From ZBrush to Entrepreneur: The Art of Marco Plouffe

so we got a handful of really inspirational people that do these hard surface type models that we call them these days but you don't just hyper specialize but you do like organic characters you mentioned your frog on stream and that's very different than the robots one of my favorite pieces of yours is the Panzer Samus we could talk about that for a long time and you really do have a wide range of genre and character types and they're all great man foreign [Music] hello and welcome to pixel peeping the show where we take a closer look at some artwork from some of today's top digital artists today is my conversation with Marco plouffe Marco's been a legend in the industry in this space for a long time not only creating awesome digital art but active on the forums and open and sharing information along the way like he is doing today he's probably best known for his design and hard surface sculpting inside of zbrush which we get to take a look at ask some questions about today and nerd out a little bit on like kind of the things that he thinks about and what cares most about but more than that he has a big variety of styles and a big breadth of work which we get to touch on a little bit in this and also not only creating art but he co-founded a company kiosk Masons which has grown over the years to be a big Outsourcing house which has gone on to create characters for huge games like valorent the Arkham series Callisto protocol and on top of all that he designs and creates these Elite Collectibles which we get to take a look at in detail at the end too so super interesting guy awesome to talk to him you know a real power user of zbrush which he's gone on to turn into an Empire so really great to be able to talk to him and ask questions without further Ado here's my conversation with Marco plouffe hello Marco hey thank you for doing this dude I appreciate it man hey it's my pleasure it's really super stroked to get over a sneak peek here in your files before we jump into I mean it's obvious that you're one of the dope hard surface modelers in general and use zbrush a lot I'm always super fascinated the people that are using the tools especially zbrush because I use it so much and then you're doing things that I don't know how you're doing it so I definitely want to chat about that and see more of your process which you've been awesome to share in a lot of different ways already could you talk to me a little bit about kind of your thoughts on on the whole hard surface modeling thing like from the outside it seems like something that you're most passionate about is it something that you're you still feel that way could you talk about maybe the the early days and and learning to get on the path that you're on with the workflows and the stuff that you make I started playing with hard surface pretty early in my career really just because it's the thing that I was the most interested by just because of the thing that I loved doing or drawing when I was not doing treaty right doing like robots and that sort of stuff when I was younger Mega Man characters like they were my favorite so I always had like this kind of like appreciation for like some sci-fi stuff I am and always have been somebody that I consider like somewhat like versatile even if if it's just in my interests right so like I always love to do like a little bit of everything but hard surface has always been I didn't call it hard surface when I was a 12 year old kid though but uh like doing like robots and mix or sci-fi stuff has always been something that's been really close to me when I got the tools to do stuff in 3D I thought it was maybe like the time to try to concentrate into like making it making it work making it look good the tool that I decided to use was zbrush maybe more so so at that time was kind of like counter-intuitive to use zbrush to do a hard surface things like I've always been also like a person that I like to be really close of my craft and I find that zbrush has a kind of like a way to be really in relation with your scalp just by using the pen basically so the whole like organic approach like I I really love that approach so I tried to take that approach and make it work for hard surface stuff and what's great is that I've met Cedric at that time that was like before we started chaos but like I was working with the guy so he like he introduced me to like this approach you showed me like the work of other artists that was doing the the same approach like furio tereski was was actually one of our inspiration and um that's before like we was a friend of ours and everything it seemed that like we were pretty much at the beginning of this kind of like new approach for hard surface and everything and zbrush kind of like followed and created a few tools that were making it even like more possible to get something like real clean even if it's kind of like an organic software let's say it just got better and at some point like I felt like I had all the tool necessary to basically just use 100 zbrush to do uh my thing so I kind of like created my style around those uh those tools and everything so it all goes like hand in hand in the end yeah so I wanted to kind of ask that or because I would assume that it's true of everything but the tool kind of influences you know especially because you're using that tool for so long so yeah would you say that like the style or the aesthetic that comes out from making a hard surface model from zebra because you're also designing it like you say you're doing a lot more kind of sculptural clay-like stuff so I would assume that would produce shapes and designs that are different than if you were using a cad style modeler you know like Fusion or some of the other things that people use for industrial parts that sometimes people use for robots too first of all it's really a question of like the chicken or the egg like what comes first so and and I think that the answer is like it all comes first it all happens at the same time but I think that if you talk about the relation between like software and what you do with the software the kind of stuff that comes out the software will kind of like influence also the end result just because of like how user-friendly or convenient the software is to do a few things and those few things are related to a certain visual style and this visual style is related to the end product like the design itself of the character you look any artists that like to play around with a few software and depending on the software they use they usually end up with like some very different results right their Essence and their Spirit as an artist always stays but the the delivery the you can see that there's like a like really a difference basically you know yeah and I really like the the style and aesthetic that that you're doing you know it it does feel unique and at the same time has those things you'd see in a crazy techy robot which I assume comes down just your personal taste and everything yeah I think the the essence are who you are as an artist is really like the driving force of everything but anything else along the way is going to dictate like what it's going to look like in the end me I'm kind of like I'm very monogamist in terms of like software like I've this the moment that I started to play around with zbrush I pretty much like stayed with it and just because I just really loved it and I felt like I was really able to do what I needed to do I feel really like content let's say oh yeah with what I have and I assume comfortable like that's so important when making the kind of art that you do because I want to speak a little bit more about that like design and everything and also I want to speak more about your versatility which for sure I think you are and I don't mean to pigeonhole you because I think you're great at a lot of things but why don't we take a look you're showing me now this cool like sci-fi guy yeah can you tell me like how long this would take to make yeah I mean this guy here I think that this one is I made it at a period of my life where like well first of all I didn't have the kids so I could actually concentrate a little bit more I think I was actually able to get like enough time during the nights and during the day to pretty much sum up to like eight hours per day of work basically as far as I can remember I think I think this one took me two weeks to do two weeks to do this character here I think that I already had the blocking of the head done before the two weeks Mark but I remember I started the blocking of the head during a live demo when I was doing a workshop at like a school in Paris that like one of my friend has that sometimes I I used to actually go it just started in with like the blocking of that head I think I actually have it like somewhere here probably oh awesome there you go like just it was just like this plus the tubes and stuff so that's like what I actually did during the live demo just to to show the approach in terms of design and I was like oh you know what I kind of like like this head so I I talked to some other guy that uh wanted to maybe like animate the character it didn't end up working out but I still I was like oh cool there's a purpose to actually like finishing this character so I just decided to complete yeah the entire character in in full polish everything and and that stuff also this character every piece is Zed remeshed and it has UVS as well because this character was used to be able to be baked with Vector displacement map and okay the test work it's really nice like we used Arnold and we were able to get the exact same result as zbrush using a Vertex displacement map and everything like I said it's it all said rematched and uv'd automatically with the zbrush uh yeah UV Master actually yeah like I like using Rhythm as well for my UVS especially if I decimate the character that's how I did like the frog that I did recently in one of my streams but this one we just used UV master and uh it did generate some like pretty heavy map but there are so many like polygroups for like each pieces that UV Master is like pretty good at just cut your UVS with poly using poly groups as uh like UV Islands basic Islands yeah and it does like work like pretty pretty okay and then you just bake the vertex displacement using multi-map exporter yeah yeah that sort of stuff and it did work well I didn't do the actual like integration in Arnold so I cannot speak for this part but it's judging by the the render that I saw I was like well it's nuts that it actually works because you wouldn't think that and it was done like in a cinematic kind of like within a cinematic approach let's say yeah because it was a friend who worked at like a cinematic company and you wouldn't think that like using zbrush could actually work in the Cinematic industry because cinematic industry tend to only want to use like poly modeling and that sort of stuff so it was nice to see that the test actually worked I'd say anyways yeah it'd be so fun to texture it too I mean you already got it uv'd and everything I mean dang yeah well I got it in substance and everything I just slapped some uh some uh stand like uh some very simple materials there was like nothing really special but we actually had in the end like a few renders of what it would look like this is in Arnold yeah yeah this was an Arnold and it's perfectly clean there's no like weird like artifacts or anything it worked like super well as clean as in zbrush plus you add the texture on top so yeah that was cool plus since it's like vertex displacement you're actually using the lowest subdivision level of your meshes right so