpting

Id: dp83xaHOgp0

Length: 97min 53sec (5873 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 28 2018