Vitaly Bulgarov Live & Uncut: Designing for Films, Games & Real-World Robotics

thank you so much for coming everyone such a great turnout thank you so much let's start with just a big round of applause for Vitaly [Applause] he's actually driven all the way from Vegas tonight so and I think he was just shortly back from Italy as well so if you see him yawning he's still jet-lagged so I'm super excited tonight thank you everyone for joining us at the gnomon School of Visual Effects we're streaming live from Hollywood this evening as well so a big hello to everyone watching on livestream and Facebook and thank you for your patience we had such a big crowd so it's taken us a while to get you all checked in so so when you're as ridiculously talented as Vitaly is one of the downsides is that you get hounded by people like me to do interviews and tutorials and workshops and talks so I think I've been bugging him for around a decade now so photography I'm sorry for that but I'm happy here and I basically moved to LA a couple of years ago and one of the first things they did was email vitaly like hey come to an event I'm here in LA and then he was like oh I just moved to Las Vegas so we've been talking for a while and trying to get him here waiting for the stars to align so tonight is the night and we thought we'd go big we thought we would do a gallery shows so you'll get chance to see a decade of his work over in the gallery show we'll have some drinks and hang out we don't actually have time for a Q&A this evening here but Vitaly will be around all evening so you'll be able to go and ask him any other it's gonna be cool so for those who I'm sure all of you know who Vitali is but for anyone who is new to his work tonight all those watching online you just stumbled upon this event Vitali has been working in industry for a long time he was working as a 3d character modeler for video games and game cinematics at Blizzard as a concept designer for the likes of ILM DreamWorks Paramount Lightstorm so many more he's also designed next-generation wearable products surgical robotics worked on US military projects and so much more that he's going to tell us about tonight I'd also like to introduce ray Cuevas up here he's our awesome Admissions recruiter here at Norman's school as Admissions recruiter he travels to schools colleges trade shows and educates prospective students about Romans academic options and providing them information about careers in the industry he's also illustrator and concept artist and he worked as a graphic designer before joining us here at no man so can we also have a round of applause for you I'd also like to thank our event sponsor as you can see on the side Lenovo for helping us to bring these free events to you tonight's presentation is powered by Lenovo and Intel technology which out students also use here on campus for those in the stage we have some insanely cool prizes so I think you can just about see here on the stage here so they're basically free of reticulated robot action figures so really really cool as to hang on to your raffle tickets and we'll draw the winners at the end of tonight's event and if anyone is new tournament and I would like to take a look around the campus just come on let us know and we can show you around later on so let's have a another big round of applause for Vitaly and we'll get ready to get us started all right uh welcome everybody thank you all so much for being here thank you Batali for doing this thanks for having me yeah no I'm super stoked I think we were talking a little bit bit earlier and a huge fan of your work so I make so much yeah it's pretty pretty awesome to have you here so just to start Lynnette kind of actually answered this question and during her introduction but most recently you did some work for ghost in the shell and before that you worked on Robocop you work on transformers can you tell us what you have been up to pretty much from from kind of finishing wrapping up work on ghost in the shell' - - about now oh sure yeah well just kind of warm up right yeah just to warm up I want to first say say thanks so much like for having me here thanks so much to live for kind introduction it's quite surreal right now actually and I just want to thank Nolan like personally like everybody who's involved with normal school and also going events and normal gallery because like 10 years ago when I was still in Moscow I was actually more than that long like 11 years ago it was like one of the only sources where I could get my education from so I'm very very grateful and today to be here I write talk is very very strange so I don't do like talks a whole lot so I think the last time I was here was like almost five years ago okay I did like this small presentation on habits for productive workflow okay it's kind of more like overview of what what are the general habits you know for that I use for trying to stay focused and efficient gotcha so I think we will talk a lot about that tonight as well but I just want to say like it's been a while right so since then I didn't really do a whole lot of talks so I hopefully kind of my way of giving back to the community again and hopefully we'll have some fun yeah yeah going back to your question yeah let's try there was some movies recently right but maybe a year and a half ago I tried to do more just industrial design work and one of the reasons for that is just because I just try to learn new stuff and have fun with the new projects and try to see what else I can learn about design in general and yeah it's been my sort of long-term commitment for the past almost four years he's been a role of a designer and Hankook neurotechnology also known as curry fish technology is just the translation right it's the company to build