I didn't I didn't like throw in Arnold like a mesh of 120 million polys or whatever how high this model is right it was a respectable amount of like polygon for the character yeah like a mid-level poly or something yeah exactly awesome we could have spent more time making it look good but it was just for the around do the test so you have these kind of stages like what we're looking at here is so detailed and stuff and it like hurts my brain I guess maybe before we look at a older version like you know one of the things I wanted to talk about with you is are you sure a lot online which is great you've done talks and you do your streams so I've checked in and I see some stuff I know that I need to be like practicing to make it stick but also you know you have this long like history of doing things and I feel like you could teach someone your exact workflow but that doesn't mean they're going to be making art like you or even that strong in the beginning right can you speak on especially with this hard surface kind of modeling and design the relationship between design and modeling technique you know yeah yeah but I mean there's two things that comes to to mind I mean first of all the quality of like a result of like a Sci-Fi character like this it does not come only from how clean like the meshes are and everything or that you used a process that is known as the hard surface process none of that really gives you like the feeling of having a good done a good job in the end like the cleanliness is one aspect of it that makes something look finished but it's just one like on top of so many others and following the hard surface process does not mean that you're going to have this like feeling of like overwhelming success on the character right it's just a process and a process can lead you in many places one of the things that is the most important in terms of doing something that looks good in the end well first of all the design of itself is going to speak a lot but if you just want to go like to a subcategory of design when we talk about the visual language I think the visual language is one of the things that is the most like important or the one of the primordial thing of making something look like sci-fi or making it look art surface or that sort of stuff is very visual design itself for example having like an extrusion right here on the side of the helmet that has this kind of trapezius shape yeah it's just like this is a like a vulgarization like a of like what this is right but just like making that choice tells a lot like if you were to do like a medieval Gauntlet and you would use this shape to make an extrusion in the armor automatically at least my brain would see that and be like that does not look like something that's like a blacksmith would have done at that time at that era like it's a choice that actually tells a lot and this thing is everywhere on the model there's like this sensibility to like the shapes and all of that stuff that choice and this is really just to talk about like a shape that was chosen that actually gives the impression that it's sci-fi and then you have so many types of sci-fi like you want to do something like Warhammer style well maybe that like using diagonal lines is not something you're going to want to do so much with hawar hammer because Warhammer is so bulky and rigid and square that the moment that you have like too much diagonals you're getting too Dynamic you're getting too like cyberpunk and it's like well there you go you had two types of sci-fi and none of them look the same so there's this like kind of like sensibility of making the right choices on every aspect of your character the shape of the meshes the shape of the like mid-level extrusions or whatever the choice of the alphas look look even when I make a cavity on my model right now I'm using my mouse and then using my my pen but just using this cavity or this cavity like there's a difference in my head because this one kind of has a fall off and then has like a hard pinch yeah exactly whereas like this one has two hard let's call it like bevels well it bevels basically so it's kind of like a a 90 not 90 degree and like a 45 degree angle on both sides it they have a difference they make a difference in in your choice in the end so it's just to say that the rabbit hole goes like pretty deep in terms of making choices and it's really just understanding those choices testing them out feeling them looking at your model once it's complete because For Crying Out Loud please finish your models people like so many people they just don't want to finish it because it's not like too much perfect of the agitate and stuff let me tell you just like even if like your heart's not really into it in the end just like finish it and look at it and observe what you could do better and observe other people's work and try again and okay that brings up something that I want to ask them just about finishing then and I'm trying to remember to ask about the design stuff some more because this is great I love seeing that you're going down to the line detail I would expect nothing less it makes sense that you even obsess over like the different kinds of panel lines but just to go back on that section too like there's these little it's all over but there's these little like manufacturing marks and like insets Alphas I guess for lack of a better term but like these pill shapes and stuff one of the big ongoing quests and questions that the Evergreen questions in art is when is it finished because it's like never really finished you have to make that call or you run out of time or there's some you you have to end it manually there's not a done thing now for me when I see hard surface again it's such an exercise in abstract things and in fundamental things that for me even though it's already difficult to call something done it would be so difficult for me so I would love to hear you speak on like how you like these two pill shapes on the screen you could have not added those but there's a time where you're adding these and at some point you get a sense you get a feeling that it's done how do you not just keep adding little things like first of all I think you have to and this is something I've only only got good I I guess at it in the past years is just like knowing what's really like your end goal in terms of like for example are you doing that for a video game are you doing that for just a collectible are you doing that for something else like this is already like a question you can answer and then let's say you're doing that for a video game while it's like okay well is it a video game where you're going to talk to your character like very close to its face or it's a game where you're gonna actually like be like further when if you can answer those questions then you know how much detail you need to put on the character before it's kind of like getting irrelevant right like for example this this head here was made just to actually like kind of like a tech demo-y thing so I kind of like went into something some pretty like fine details in some areas because I was like oh yeah you will we'll see them so I knew that there was a certain limit to details and I knew with this one I could go far but for example if I actually do something for print this line here on the on the helmet this one here we might not even like see it actually printed it I I have it behind me I just don't really know what it is I think it's all right right here there you go like do I see like I got it right there like but and it also it depends on what size you actually print those things but do I see that line and the answer is hell no seriously so it's like and this character has lines that are even smaller than that so it's like at some point you're gonna waste time if you don't see that line you clearly don't see the ones in the eyes right there so this is already kind of like a bracket that you can have so less about the technical aspect and more about the like knowing inside of yourself that you are finished with your art I'd say that first of all you have this the first part that I said that kind of guide you in terms of like the frequency of detail but in terms of like saying that like in terms of design you're not missing something this is like I'd say this is kind of like a a hard one and it's one that is a bit subjective to like how much you like to put details on your thing because some people love to actually just stay with the shapes and not draw too much attention to detail and they do like fantastic things just because they really know how to control their shapes correctly and stuff other people they love to actually make almost like a pizza out of their character where there's like details everywhere and arguably you could say sometimes too much detail is too much detail and not enough detail is missing something so of course there's a radius there's a gradient let's say or like a gray Zone but in terms of like feeling it I'd say that for me the answer was just finishing the character and looking at it and then be like okay well a mix of like being proud of the word the work you finished but also be able to to objectively look at your character and be like right there that's that was too much that was too much this too much death and even if like your character you've posted it it's not a failure that like you can now see like errors on your character Vector it's just like an observation for the next time I've never did a character that I was like this is perfect it's like no no just give me a week and I'll be like ah why did I do that it's so obvious I should not have done that but it's like you know what it's it's okay it's part of the past and the only thing you can do is go forward and learn from that and that's why I'm saying finish your goddamn characters just like you need to finish okay so you can go through that that's so important I think for people to hear because I think we just hear that over and over that people say I'm never done with the work and I'm like yeah this is awesome would it be right for me to say to like rephrase it and say when when you're like hey um people need to finish their work in other words like are you saying like you need to pick a point to stop you know because I would say lesser experienced artists that that word finished carries something that they don't know so they kind of keep going they can they can continually tell themselves it's not finished but right at some point we have to pull the plug and we have to just stop you know there we have to put an end on it right yep absolutely that's a good rephrasing I'd say because it's true that like finishing the character is some people see it as like well the the finishing is like the polishing state so maybe like that state never finishes itself like ironically even waiting to be really happy with it like you say like you know if we're posting work that we don't feel 100 on they may be waiting to feel 100 which doesn't really come right they need to be like this is good enough I mean it's I guess it's easy if like let's say you get a class into a character design like they kind of like somebody that had classes can will teach you like the steps of creating a character you have like the blocking which can also be like the design phase of your character at some point you commit to the design or part of the design and you you start like breaking it into pieces polishing it adding the mid-level detail adding the smaller details then you do that for like the rest of the year character once you get everything finished you give yourself a chance to maybe calibrate some stuff remove add some stuff if you feel that like things are not in balance