this huge mecha nice so we're now making like four or five more projects similar to that but not in terms of size but similar in terms of robotics design so this has been my kind of ongoing commitment every week I work on that stuff sure and outside that I try to do some freelance here and there one of the recent work was working for Boston Dynamics I can't really talk about what exactly it is but it's related to what you guys seen before from Boston and I'm not gonna ask I don't want him one of those robots showing up the other thing about scary they're very scary robot so my goal actually there's the design try to make him look less scary we're just kind of weird because philic my portfolio is like why would they choose me sure yeah let's make those nice and friendly what the soft edges though my last talk that I did that was in public was the time at Sonic but before that it was a Boston Dynamics and I was showing that my work and I was transformers Terminator my black finish project and then and I and right like before that we had this meeting when I would say hey so we're really trying to make a robot looks less scary I'm like okay so let me try so anyway that was like an amazing experience like insanely awesome in terms of just learning super cool yeah just like I realized like I know nothing like you know nothing Jake so they do right yes that was a kind of experience with those guys after that they did a little bit work for a company that had a massive project so there was a back backed by NASA and also US Marines and and US Navy so that that is stuff I'd I can't really go in right now but it's also kind of scary but also cool cool in terms of like I think it's actually trying to save people rather than kill more people right right right so that's you guarantee me they're not building Skynet what is it can you guarantee they're not building I don't think anyone can oh boy okay yes but a lot of people might not know that you actually kind of got started before you're doing all this kind of industrial design work and also film work you actually work on video games as well that's right gotcha so you worked a blizzard you worked on a little bit of Starcraft Diablo can you tell me a bit about that experience sure yeah thanks thanks for asking yeah that was like a dream come true for sure because I grew up playing blizzard games huge fans like Diablo 2 and Starcraft yeah my favorite games I even played like Warcraft 2 that was like my first game I play and seeing their cinematic success she was what got me started so you know I did this contest called a dominance for a while ago was like what is like nine years ago or something like this we're faster Demartini was one of the judges there and he gave me a pretty high score like some other judges too even though like I didn't win I didn't even took a good place but like he I guess he saw something so like I replied I say thanks and and and really try to just try to reach out to those guys because after especially this happened right after when I saw the building better more in cinematics this is like okay I really want to work with those guys that was like the coolest I've ever seen super inspired made me just cry and you know with you know tears of joy and also like a kind of just child stars right so so I I kind of like crafted a new portfolio just to get a job there right so once I got there I I was very lucky to work with an amazing team on pretty much all of their franchises which was like World of Warcraft Diablo and Starcraft on ammo cinematics team which is if you guys don't know that it's kind of like I think today is called Blizzard film department so it's essentially it's a film studio inside a really big company so they don't really do video game contents they do like a small movies right so today you can see all this awesome overwatch and like all that stuff this is like done but it seemed so that was an amazing experience and I think in terms of like transition to what I did today that was probably like a very sort of a pivotal moment for me in terms of like the style the tools that I use because I got really affected by the the work and style of you know artists that work there sure like fostering or teenager Peters and Jonathan do be really like affected how I design stuff so we got like really tight group of friends that were just always share the designs and that was like a huge boost in terms of how I personally you know see design in terms of like my the flavor that I like and I think this is when it kind of started like I got inspired to think more about like what if I eventually do work for movies so I think it actually started at Blizzard oh wow so and that happens right you're you're kind of surrounded by really talented you know other artists and in a studio environment you kind of start up sorbate environment is super important right there you're both your professional violent in your like family environment if you have a supportive you know spouse or girlfriend or boyfriend like it's super important because like yeah it's if you don't have that it's it's twice as tough to really try to go there yeah firing environment is a key for sure so now you're working on on some real-world products you're doing some industrial design like you mentioned and you're doing some of the coolest stuff out there so you got a lot of people reaching out to you to ask for advice or ask questions about your workflow and stuff like that and if so can you tell us just a bit about you know what I can't some of the most commonly asked questions there sure yeah thanks it's just a good opportunity because I feel like okay final I can answer try to answer them in bulk instead of just like trying to pinpoint and I think one of the most common question is actually like more on the software side we just talked about it like 15 minutes ago you asked me about 50 minutes right right yeah that would be like number ones like dude what are you gonna use now so this has been cancelled right right and I think that the simple short answer is I still use for those who you guys the notes of too much exercise I think is just called Autodesk Softimage because the bottom right so it's a software for 3d modeling and animation and it's got really really awesome 3d modeling tools right and I show been discontinued right yeah yeah so like because I've been using it for like 10 years and I really know all kind of just super comfortable with the workflow and I don't really feel like I need another so unless it's insignificant significantly better because it would force me to just relearn right just like you know out you use the same pencil every day and it really works and kind of the same thing with Softimage right now I really like it right but for a specific for a very very specific chunk of work right which is these days it's just sub D modeling it's like really powerful I can be really fast for that and this is something you could you know it's very very important for our surface design whether it's like a car or whether it's like a robot that is it's got shapes inspired but like automotive lines it's very very fast to this kind of stuff with with a sub D modeling instead of let's say using cat gotcha and yeah so for those of you out there Softimage is no longer available unfortunately but we had a conversation about this and we were talking that it's really I mean it's a tool right it's kind of the same you know age-old question of what brush are you using right god it's not the tool it's an artist and the time you've spent yeah but it's a legitimate question because you know tools are important sure you know you you can't win a Formula One race with like an old beat-up I'm not gonna name any brands but like an older car right that doesn't go as fast and it's not as sporty right so to me that's like what I like about 15 which is very much like a rifle you know it's just like click-clack like very mechanical it's very very precise and the thing about this kind of modeling that I like is that it's very you're very involved you know like you don't have things like a fence that you move move the camera the camera just kind of flows in there and sold slow it's very rigid okay and because of that you can go really fast and when you do that it's also very demanding because you know of social allows you to go much faster and you're still very present and this is actually we're probably going to talk about it but one of the the most important thing I found for myself at least to be productive is to be able to entertain yourself without you doing the work right because if you're not entertained like you're not gonna deliver like you really need to be so into the work you do that that you just like there's nothing else you want to do because if you force yourself like work hard and do this thing it you can I get tired pretty quickly right if you're really into it you just like generally just excited it's fun right and you look very very you know involved right then it's it's it's a completely different story right yeah and I feel like that that has to do to the right with just in general with health familiar you are with the schools that you're using though and right so like you're really familiar with Softimage and I've seen there's videos online of you working and and just those crazy stuff that you do you know a lot of I was watching you work on showing some of the modesty that fur goes in the show and doing all of those like the muscle tissues and getting all those crazy mesh pattern and those muscles and you were extremely fast about it I mean it took you five minutes to kind of pull out this full-on muscle it makes a mesh pattern which is really awesome but it's because you're so familiar with the tool that you're using that you know it's right and another thing also like I really like to practice is this kind of exercise which is actually of something I think everybody could benefit from doing this is to set up an exercise when you give yourself a deliberate constraint in terms of what tools you're allowed to use let's say you give yourself okay here's one hour only use extrude and like move and this like what can you do with this right and it really forces you to think differently because you have a limited amount of tools and you discover new ways of using the same tool this is how I discovered how how much how useful the adjacent selection is in Softimage where you can like let's say like if you the video I mentioned right when I was showing you select edges and then you're like a justice like two points then you bevel that and you're just into like two polygons and you're instead but you can set individual then you extrude them then you get like this really really complex pattern but they known time right and it's pretty much you get like maybe like seven hotkeys right and instead of like going in the menu if you remember that right it's much faster to do that right and I think it's really really useful to do this kind of exercises and then like you practice you kind of drill that and then you just implement it back in the real war flow could be really beneficial no I better yeah I mean yeah it's some crazy stuff that you can do with it so now you've also worked on some surgical products right so okay tell me a bit more about that yeah that was very surreal to because I was just finishing transformers while I was an alum and I got a from Micronesia who was a director of this department at Intuitive Surgical which is a company that creates this robotic assisted Surgical consoles and essentially what that is