and that sort of stuff and once you're at this place well then you need to commit to this to go to the next step which is a retopo or like all that stuff right so whatever is your end goal are you stopping at just like a zebra sculpt are you stopping at like the textures and everything right you always kind of like need to commit in some small doses in your work so I think that it's just being able to do like a final commit at the end and just tell yourself I went through the steps I went through the steps I technically did everything that like people told me to do the rest is is is is really subjective and is part of like your your spirit as an artist like if you're happy with what you have or not but this is something that like you have to know you might never be able to settle it because yeah I mean God knows I have my issues as as an artist imposter syndrome through the roof and a lot of like other stuff right but you kind of like have to know the that like these voices they should probably not like dictate like your your progress also yeah sure listen to them if like they really they're saying like this is a piece of maybe analyze why the voice is saying you're a piece of but if the if if you can't find why well then you have to ask yourself okay well is it that I have a bad voice in my head that's just mean or is it that like my eye sees something that doesn't like and if actually if it's the first one uh be kinder to yourself and I get get therapy and help yourself because that sucks to have those those voices but everybody has them I guarantee you but if it's the latter one where it's like your eye can see that there's a problem well you know what if you can't see it right now and fix it right now maybe it's because you need some time and to grow as an artist and you'll get better later and how you get better by advancing as an artist and by that I mean completing your character yes right so we always go back to this yeah okay so put to put a butt on it I would say like the main things that you can use to finish things and move on is one like look for those technical limitations like just look for limitations like you were saying like what's the end product is it for a game or will this ever be noticed is this going to be in camera view just try to put limitations on yourself so you can have boundaries and the other thing is to use your intuition look at it yourself and then just trust your intuition because ultimately you're the one creating it anyways so it should be a reflection of where you're at right now and if you don't like it later on that means you grew and that's a good thing anyways you just want to keep going right yep exactly but just like reiterating that the the bad voices in your head like some can just be mean and and not useful so just don't give too much power to all of them right yeah that's right also parse like yeah parse those thoughts and and voices in your head and see like is this really uh something that's real or useful you know is there something I can do about it or am I just beating myself up for no good reason yeah exactly can I tell you a small story about exactly the subject okay people that follow me will know that I've created a universe called the new apocalypse where I actually create characters and they live inside of that world and there's like a story and a backstory that actually drives everything and a lot of it is written on my side but I reveal small pieces by small pieces when I add character to this universe those character from new apocalypse they're basically uh made to be uh Collectibles and this is just because I really like uh Collectibles and stuff I'm putting the website on the screen right now the new apocalypse.com just go there if you want to learn anything about this universe and all the stuff that's in it basically like the choice of like making those Collectibles just in parenthesis is really just because I love Collectibles and that sort of stuff but the idea is that for me this is kind of like a way to really like have fun there's a difference between creating just like one-offs characters or creating like a series of character together and I like to do both it's really relaxing to just do a character alone that doesn't have anything connecting to him but it's also fun sometimes to create like characters that live together and it's much harder I'd say but it also personally I find it more fun anyways I'm working on the next series like the one on screen right now is death from The Four Horsemen series there is Michael from the Archangel series those are like two that like people have had a good reaction with and I'm currently working on the next series so foreign for Horsemen you got the archangels and the next one is going to be the elementalists the elementalists basically are going to be like characters that are very close to elements like don't go far it's the premise is easy right so how do I have fun with that how do I do the designs and make it interesting this is the hard part right and I started working on those the moment that I was done with like creating this whole website and the rendering like the all of the characters for it that I started in summers I was so inspired I already had a mood board of like all the groups of the character of the world like I said I I wrote a lot but it was time to like really Define like what they look like do like thumbnails figure it out like where I wanted to go anyways and I was like super motivated and I I made all my research like I do usually I did my thumbnails I found ideas I found stuff that I found inspiring I found like the core idea that would bind them all together which is a big one and I was like okay well let's go I'm I'm good I'm good let's do it I did some sketches and then I was like okay I'm ready to go in zbrush sometimes I just go right away in zbrush but for big projects like this I just wanted to do a little bit of research first I got in zbrush and I think it took me a week and I started to have like a major a major depression like I I was like that's not working at all that's not working at all like and I Revisited the design and then I started to like hate them and I was like oh my God like no this is like there's nothing good like this is not good I think I need to like almost start over or like even stop like I got pretty like depressed like because I had so much hope and I had so much fun with it and instantly like I had a feeling it was not working out in retrospective what I can say is that it was probably a burnout I'd say which is not my point it's just a parenthesis like I think I burnt out and it's really hard for me to Define like a burnout when I do what I love because it's like I love doing that but it's like well you can still burn out and it's just in the burnout it's not going to be like like that thing I I hate it if you were like I don't know like working at the government and you hated your job it's really easy to be verbal about how much you ate it and you just don't want to do it anymore when it's the thing you love it's so hard to say I hate it I don't want to do it ever again it's like no that's not true I want to do it for the rest of my life but what's that feeling inside right and I think it was actually a burnout that led to like a depression but my point is yeah I asked two of my friends uh to well uh yeah to my friends to uh take some time and play around with the concept that I had I was like you can start the concept from zero just follow the bio at least because the bio is but in the story right check the bio check my Concepts here's my mood board you can start from scratch or you can take what I did and can you do iterations on the four elementalists and just I want to see what you would have done right I took two artists that I was like I I liked what they did so I was like I already know that whatever they're going to create is going to be something that I know I can appreciate basically they did that it took a little while during that time I just relaxed I did frog character like I concentrated on other things and Wendy gave me their stuff back I was like okay well it gives me back some inspiration so so now I I can take what they did I can get inspired and I can go back on it and when I was done revisiting the designs of my character there and I looked at the ones that I had during my my like right before my burnout I was like they're not so different after all so like and they were better because like my friend helped me to like Elevate them right but when I look at before and after I was like man it's like I had all the answers the idea was there they're not that different they're just like a little bit better I really thought that they were disgusting pieces of and I'm like well if they were really disgusting pieces of why didn't I take a different design that one of my friend did it's because in reality it was not that bad it was just I guess I was not like in a place to really appreciate it your state of mind kind of dictated or influenced like how you were able to make art and and how you're even kind of viewing your own art right yes exactly and the answer was that yes I was off and I was too burned out to find the right way like okay fine but it's not what happened I looked at everything that they did I looked at what I did I mixed everything together and what came out is something that was not that different from what I did was just elevated and it was like in a better place so I was like man okay um well it really taught me something about like being hard with myself really which is kind of like what I said earlier right about the bad voices and everything it's like don't go thinking that because like I have like the career that I have and I made like a couple of cool characters that like I'm not like fighting against something inside of myself or that I'm not actually I mean fighting with something inside of myself on a regular basis I mean I think when you're an artist you're gonna actually have those things and I think it's like being able to harness and understand and control those that are going to make you an artist that pushes it to the next level right yeah so if you were gonna do another series now you know on top of it let's say and then you ran into kind of some of the same feelings would you do anything differently than you did with the elemental experience I think that like I would just try to be aware of um when I get like this amount of antagonization against myself I would know that this is the moment to take a break because I actually pushed it for two months and I think what I did is I just dug a hole for two months I was like no no no I should not stop this is just like a little feeling that I had and I'm gonna get through it because I kind of like got out of it sometimes by doing that by really just like digging my way out but this time it did not work this time I dug solidly down down and when I realized like that was just not well I was really like okay I dug super far like I didn't do like this like in this and at some point poop it popped out like I sometimes I did I really did like a good a good tunnel a good vertical tunnel let's say so I would say that like it's just about like awareness really which is kind of like how people deal with trauma and and that sort of stuff it's like you never really like are cured from like what happens to you you just understand what happens to you and you're able to control it better or to go around it better yeah maybe react I think taking a break is and it's what you did maybe you do it sooner or something I think that's a nice solution is to call on your friends to see what they would do and have them inspire you yeah well it's