is you know how usually let's say when you have a serger who has to like open up a person or a cut depending on the procedure it's very invasive you know the cuts are large just physically it's very intrusive and the recovery times are very long so this company what they came up with it's instead of doing this you have this arms but they make very tiny like eight millimeter wide institution points so you get like let's say three incision points where you get like two mechanical arms one is for the scopes you get like stereoscopic vision and on the side from the patient right like a few meters away right you get this console where the surgeon says and it's pretty much just like you have like a VR set except this is not VR you get real-time like 4k stereoscopic like side was going on the side of a patient and he's got these controllers right and with the beauty of it as this each arm ends with the two or three degrees of freedom wrist that does the same thing that an actual surgeon does for the race except the precision is very hard because whatever you do is say like on this scale like this it happens inside a person like on the dates like tiny scale so you like when you make let's say you tie like all the threading and stuff like everything all the little precision is really really precise and it's very non intrusive right and which recover like recovery time is like speeds up to whatever like you know from like three weeks two days that's crazy and it makes some procedure that used to be like super dangerous super risky or like just incredibly inconvenient because of the recovery time much more accessible right so this is like the completely different like paradigm compared to like traditional surgical methods right so what happened is that they saw some of the worker that she saw from the black Phoenix project so the ambulance mag that I did which I find enough like I did that make only because of like my parents they're from they're like doctors right that is a surgeon yeah he's a retired surgeon now all right she's dead only has like an x-ray because it's not stressful so he's just even though he's retired he still like wants to be a medical field so he's only doing like x-rays and stuff and my mom is still like she's an internist right I mean because at the time they were like making fun like me why I always always do this like scary mean robots only here to kill people I can you just do something good for a change let me do like an ambulance make nice so that even though the ambulance make for like a mechanical standpoint that makes no sense they get very very small rotors the balance is all off in severe like aerodynamic there's a lot of like problems with that but the guys attitude surgical they like some of the thinking in terms of the use case because I kind of created a whole story about how this mech would come to the let's say like an accident side where it was very hard to get in because let's say there's a traffic jam and there was like this car that collided with another car there is a person in need and it's like wooden did whatever right so the thing would come in and it has like this jaws of life you could open up the car take the person now there's like a mechanical best so I I tried to implement like I think maybe like four or five ideas but I never really like so anybody do that just that kind of like thinking about the use case and I think this is what they like it wasn't really a design it was more about their thinking about the thing I and and they invited me to just check out the facility and like what they do and I that was a completely insane like to see that and like try that actual surgical system in person that was completely crazy like there's like have this like trainer tank where you use the actual surgical consult but I kind of small like little figures so you you really experience the dexterity and it takes you no time to get used to it like it's amazing right that's the same and while I was there actually with it when they're also with my friend Jonathan Ruby who and I also do some work for them and we're just like we were they're just bringing up some ideas just like hey it would be awesome to thee it should be also do that and by the end of that tour he just says hey how about you do some work for us that's like oh that's like cuz I was like guys like I'm not an engineer I don't do it I wouldn't I didn't even do any cat at that point that was like four three or four years ago four years ago thing so I came back with drove all the way back to California and the same night I start working this like mechanical arm for them that's crazy and I think that that sets you apart you know just how how much you're thinking about the process and how you know you're not you're not designing any of the engineering parts for it or anything like that but well you're you take so much care in thinking about how how the product is going to be used and how it's going to move the way you're describing it right now about all the pivot points and everything but the thing is that this kind of exercise is the cheapest sort of practice that you could get because it doesn't require a computer it's the fastest turnaround in terms of iteration so let's see in every designers and every designer though there are like ten thousand shitty ideas right so you want to get rid of them quickly so you get to the good ones right and this sort of exercise really lets you to get for them as quickly as like sketching every time you use the fridge you think about it like how it would be awesome to have like handle higher or maybe like to have this slide to do this and that so this kind of thinking is just just a way to sort of cheat the amount of time that you need to spend to get at the level when you are pretty good right right and also you don't have to you don't really want to do it when you like 3d modeling I think the key the thing about 3d design as a profession in general is that the learning curve a little steeper because if you go there try it straight from let's say you didn't really have a design experience or three modeling stress you have to learn so many things at the same time and that's why doing this kind of mental exercise will help you avoid redoing while you're modeling because modeling is expensive you like if you spend let's say an hour of making this thing and it was like oh it's in the wrong way like it makes no sense looks cool but like not useful at all right so if things like that happened like I did happen to me every day see alright so this is completely normal so what you want to try to do is to mitigate the risk of running to this so what you ideally you want to go through the simulation in your brain for like thousand times so when you get to the real-world experience then you have then it's it's so you're less prone for a mistake like I wish is documentary or Nikola Tesla he was doing he was testing his electronic like schemings all that stuff and he's read at least that's what the documentary says and I thought like wow this is genius because it doesn't really have to be very precise but if you can go through that process right then once you actually see them from the computer we have to three model you're probably gonna skip all those mediocre or the ideas that don't work because you're ready like because you've already got him yeah blocked in and so you don't do you don't really do any sketching or anything anymore you just know so I used to do that like my so when I was a model a my my dream was to become a culture of artists and I was taking like classes meeting my wife we would drive to like this school every Sunday to do like figure drawing for like more than a year so there's a lot of like just trying to do 2d and when I ended up working on Robocop I was actually doing some 2d sketches and then I was also doing 3d and what happened is my or director when he saw that 2d and then he saw 3d he's like hey can you just do it in 3d and to me that was like that was like almost blasphemous he's like yeah but it looks better and I kind of like the design more I'm like but you can't just go and do 3d without a sketch right so I thought maybe if I just do this case first for myself I don't show it but I still use it kind of as a guide and I did it at first and then I felt like well if I crazy as it sounds if I could just keep that have enough clarity about the concept wouldn't it be freaking awesome right right yep there right and just the idea itself was just so enticing it was just so exciting to me that was like wow that would be awesome to be able to actually do that just go but then I written right but then the thing was it was a lot of problems at the time was like what it was like 2012 and it was my the world was coming up was it the end of the world was coming up and yeah I was preparing for it yeah anyways what I was doing is that a try I've made a list of like all the kind of roadblocks that would preventing me from being really fast and I would be like okay I need a better software I need like a faster rendering I need the library of shaders so try to keep we're can I have something that's where the kid Bosch also came in right but the last the last item was hey what if you just know exactly what needs to be modeled so you just go in today so you don't really do part and that was to me like wow that's pretty awesome if I can get there so yeah that'll be awesome so this is where I started to practice a lot of kind of mental design exercises and I still do that and one of the cool ways you could implement that is to when you go to bed and let's say you plan your next day it's this is when you want to start to design your project for the next day and it could be loose you kind of like just fall in the sleep you know and you just like okay okay this kind of robot it's kind of hat and the arm I'm gonna like expose you let's say the pink is gonna have this like negative space right we have like this carbon fiber plate maybe it's gets like kind of a Y shape to it and that what's cool about it you don't really have to make it forceful you just let it flow and when you let it flow there's a lot of shape there just kind of like it's like a slideshow shape right and then you know there's like a limited amount of basic shapes that you could use and when you do this sometimes you stumble up something that is actually kind of cool and when you do like I usually I was just like go to my phone and I'll write it down right because it doesn't happen to you you're falling asleep in bed and then suddenly you get this great I don't you like have to get up and do it right yeah that happens I woke up this morning actually 5 a.m. because of jet lag and I went to work just but but then when fell asleep again but yes sometimes it happens right and but I don't sketch it I write it down because I want to capture that emotion that I have because if I just sketch it I will try to replicate this cage if I write down like okay a very thick V shape frame for the like sternum that blends into vertebra with like spirit with like spheres on the sides where you plug in wires so if I do right if I write it down like this I will remember what kind of shape I had in mind when I was falling asleep and this doesn't limit me into this crappy sketch that I will do on a napkin like and that way it makes it sort of I try to capture the emotion that I had at the time right and that way it's also sometimes it's less about the design it's more about being excited about the opportunity that you you can make something that that's cool so we always