pattern recognition eh because like if I actually would have seen that like I was in a negative pattern well that would have been the time to like put a stop to it and just tell yourself okay break time because like sometimes you can get lost in the pattern like you're in the eye of the tornado and you just don't see it but that's that it's happening so pattern recognition just be and I guess that's something that comes with like insight and wisdom about yourself that's kind of hard one because now we're talking about like therapy almost like yeah I mean that this is awesome stuff until yeah I this is to me I think it's super important to hear some of your caliber talking about it so I I love talking about this and I I want to ask you again about this kind of passion and work and joy and stuff so we're gonna Circle back talk a little bit more about it before we do would you mind first back to the like this hard surface crazy model here like could you like zoom into like a detailed section of the like the ear cheek kind of area like I don't know how you're doing these like small little things is it a mix of technique like this kind of stuff seems crazy to me the I guess there's there's a couple kinds of things there's this like the actual ear thing with the detailed and then there's these latches looks like these two like latches yes yes yes there's there's a lot of things happening here there's I think two of those meshes are actually kid bash like this is something I think I took from one of the the Vitaly uh kid bash thing this thing here when I actually placed that shape here on the character I guess in blocking if I know that like I'll have a connection between two parts sometimes I might insert like an IMM right there just because like imms of stuff that looks like joints or attached just like like I don't care about modeling them all the time and sometimes I know I instead of like just placing a cylinder it's boring sometimes I just Place something there but you see what happened is like I think I've placed yeah right yeah because like those two like holes like right here where like the inches like Teeth of the hinges I don't know how to call it well I think they dictated like how I actually approached the shape here afterwards and in the final result the same thing like happened so it's just to say that like sometimes you place an IMM just because it works well but that's actually something that's cool is like when you place something that is a bit more finished in an area that something is not finished sometimes it's just like kind of like dictates how the rest should be right so it's kind of like a tool to get rid of like the blank page syndrome that's the phrasing in French I don't know if that's how you say it in English yeah I totally get what you mean yeah when you when you yeah the like you freeze when you start yeah or when you don't know where to start it's like you place something and you start you start from what that thing right there caused to to your canvas let's say do you have other imams here too well yeah this one the ear I think it's uh well not the outer ring but the inner ring I think it's another one of uh Vitalis I think this one is actually the same as this one it's just I I kind of like added some stuff on it but there but there's a lot that it's like like this little thing I use it a couple of places this is one that I did myself and saying that is just saying it's just to say hey whatever you use your IMM to create them yourself or you go get them somewhere it's fine it's cool it's not a problem to use i m I'd say that the problem using IMM is if they dictate too much of your Design This is where you're not in tune with your design anymore if you're just letting some pre-made things tell you what the things should look like yeah then if you then it would influence it more rather than being like the spice or the things that yes exactly ends up actually looking like you said it very well it's I actually you know what I kind of like started using this exact expression at school to talk about like using things to like a smaller degree to help it's like it's the spice of it like it's a I totally agree with that analogy could I see an IMM brush or drawer like now that you mentioned I I assume you have like Treasure Trove of IMS no to be honest I I find that like I'm most of the time dissatisfied with imms and I always revert back to just like the Vitaly not the black phoenix one but the other so do you do you have like Vitalis and then yours are separate brushes or do you have like one brush that's just yours your stars you know no it's like a favorites it's like you open light box it's like you have his stuff here I just take one I test it I change it if I need and the ones that I have to be honest when I reuse it I kind of like open the project from before and I go grab it it is so not organized in that way like earlier I told you it was kind of like an organized person not in that regard actually I I kind of like feel it it like forces me to think it over and not just easily go and grab them all the time so this way it's really just like if like I really feel it's like I need it then I remember it I go get it and I find it like yeah it kind of like forces me sometimes to just create new ones and get like newer stuff as well so you you're consciously not making like a Marco I am in it was not conscious at first it's an observation that I realized afterwards that's not the reason why that would be that would be fire dude if you made one everyone would get it yeah I'd say that like I'm I don't pride myself with my imms I find that they're very like like you said the spice of something yeah I would love to have it little clasps and but like those things you you showed that go around the wire that's great the little where the pink wires go in the back it's like a little okay you know yeah that's awesome yeah yeah okay there you go yeah yeah to be honest stuff like that I think I have like seven and I drag them like for five years now they're just never really noticeable they're really just like in between stuff so you don't really notice it but they they're there to actually just be like noisy and and procure like this feeling of like functionality but at the end of the day it's when you look at it from afar they're more in secondary I'd say like tertiary or oh yeah definitely yeah but anyway thanks for the comments like I appreciate the kind words oh they're awesome oh dude I'm really serious about that by the way you should make a little kit of your it doesn't need to be that many dude it for five bucks 10 bucks dude I would get it everybody would get it dude well I I like to know that maybe I'll do you should yeah you really should so that's the IMM brush and stuff are you actually just straight up using Alphas too sometimes like for some of these pills and stuff because I that that would be cool to know that you can just drag out some shapes and I got like a library of Alphas there's actually one that we created ourself and uh it's it's a good one it just so happened that my friend sent me like a collection of Alphas that actually works pretty well it's just it's my friends who send it so it's not that really the stuff that I share but most of the time what I do is I kind of like just open it then I create a package of of alphas and I just like load it this is just like a shortcut from somewhere and I just load like this these bunch of alphas and everything I have like many I have like Alphas that are good to just place in the middle of nowhere As a detail it breaks the monotony I have like D I have some Alphas that I find it works really well when you put them on borders of stuff and like just me saying that just makes me like just just brings it to another like subject which is but actually you know what going back to visual language it's like okay well where do you put that kind of detail like what kind of detail and where do you put it is it's another aspect of like visual language and this is actually what's going to really make your stuff work well like for example like if I was to just like add like a detail like right there so let's say you have the like this Alpha it's like a half capsule shape so why first of all why use a half capsule shape well a lot of like my character is like round or at least the element it's kind of like round it's like a full round shape it's kind of like broken as well a circle would work the capsule Shake actually I find works it just the eyes are almost it's like a tapered capsule shape so I know that it's got It's kind of like a a strong shape that exists on my character already so half capsule will work and where to put it now well since it's kind of like a broken probably that what I can do is I can and I can just actually try to marry the straight line right there of the capsule with the straight line of this design of this like bevel right here and so the reason why I would not do like the opposite for example It's like because of that it's like okay well I find that there's like less Harmony like for example here it feels that there's like this line and this line that are like fighting against each other like the negative space right there for me is kind of like awkward I find and whereas if I actually put it right there I find it like just because of the harmony of like those two lines together and the roundness of this and there's like Realm things all around it I find that it's just like it marries itself correctly it's much better in my opinion now if I look at it better yeah now that I look at it like this I'm like okay well there's already a detail here it's kind of like stealing the spotlight of this detail it's starting to make it like convoluted in this area and also it looks like small dog eyebrows I find right now and I find that this character should look expressionless like he's he's like an automaton basically like he does not I love I love this this is exactly what I want this is exactly what I want to hear so like you've already you've already touched on a couple different kind of what would you say schools of design or philosophy but they're coming from different places so the one thing that I was kind of thinking about before when you talked about visual language and uh like using that shape that like Smooth transition shape the like box trapezoid shape and that gives you the feeling of the sense that it was manufactured you know using like a technology that comes of an age like that is vacuum formed or that it's 3D printed or whatever I think when you're doing the hard surface design you're going through all these different hats one is like the impression of purpose if something feels like it has no purpose then it's like why is this here this this is not helping me you know you're creating these illusions of something that was manufactured something that fits together that things have a purpose but they don't really have a purpose but you're you know you're trying to imbue that and then separate from that are these fundamental things these really core design principles we talked about like tangents and like Harmony and stuff that's what's so fascinating about good hard service design in my opinion is is this jug this balance of different things of like understanding enough about manufacturing to fake it to make someone feel like wow this is a real thing and at the same time these big things these like compositions and balance and Harmony which are like very elusive design like highbrow terms that I think come with experience and personal taste and stuff yeah I think that and be able to really get a grasp on those I think you need to either like go to school and design or check a few like tutorials of people that actually was were able to put like words to the this kind of like Theory and I mean it exists like there's like people that made some pretty cool uh tutorial I'll just uh like plug there's a Alex cynical well he does a lot of things right I think he's more known for like his guns and stuff but like he made a tutorial that actually explains a lot of like theory that I knew and some that I didn't knew but the one that I knew he actually found like a like a way to express them and I was like oh my God yes this is exactly what I what happens in my head but like put it in two words right thank you for like make sense of like that and I was actually like it made me I find like a better teacher afterwards because I was like okay well this guy figured out how to explain it and and that was good and I did learn like a few little things right there so this is also just way of saying to people like hey just check tutorials all the time you'll always learn a little something and if you like it integrate it in your stuff and it's going to be good and joining a school sometimes you just get through like so many things like just like learning like composition in terms of like the composition of a canvas I I use that when I when I do my characters like when I place a detail in a shape I kind of like see the shape as a canvas and I place a detail I use this kind of like Theory either like subconsciously or not subconsciously I use that theory just to place it just framing things correctly all of those things you can learn so much from like even stuff that looks like it's not of the same nature like painting composition I mean no you're you're going to learn something even if like it's in treaty or whatever right so the other thing about the visual language that like you said just another little tip sometimes it's fine to it's good to ask yourself like what era is it because you got not so sci-fi and super sci-fi and like those are also like different for sure like on this character you'll never see like a bolt because it's like well no it's it comes from like an era where like everything is clipped like differently and it's more like mobile it's not like not yeah nothing is like screwed in and that sort of stuff because like screws are more like either like Warhammer ask because it looks brutish to screw something rather than like having it like clip by itself like gently clip like an Apple product now that you mentioned it I feel like I feel like that yeah your stuff Clips together yeah I'm more of a club guy I'd say yeah yeah dude yeah yeah I feel like you just unmasked yourself as like yeah dude you make things that clip yeah yeah what about there around the nose area above the pink thing that looks like that might be a screw hole there or maybe it's a vent maybe that's where you oh that was gonna say another thing let's just attack on just I know we talked about it a lot just wanted to mention that I thought it was so cool when you talked about the face you talk about the expression that's another that's like a third version of design where you're using your intuition and just like the thing we all have in our brain where we kind of personify everything and that's so cool that you were looking like you're looking at your character like it has a face even though it doesn't have a face and that you're making choices that's super cool to hear you say that because when you when we view these kind of robots we're all feeling that stuff and those are choices that you made as the as the artist like where things go in the balance and whether or not you're gonna add something to to try to evoke like Personality yeah that's I guess that's the word is like there's the manufacturing there's abstract there's fundamental design and then personality and those are all different kind of things that are going on together as you're making something that's super cool yeah absolutely could we roll back to an earlier version we're looking at the finished one like maybe you could show yeah okay so like when you're doing this type of stuff mostly you're thinking about the design I guess you're already starting to add little bits here I know you said you did this as a demo itself and you even have the body where you're like just drawing stuff on right you're just straight up playing around and well this one is a bit more finished I guess I think I had like uh yeah I see like I had like this one was was which was like the very first step of like taking like a naked guy and just like starting to to draw like lines on it which for me is like it's the two first things that I do uh this is so early this is so this like that's super cool to see I want to see this like this is yeah when you're making this are you are you making a line and then undoing it and trying it again or are you are you thinking before you do a stroke like how messy and you know how do you even know where to start I think everyone would want to know like I think I just like throw a couple of things like I'll add like a layer and I'll just do like a couple of lines and stuff and I'll just go with the feeling of like if like this seems to work for me or not but I don't throw only lines and stuff because like I I work the lines and the volumes at the same time I'd say and especially in those like early stages not that this character has so much has a lot of volume like it's very humanoid in its in its shape right uh but for example like I started like adding like the neck protection here so like that was volume the same way that I was like adding like lines and stuff and or like we could consider like this a volume although it's not a huge shape change but I'll explore all of those at the same time and I'll just like see if like they're if I if I like it or not if it speaks to me and I always I try to do that without adding like too much sub tools like here on the arm I did add like this plate because I really wanted to actually start to work on like how those like layers are really going on top of the other but I'd say that in retrospective it's it's the kind of stuff that sometimes it's maybe like a bit early I prefer to really explore like the shapes and those simple lines like without adding too much sub tool just getting to somewhere that I feel that the shape is is fun and and like I said this this is like so early it is I I just happen to have this file so I was like hey let's open it I don't know I don't you see how like in between like oops sorry in between like this and this like how it kind of like changed you can see that like where I was like missing volume around like the clavicles here and the shoulder yeah I found like the shape correctly at this at this stage while keeping like the lines that I had here to try to get like my layering correctly right so I I'll really try to not add subtools to get my layering correctly I'll really try to just like draw with like damn standard like just a mimic like a layer what I do is I just take my damn standard but yeah so so to add a layer like for example like often what I'll do is I'll just take a like a negative damn standard like this and then I'll just add like a cavity on top like here and then I'll take my my any clay brush and I'll just like add in the volume that was maybe like missing like around here then you smooth that and then you've actually you created like an elevation in your shape like this right away this can actually be interpreted at least in your blocking stage could be interpreted as like a layer over this layer so this is pretty much like how I try to go buy things because I find that when you look at it from afar it does the job and I didn't waste time creating a new model and all that sort of stuff so in this exploration stage really useful I'd say and so that's something that later once you're happy then you'll go through the trouble of breaking them off making actual layers of different meshes yeah especially if they have like different materials or how like polished you want your work to be like yeah I'll like split it into like another like material yes when you go from like I will say I will say it's super important because I know you're like oh this old one like the Delta between the first one and the second one is not that big and then the Delta is even smaller on the next one and that's what you'd want to see but like honestly the they're obviously strongly related the first early version and the last version it's for me it's really cool to see very quickly you got to the overall primary shapes and the silhouette you're making like five to ten percent changes on the Silhouettes and stuff it's not that it's not that much and then the Delta between number two and number three is even smaller but it really like comes to life and then there's this I'm just gonna throw it aside at you because I assume like you know about this and all the people heart service people are like masters of this but it was something that I first thought of when I watched the first Transformers movie that there was this feeling I was like overwhelmed visually like like it was so much there's so much stuff that it just creates this feeling of complexity I guess and so I see that I feel like you guys are especially you and the people that do these like detailed these like blocks of detail are kind of wielding that where the first time I see your work which for you is gonna be hard because you're seeing it all the time but I wonder if you have that in mind like the are you thinking about the first impression from a viewer because when I see one of these works for the first time there's these levels of and this is that really nice curated design of philosophy that there's an order because I think of this in my own work but I have such less details to play with that there's an order of what's Happening like At first boom I see the shape I get the like overall what it is in design then there's these like values like we're seeing here but then there's like all this complication that is just too much to take in at once so you just you can just kind of feel like wow that's detailed or wow that's like you know so sci-fi or whatever you know it creates a in a feeling because it kind of washes over you at once because there's so much little things you know I'm saying am I making sense yeah yeah you are you are I to be honest I never really thought about that and uh I think that I can actually also relate to this because like the same happens to me when I see something right I get this like like sometimes like I get like a Thunderstruck of like almost like a dizziness because there's like so much things and at once it happens and it's fun it's not it's kind of like tasting like a super complex meal for the first time and you're just like completely blown away and if you take more bites now you can start to get like uh the hints of this and that or whatever right but the first one is just like blasting you away right it's something that can be pretty cool and I think that also it goes to say that like when you're able to dissect what's happening on on the the the piece now you start to get like more of like the things that come back or even if you squint you can see like the bigger shapes and you can see like some pattern repeating and you can see like that's the style of what they do then you can see like the medium and the smaller detail and the composition of everything makes for the finished product but it's also the same way that like when I create this character I pay attention to to those levels of of detail um in a very um how can I say that not structured way I guess like take it with a grain of salt structure like sometimes I jump from one to the other just because I want I want