say I think as the designers we always change this dream the okay this design will be the thing right there will be this awesome thing and of course it never is but this chase this dream is what keeps you going and she going and I think keep the keep like keeping going is more important than eventually achieving that because you yeah absolutely I feel right you should never you should always kind of be chasing that right let's move forward actually that kind of leads up to my next question and you draw just dropped a lot of wisdom which is awesome so you know we have a lot of students here you hear from them and tonight who you know might be wondering what kind of uh if you have any advice for you know soon as starting out their careers who might be leaving here in a year or two and are gonna be heading into the industry sure uh well there's a few things that I wish somebody would told me like let's say like 12 years ago I think the number one would be clarity and this is just I know it sounds kind of cliche oh you have to know what you want but it's just the most important thing right like if you're very very clear about what your goal is you can save yourself not a year of time you can save like a decade of like oh five years and that's that's a lot of time right if you compare yourself let's say like in terms of just age and the an amount of energy that you have the same when you're 21 or when you're 31 or even just because let's say when you were 21 you don't really have a family or a lot of responsibilities you have so much time on your hands that you can spend if you know where you want to spend them won't spend of time it will just you can unlock so many things much earlier so if you have a very very clear idea what you want to do that would be amazing and of course it's easier said than done of course yeah it's I know it's like it's it's a challenge that everybody has but still it doesn't change the fact that the sooner you know exactly what your you want your path to be the better and I think it's important to kind of elaborate elaborate elaborate elaborate here that don't try to you know to mimic somebody because every person has their own different set of you know background and circumstances where they came from and this is the only authentic thing that can form your voice you want to find your own voice your own style and the only way to do this is to really use all of it of what is your background right right and say if depending where you grew up you will have a different background just like even then Asia is different you might have a different tasting music just because your older brother forced you to listen to the kind of music right like I grew up listening to a lot of metal so like it's kind of like my where I'm coming from right so so it affects a lot how I perceive the visual form and how then I translated so this kind of stuff is is really important to I think understand early because it will also not just save you time but also save you potential you know like broken heart thing because I heard I heard this phrase it was something like I think it's like in envious ignorance and imitation is suicide and I think it's pretty cool because like you would only Envy if you're ignorant because you the only reason why you would envy you because you don't really know how things work because we're all different everybody's got different potential and the only thing you should be chasing is trying to be the better version of yourself not trying to be somebody else right in and it's no she's because there is some like philosophical reason but it's actually more practical right if you're trying to be let's say okay you're at this level there is this guy he's like doing that and you will be like hey I want to be like this guy by the time you get to this guy maybe the market won't need that anymore right you might as well try to invest in your voice and what you think the industry will need if we're talking professional work right because you could be so developed in sort of certainly no development but investing your time and doing the art for the sake of art but if you want to be an industry as a professional it makes more sense to find the balance between what do you think the industry is going to with what you person really really like doing right because my original background was character model right so I started with that and at the time I wasn't really making a distinction between hard surface or organic and I was mediocre at both and that was the think it was when I started started doing more mechanical heart surface modeling where I thought there was something about it that I I felt like I had something to say it was this kind of this nagging feeling key oh man I really have something to say about this within that right and it wasn't really it wasn't like that with organic and I wish was weird because always thought I wanted to be a character sculptor and it was so such a strange feeling I almost was like let me just do it on my life in my free time and I just started doing more for surface stuff on in my free time and this is when I discovered I had like a lot of patience to do like very very tedious work but like you know like all the topology or like really really tedious stuff that is for a lot of people not fun and I was mesmerized by that and I think like it's important to if I would go going back to what kind of advice they give find what is true you know for yourself what are you willing to suffer with in a way right yeah that's exactly what I think this is awesome book I should recommend reading it I think it's it's called the subtle art of not giving the phone yeah yep it's awesome yeah it's actually it's it's it's it has a crazy name but the overall premise is that you can't do that there