but sometimes it can create like technical problems but most of the time I I feel that I pretty much have the freedom but nonetheless humans always seek patterns and my brain kind of like created like a pattern of paying attention to this and then this and then this and I know that if I did that part correctly even if it doesn't have the other parts to it I kind of like know it's like no I know that I actually gave it like enough love that with this and this it's it should be really good and if not well maybe I'll return to it add something if I need it kind of like goes hand in hand with like the discussion we previously had which was about like just creating milestone in your work and going through the motions in order to get to the Finish Line right and just knowing that if you compartmentalize things a little bit sometimes it'll just help you to know that you're done with a part and you can get to the next one and things should be relatively like okay yeah and the way I see it is like we almost have a perfect representation your three versions here of this thinking of primary shapes and then secondary shapes and then tertiary shapes and how you're getting smaller with what's going on that's kind of the order that people take in a design too that like boom that first one is so important I always thought that you demo that order so well you know that like you can actually see it getting smaller it getting more complicated and another thing that came to mind as you spoke is I think another way to frame that first experience is like when you when you see a work of this anything that has like layers and complexity to it that like the first couple seconds of seeing a work like this for the first time time is emotional and then the longer you look at it it becomes more and more analytical you know over time then you're starting to actually like you know now you're actually thinking and taking it in in a different way and that's what makes it interesting yeah absolutely it's kind of like important to be able to like analyze this this this way because I mean you can look at like a a a a picture or just uh to enjoy looking at a picture because it's cool right but if you really get to like really observe thing and try to analyze like you'll really get better like I mean I think that like something that worked for me at least was doing a lot of like observational um observational observation I don't know how to say that like analytical observation I guess when I went to museums and stuff like um like even like abstract art like I love to actually just like get lost in a painting and just really look at it and let just my brain see things and and understand things and whatever and just letting it do that exercise and really looking at it I found like helped me to uh observe something and understand things and whatever and just letting it do that exercise and really looking at it I know that it worked because if I compare myself to other people I really notice that I have a better photographic memory than like other people and I don't think that it necessarily at least only comes from like genetics or and when I was a kid I think I kind of like practiced it because I know for a fact that it's doable because like I nobody in my family does music and I decided to play music and I know that music does not come as natural to me as art but I've been able to get to a certain level like I'm so so at music right but I've been able to understand things that were absolutely impossible for me to understand like for example like earring a note and like guessing what note it is or like like hearing an army and guessing what the Army is and that sort of stuff like I did practice it to a point that like now when I actually like play guitar and sing I'm like hey I think I can actually like do the harmonies of that thing like it makes sense in my head that I can do them but there's nothing inside of me that's like base level a musician like it's all acquired basically and I think the same goes with observational and analytical observation it's like it's something that like you'll you'll you'll get good you'll get good if you actually just start doing it check references ask yourself like why do I like this like either like somebody's art or anything it could be a photo of something you like I don't know but you just like look at it and you just like try to get lost in it and like your brain's gonna like attach a few things even subconsciously it might become like tools later that you'll just repeat something you like and like I don't know I mean it's it's worth it to spend some time like doing that basically so it's kind of like saying like you take a reference and you're not really trying to replicate your reference you're trying to understand what's happening in the reference and see if it's applicable to your style and your model basically those things that you're talking about right now it's cool to hear that I've seen this in talking with other people that are successful with their art and that they keep growing is that they maintain kind of a student mind about things and that they're not adverse to learning so like even hearing that you take on music and like this I think this constant learning and being open and trying being analytical is super key and important to just growing lifelong and I think all that stuff spills over to just keep that mindset of of trying new things and learning new things yeah absolutely I mean sometimes it's it's nice to just like ride the wave of your knowledge and just go with the flow of things and give yourself a break right so yeah that's also something uh you should give yourself the chance to appreciate doing but yeah once in a while it's like fun to go back in study mode and try to see if you can push the envelope a little bit learn something new and that sort of stuff for sure now we talked about your world of the neo-apocalypse uh would you mind pulling up one of those could we see like what that looks like in zbrush now that we've seen like the tech Soldier guy um what would be one for print because like you said print's a big deal uh absolutely the things you like to do uh yeah yeah yeah let me clear the clear my Ram so jumping into this I saw you had a couple versions um is this the final one that's print right now this one is no this one is the final one not print already because I can show you if I click on the one that is print ready which is probably there we go there's like slight differences actually let's say I'm just going to put it all gray so we can compare all gray to okay great yeah so for example if you look at snake look at the size of the teeth like they just got like a little bit bigger the skin got more detail the all the details exaggerated and it does kind of like look a bit overkill for my taste at least if you look at them in zbrush like this compared to the true final one which is you know this one and it's because like of course in print you have stuff like for example like there's a lot of things that's gonna there are gonna get washed out detail is one of them especially when you have a lot of detail and you want to get like the skin texture correctly like this might get washed out during print when I'm done normally with my characters all the skin detail like this I don't even need to put it on a layer there's just like you just need to have a mesh that has subdivision levels so like a pure dynamesh won't work but you can always like just create a zed rematch and reproject the details right but I but it does need to have like lower subdivision levels like this and there's like a script if you go get it's called Ryan's tools and at the bottom there's one that's called amp detail and basically what it does is that it's going to check like the difference in between the lowest subdivision and the highest subdivision and it's gonna it's gonna understand what is the detail and what is the main shape and it's actually going to give you the morph brush so that you can actually amplify where you want the date the details to amplify it's really it's a really good tool it's really great that's a good tip you know too they added the contrast slider too I've been using that that's a nice little thing that zbrush added yes I did I did actually also notice that I didn't test it uh though but like yeah absolutely I think it I think it's the same mentality I think so I mean being able to morph where you want it is is better gives you more control but in a pinch anytime I need to amp something overall yet the new contrast slider in the deformation tab is good it's cool to see the difference you know like I would suspect that there's something going on that would be different and you had to see it like really punched up so that's over it's like a lot because you're going to lose a little bit of the edges and things are going to melt together and yeah I think also something that's that's fun to say an observation at least it's that there's some choices you have to make like at the beginning like for example like if you look at the details on the veil right there like the size of the dots might actually be too big like bigger than what I would have done if I was just to do like a something like akin to the character I just sold before which was made for like close-ups and that sort of stuff like this character was never made for close-ups because I know the size at which it's going to be printed and a lot of like things on this character is superficial I actually put grain on the skin but it's like I think I did that just for my render because I know that like the renders will see it even if the print doesn't see it you kind of like have to be careful with that because a lot of things can be like useless it's just I like to actually strike the balance in between making it look good for render but actually making look intelligent for print as well and this is why sometimes I'll render like this character with like the normal skin for the snake but I'll have the other one which amps the detail but some details you can't really do it twice or it's going to be a hassle to do it twice so like the dots for example on the veil those ones are a bit too big for if the goal was to make like I did before but I'm like ah you know what that's just what it is if you do something for print sometimes you have to exaggerate and this one is an exaggeration that is kind of like baked in the model let's say I feel like I have to say this is an insane looking model for print this is crazy is it actually like simple in terms of put together like it looks bananas in terms of the details but also like the undercuts and like the hood and the and the elbow piece freak me out but I don't have that much experience with print like are are you at a place where you're not worried about it are you figuring it out later or it's just crazy to see something like this doesn't look like something made for print just look at it let me just say that my first character that I did for print I had a lot of feedback when it turned to making it printable because also like I rarely done the engineering for the the print as well I did it sometimes but uh like I find it so boring that I always like negotiate it out of my contract still even if you don't do the engineering they're gonna ask you to just like be a bit like sensitive to like a few uh a few uh points when I do my characters now I always like apply this like sensibility or at least I'll I'll do it in the final step something you cannot do in the final step but some you do like when I said the comparison between like this one and this one if you just look at the plates let's look at like this one here so look at the thickness of the plate like