is every everybody cares about something you just have to understand what you what you care about more about yeah and I think the date the author talks about how you know the happiness it's kind of overrated because you want to find this level of satisfaction and what you do in a daily basis but the only way to really be satisfied is to challenge yourself and here's this kind of a catch-22 because you want to be able to find this what kind of thing that could be doing where it's gonna be mostly suffering and by suffering I mean if you need to let's say you you let's say you working on effects right and you realize you know what I need to do actually I need to do some programming and do some really custom stuff to make this particular effect it's gonna be a lot of learning and also a lot of stress because let's say you go in the road that nobody else did before so it's very hard and it's gonna be stressful too because it's very ambiguous you don't know if you're gonna find out especially if it's like a real project it's a lot of stress there's deadlines right it's it's really tough but if you accept it if you like okay it sucks and I love it right that's the thing you want to invest in that because if you'll be able to survive in it for like ten years oh man you you'll have a great you're golden you'll have a career I'm like I'm telling you this to think is I feel if the hardest part is to find what is this thing that I think this article about like Navy SEALs and I think they say if it doesn't suck weed and do it right it's where you you willingly set the bar higher to yourself and it's not because you're trying to get a better job or prove somebody wrong or any of that stuff it's because you like it so much and and that you accept that you tolerate the level of pain and level of comfort yeah to get something that let's say you couldn't do yesterday sure and it's just this little thing at I feel like if you can't find it while you're a student it just will save you a lot of time right I think I think the the problem is maybe special today there's so many talented artists there's a lot of really like this high quality education competitive environment and it's it's dangerous to just try to chase a good job because it's not sustainable you might be able to get just make it a nice portfolio now get a certain level of skills now just to get a job but if this is not what you want to do it might be harder for you to make the transition because I I've seen like two examples of when talented like talented guys they crafted the specific portfolio for something that they're so initiative that they can get a job but there wasn't really something they want to do they got a job and then they spend another five to the news try to get away from it trying to get away from it and they if they shoulda made a transition so it's kind of like a dilemma do you want to just go straight to what you want to do or not and again you have to just use your own judgment and intuition I think it's still a lot of risk involved right so I'd say if that happens that you again going back to like what kind of advice I would love to give is that if that happens you feel like oh that burns so much time here don't yet just for it the happens to everyone because first well nobody is guaranteed that what you do now will be needed later right but the another thing there is always a way to pivot your knowledge into something else and and going back when I was doing you know character stuff and I thought you know I want to really do hard surface stuff and I sure do design for it and I thought I wasted so much time doing my figure drawing I thought that how foolish of me now this is the most Portland like foundation in terms of like the knowledge what I have is the fund at the foundation I get from character yeah because whenever I like design would design a humanoid robot I feel like it's all about the character right true there's like mechanical constraints the degrees of freedom the the ratio of all that is basic you know basic things like there's a certain way to structure a forum to make it sexy to make it appealing Lincoln right sexy if if you if you if you do in the wrong way it will look bulky or fat or just unappealing and depending what kind of robot you want to make this could be a difference between the price GPS approved or not and if you just go straight let's say to robots because you feel like oh I made a tank I made let's say a reactor a really cool reactor for like a movie and then I go to a row but that is humanoid if you don't have a character background it's gonna be a little tough tougher yeah it's gonna be tough you because you now you have to learn from foundation about the character so I feel like this is kind of thing you want to be looking at this okay what is my foundation what is something that I have an inclination and how I can combine it all and use to let's say to dominate a specific niche that I enjoy and that can also be used at the market and you're a perfect example of that you know pivoting like you were saying right like you know all that knowledge that you gained you moved on to just a bunch of different fields in industrial design games film so so yeah I you know totally see totally see we're saying they're so very cool now we had we touched on sub-dimension how he's not available anymore how much time you spend nowadays just kind of trying out new stuff you know to see if you can incorporate it into your workflow so I used to do sabbaticals when it would take time off just learn new stuff and nowadays I I try to spread let's say like a chunk of two months throughout let's say a year what I will do every week was every Friday trying something new I think it's really important and it's this explore exploit probe problem I mean