this one is like less thick this one is like much thicker and you even have some that are like way thicker and they even have like artifacts and stuff but like since they're they're on at the back here I know that they're gonna get like washed out with like the print and everything but this plate was completely inflated whereas like this one here is oh wait actually no never mind I already did the inflation on this one but some need to be inflated even more like exactly to make sure like the overhangs are not a problem and that sort of stuff so there's always like a pass at the end where I will actually just boost the thicknesses a little bit I'll even if I actually have the thickness still pretty good at the beginning sometimes I just don't want it to look like it's ready for print for my renders because sometimes it just is a little just too thick for my taste and you don't notice it when it's printed but for the renders yeah it would be kind of like bothering a little bit like after having done like dude almost 40 models for print like I'd say that at this point like I've kind of like heard most of the feedback come back and now I just like applied them and I I think about them like ahead of time especially when it comes to like what's really possible in terms of like Gravity the way of this this rock is shaped is not an accident it's like well I know that like you need to kind of like have like the thing somewhere here to get like the peg to hold like the body here and that body on top of this body make sure that the way is correct and like contact points with the floor and that sort of stuff something like you you kind of like super great good time but if if you don't know it I mean like if you work in a collectible industry and you don't have this this knowledge yet I mean there's going to be a guy from the company that's going to let you know at some point I mean when they're going to do their concept they're going to basically like make sure it's doable and then when it's like ready for print they'll go over the model and you'll get like a revision pass on a few things and you just uh yeah you just find like imaginative ways of fixing them let's say they say like the head needs to split well maybe just design something where like you can add like a cut and it doesn't look like that bad that sort of stuff yeah I mean now that you mention it I think you can just see the experience it's cool that you're making your own Collectibles at this point because it just looks so Dynamic and so detailed and it doesn't look like there's anything compromised seems like you're pushing the limitations of the medium of like 3D printing it's really awesome yeah this one I was like you know what yeah I'm gonna push it I'm gonna push it I'm gonna see like where it's gonna land when I was done with the blocking of the characters I did call a couple of my friends who work in the industry to be like hey am I like crazy over here or like do you think like that's doable before I actually go forward because when I did the the horsemen series like this one I did not have my collaboration with XM yet like they actually contacted me once that the model like the the models were done basically so in order to actually get to create something that I know that I was not like doing something impossible like I I actually talked to my friends but when I did the the archangels which this is the series that comes after them uh well I was able to just go see XM and be like hey Mike that's my idea what do you think like is it doable so I'll do a little teaser over here like I'm already in contact with XM for like the the next series for the elementalists and we're really pushing the limits of gravity and stuff like I'm we're gonna be doing like a few new like tricks and there's a couple of characters that like even me I'm like what like we can do that and I'm actually applying it on my characters and I yeah I can't wait to show it to you because it just looks it looks impossible but if you look at like the last things that XM actually did there's a few of those tricks already there and there's a few of those characters that I'm I'm actually I called a meeting with XM to talk about one of the guys and I was like please explain to me how this character works because I have no ideas and I want to be able to do that for my series there's some black magic happening there basically this yeah so you're still pushing it that's awesome to hear you mentioned the website like are these still like pre-orderable like are they gone can people still get these when are they coming out like if someone wants to get one of these can they yeah the bar which is like the first one and pestilence which is the second one are available to to pre-order right now you can just go on the same website that I showed earlier uh neoapocalypse.com is basically like a platform that's made to learn about the universe but also like I mean you can go and buy the statues and that sort of stuff so if you want to learn you just click on all of the nice little icons over there and there's always going to be the the publicity for XM website where you buy everything and those are the two that are pre-orderable right now if that's even a verb that you can pre-order the third one is coming very soon actually and I think that by around may we might actually have like the last one death available for uh for pre-orders so yeah it's it's coming out and then for the rest well I mean we'll see I guess we're just gonna make sure that the the cells are going well and it's a it's a uh something that we can repeat and I'll be more than happy to continue on with that but for me like it goes on anyway like like I'm I'm building that Universe this is my pet project basically in a it'll continue like nonetheless well that brings me to another thing I wanted to talk to you about I think you're in a unique position from the artist I've spoke to before in that your passion I mean in general you know you have this like you say a wide range of passion and stuff but like your strength of using zbrush utilizing it doing design making original characters making hard service models and collectibles like you founded a company and it's been your career now so you're like an owner of a company that does your passion so I would just I just assume that it comes with like this extra amount of stress and pressure your passion is also your business and it's supporting you and your family like man what's that like how do you how can you balance that stuff and are you able to maintain joy and excitement it seems like you you can and yeah that's just something I I'm interested about because I think you are in this unique position where just it's more than just for fun anymore and even this your passion project is kind of growing into an Enterprise in itself are you able to maintain the kind of light-heartedness and playfulness and joy that you want to or is it does it feel like work a lot of the time no I guess that like the the solution here was the compromises because also something to add on top of that is that I I became a dad like two years or so ago pretty much almost the same as you like you talked last time and there was like that adding on top of everything so there was the there was the horsemen that happened there was me becoming a dad there was me having my business a business that is still growing also so there was like a lot of things that happened at the same time and but the I mean I dealt with it each things I dealt with it in a way that like I knew that I was able to provide for for it so as much as my family as my company as my um this project or just me as an artist right oh we also forgot I started to stream at the same time as well like but you see like the stream is that the stream I was like okay you know what it's two hours per week that's it and that's what I'm doing and it's gonna take the time it's gonna take I'm just doing it because I've I don't have really good time anymore to make like tutorials and stuff like they're really hard like long to do and I was like you know what I'll just go live and work on something two hours per week and that's that's the only thing I'm giving myself and I'm giving myself permission to not be there a week if it it's really bad if or if I'm sick or if something is happening at work so I'm just really like putting myself like like I'm putting blood brackets but I'm just setting up things so that I know that I am not going to get like really overwhelmed like the moment at like 5 PM strikes well I'm in one my I'm with my family I do everything with for my family same thing for the weekend the one minute people are asleep and then I go on my computer and I do what I've always done working at night which I just love doing except when there's a great video game that came out and I just need to play that video game sometimes like I'll just like change it up a little bit but my company like the way that I've been able to actually deal with that is just basically it's been like a couple of years now like four years that as an artist I don't really do anything with chaos Masons anymore like I'm an art director I I show people like how to do this or how I help them I also I have like a staff of like leads that are like pretty good at their job that I also work with so I've kind of decided like what roles were primordial that I keep but in chaos Mason so that the ship continues to sail and and that we continue to grow growing right now but I've kind of like we've well me and Cedric we've put in place things to help us to make sure that everything works well like we know what our strengths are we know where we're absolutely needed in the company and we know who to trust and or and how to teach people to actually like do things correctly so that everything works well and it works pretty well and what happens when you do that and to get to the interesting part right at least what I've consider the interesting part of that subject is that if you set up things like Accord like correctly like this you at some point you let go of things that you loved to do like for example doing character art like don't do any more for chaos Masons and it's sad but so that in order to actually be able to set up the rest and have the rest work by itself I needed to not be an artist anymore and be more of a manager more of an art director and this and that what do you do now if you're not an artist anymore but you love to do art like how can you survive well that's the thing I set up things a certain way at kiosk Mason so that like when things work I have free time I have the time to take on another project well I call it free time but like it's always spent doing something for chaos Masons right so like what's the definition of free time whatever but what I mean by that is that like I don't have a meeting people are accounted for people know what to do and then like there's a moment of silence well I always have zbrush open in the background in the moment there's like an interruption of something I open it and continue working on my on my characters and at night I have like all this span of time before going to bed to work on my stuff so I basically bat it's a balancing act like yeah I know I know when I take care of my family I have my stream that's like two hours per week I know that I need to spend x amount of hours per day to make sure chaos medicine works the rest of the the X amount of hours I work on some more personal stuff like I said it's always for chaos Masons anyway and then at night well then I decide what I do do I relax do I continue to work on my character I just go with the vibe with that because sometimes I'm so like into my work then I'm just like no let's go back to work let's do it and sometimes like Elden ring comes out and you're like okay well I guess I'll sink 100 hours like yeah within the next weeks because hey that's what Elden ring says and but I found that like there's like a balance I've been able to be really happy with and that's really what made me able to do everything and start new things also it's really just like testing out knowing how much place there is in there and yeah just that so sure maybe like I don't go out much but that's just being a dad also right yeah I don't know for you but like for me it's I don't see my friends as much but it's nice it's fine I'm happy with that situation but I end up having like enough time to do like all of this stuff that that are at the end of the day really truly important for me and the and the stuff that's more secondary well it becomes a bit more rare but I still do it because it's nice and it it happens once in a while and I don't know I feel I feel I feel right with that that's great man yeah that really feels like you know that's kind of important and that that takes time in itself if it sounds like you know what's important to you and that you've over time now got to this like balance of being able to arrange your life in a way where you get to spend hopefully most of the time most of your time on the things that are important to you and then you've offloaded and you've had like with the business you know being able to grow it to like get other people to help and and as you say like do the things that make the biggest impact but then be able to spend time with your family play video games so that's cool to hear that you struck a balance like I feel like it could have easily been that you're next barely above water all the time you know with juggling all that stuff so yeah you're making it work I'm too much of uh I'm too much of an anxious person to be in that situation sometimes I watch shows like let's say like let's take Breaking Bad for example all right what's that show and I'm like I would have died and that at the end of the first like somewhere in between the first and the second season I would have just died of stress or just like go cry under my bed instead of like going forward with like whatever plot there is so I I know that about myself and and that's how I've been able to cope with that is like if like you're somebody that's like anxious easily well you need to make sure that like all the decisions you take and the way that you the way that you set up things are going to be in a way that like if goes down you created yourself enough buffer so that you're kind of like comfortable with like what you you get right so I don't believe in like overwhelming yourself at least like don't try to do it too much if you're the same personality as me or if you're an absolute maniac and can take it I say Godspeed go for it but if you're like like me yeah you just need to be like kind of like smart and I did my mistakes let's just say that I I took on a few projects that I should not have taken in my past that like thought me a lot and but by the way I nailed them also but when I came out of them I was like yeah no more of that no more of that yeah that was that was good enough like just like this is like not a uh there's nothing Secret in there but anymore at least uh so Gotham then Gotham night came out recently and this is a game we did like a lot of characters for and we were super proud of the work we did like there's like there's a lot of characters and I found that there's a lot of design that are pretty cool in that game and we've we sank like so many like so many weeks and months of work into that project but before the project got completely green lit we actually participated in two in its vertical slice and I they they asked us they told us like what's the scope of the vertical slice I think it was like 15 characters that needed to be done in three months 15 character in three months and I kind of like did that math I look at like our resources and I was like you know what yeah I'll do it and in the middle of that three months I was like this is the most stupid thing I did in my life it like like a couple of things kind of like backfired and I I needed to do like a lot of the work myself and like I didn't really sleep for like three three months it was like pretty bad and when it ended I was like it ended really well like we were able to complete everything and mostly everything was done like exactly the way they needed so we were able to do it but at the end I was like it was hell it was like hell for three for three months and like I did get a lot from that in terms of like learning but also I mean it was a huge contract so it was really great but and also we got to work on on so many characters when the real production started but yeah it really tested my limit and now I know better and you just need to be smart and not repeat mistakes I guess yeah yeah well that's um I mean it's cool to hear that you go like you go through tough times you made it out the other side I think it's also like super inspirational to me I I hope to other people they don't feel daunted because seeing like the amount of like output that you're doing while balancing like hearing that you're balancing your life and everything in a way that seems like positive and healthy to me that that speaks to your experience knowing like your limitations and also it's not going to take someone that's 15 20 years in at the same amount of time but I think that's just like an aspirational goal for someone because oftentimes I can imagine someone saying how can you like a young person thinking like how can you have a family and then run a business and make all this art this is crazy like some people want to just make one or two things a year so to me I think it's just really cool to see that you've made it to this place where you can do this balance and you're just it's really about eliminating the things that aren't contributing to what you want to be doing with your life I think you also said it at first eh sorry I think you really said it at first I think it's really about like knowing what's really important for you like Indiana and really like making place for for those things because like if if for you it's important to get some time to relax because otherwise you go nuts you shouldn't feel bad for actually like needed those things and putting them in your life right like me like relaxing is I get like fidgety if I relax too much and I need I know that I need to do something and it's since I know that about myself I can like I said earlier set up things accordingly right but there's nothing bad if you're not able to produce as much as like somebody else like produces it's nice to dream it's nice to want something but it's also like really important to be self-aware and to be realistic and understand and know what's really important with yourself right like I I could say I want to be as great of as a guitarist as Steve Vai let's say like for people who don't know like guitar that that name's not going to ring a bell but for people that know guitar it's like huge huge name in terms of it's like a guitarist guitarists that I'm trying to say yeah but like I could say like oh I want to be as great as him but like at the end of the day is like this the question is as simple as that is like am I willing to do the work to get as good as he is and I'm like well maybe not maybe not like maybe like I like to I like to do a little bit more 3D art than doing the work to be also like a great guitarist or maybe like my family is more important or maybe I actually love to play video games more so at the end of the day it's kind of like don't beat yourself up for like having other things that are important in your life right yeah absolutely yeah I have to wrap up kind of soon before I go I wanted to pay you your respects here I feel like I'm part of the narrative that you just do hard surface because you don't you know you mentioned like your variety and I just wanted to call I just wanted to like draw attention to that that you know I've got a lot of well you've got a handful of really inspirational people that do these hard surface type models that we call them these days and you're obviously in there but you don't just hyper specialize sometimes people really do hyper specialize but you do like organic people organic characters you mentioned your frog on stream which is awesome people should check that out super cool to be able to see someone make something like that so anyone that's interested in characters and how they're made and stuff check out the Frog if you haven't like you can see we'll put links down below but you can go see like the final work and the fact that you can just look at YouTube videos of it happening super great and that's very different than the robots one of my favorite pieces of yours is the Panzer Samus we could talk about that for a long time I kind of wanted to see that but that's another great one so like you're able to do these organic creatures robots people with faces so I really respect you in a lot of different ways and one of them is just like how you have this broad range of strengths and you make a big variety of characters which is something that I aspire to be better at too is making just not just one thing but a lot of different characters and you really do have a wide range of genre and character types and they're all great man so yeah you're you're a super great artist and thank you so much for showing me some of your stuff today well Matt I really appreciate the kind of words it's really uh it's really great it's really encouraging I can promise you that I'll I'll continue and I'll do I'll do my best and I'll make sure to continue to have fun because having fun makes things look good that would be something to aim for I say for like also like other people if I can like like throw out like another little like suggestion like just like make sure that like if you do something you're having fun doing it it's a good sign that you'll be able to go far with it oh man I co I couldn't co-sign that harder man it's something I tell myself like it's easy for it's easier than you think to get lost in and you're not having fun anymore and you have to step back and say why am I doing this can I make this fun let's do that and and I agree I think think things get better and a lot of the roadblocks we put on ourselves a lot of the negative talk kind of Fades away when we just drill down on like what's the whole reason we did this sometimes I think about when I was younger you know all of us would do things without thinking too much about it you know you're just following what you're interested in and as we get older sometimes we can put a lot of other things on it for whatever reason but yeah 100 agree and you can tell you can tell the joy that you're having dude this like the Panzer Samus and the other the horsemen well we'll leave it there thank you again for your time I'll put the links down below if you guys aren't already subscribed and watch Marco's stream obviously do that and I've got plenty of other talks if you're interested in more of this stuff hard surface demos and everything like that yeah dude hopefully I get to talk to you again soon and thanks again yeah man that's my pleasure hopefully we'll see each other in the near future yeah for sure all right guys thank you for watching peace out watch out

Channel: J Hill

Views: 59,742

Keywords: jhill, J Hill, Zbrush, Character Art, Game art, Character Modeling, Unreal Engine, Digital Characters, Jason Hill

Id: Ge21tRSYfLM

Length: 87min 9sec (5229 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 02 2023