whose book called this awesome book called everything algorithms to live by and they really talk about this kind of stuff that there is always this sort of play where you have to decide okay I could spend this day on exploiting that current knowledge and getting stop them or I could spend it on learning how I can improve the way of doing this thing and the thing about where the catch is you have to know what kind of natural inclination your person are because some people more are in the oriented and some people are more exploitive and by exploitive I mean they learn one tool like okay I really like extrude ins of the image and which is gonna use it until I'm dead right I really like it I really like it that's it done so knowing what sort of national inclinations are is important because they way you can structure whatever you missing that if you feel like you're more R&D person then you probably want to like tone down a bit of how much you R&D because like I'm more more exploitive like if I learn something that I really like I'm gonna be like okay until I make like 200 design with it I'm not gonna be no look anything else but that's wrong because within that time frame and new software my commodities way better right so I try to force myself to pause post projects to take time off just to learn something new just to give give myself peace of mind that okay I'm not missing on some really awesome new technology do you ever be ever do it on the project you ever kind of start a project say I try not to okay I try not to because it messes with my schedule sure you can only schedule something that you've done before otherwise it becomes very risky and unless unless this is some I can do it now with some cucmber technology because I'm pretty much there like every week I work on like I'm the staff as a as a principal designer there they let me if somehow I missed a day of a deadline right I would it would be okay but if it's any any freelance let's say we have like a two-week block of freelance I will not use anything new there because I want to make sure like everything I write down for my plan for the day I can't deliver that because like every day I plan the day okay I have let's say 10 hours or 12 hours they say I'll plan every hour this is for modeling this is for writing I'm not going to try this new risky thing that I haven't done before because what if it doesn't work so this is this is tricky right so I think if I if I had given advice it's like okay are you more like our indie guy or a girl right are you more like our indie person or you more like exploitive person and whatever if you one of those you need to find how to compensate they bring a little bit because I also got a friend who is most Hardy mm-hmm and he only he just moves from one star to another and she knows all about all the sub-tree but he doesn't exploit that right and I mean he kind of does at work but not to the point where he could like really extract the value and for him he's actually trying to force himself to stay with one and one software so so see I love this topic a lot because this is always this kind of spectrum yeah and you can't really know it's only in retrospect you know oh it was good thing I switched to Moy right like let's say three years ago so things like that yeah gotcha so how about your work on Hancock Hancock Marais yeah I probably grabbed that terribly wrong but you are designing robots like actual yes max which is the coolest thing I mean it's like a dream job I don't know I mean so so basically just how did you get there I mean like how did they contact you and I you mean with this specific company yeah yeah oh yeah that was also kind of trippy when I got this email and at the time I think the guys they used like maybe Google Translate it was very it wasn't a proper English okay it was it was it didn't sound like a serious group of people want to do a project it was all more like hey I'm this hobbyist guy but I'm trying to pretend like I'm a company right it wasn't only because of the translation yeah I get those emails all the time from Prince's from Africa who tell me that they have a lot of money than nice you're missing out really so yeah it was almost like that okay sure right and then it's another email so they're very persistent okay and then they wanted to meet I was like sure let's meet so the guys came in Irvine I used to live in Orange County Irvine at the time and I met the guys like oh wow you guys are either crazy or serious of both right because like I asked him look asking why you guys want to make a giant mecha and I was the first the first they wanted to 3.5 meter and I pushed it to four because I couldn't get the proportions that were gay and that was a huge fight to it were like a almost a one-year fight with the engineering team it's like a different story so going back to the first meeting I assume so why you guys with you guys want to make like a big mega and they say they trust with a translator to that they think that the future where humans can build Chen robots it's much cooler where the shoe yeah I agree right well we just had we just had the first down robot fight lifestreams all right let's write happening are you guys gonna get into that at some point we might oh nice yeah I look forward to that future fun yeah yes yeah that was kind of a start of it and then we went through a lot of back-and-forth with I think I was like one of the first employees of the company so before the tech team because they really wanted first to understand what they wanted to create sure because this mecha is pretty much like a core technology of the company that utilizes all of the secondary technologies that branches out in in different areas of robotics like HMI like human machine interface all the custom harmonic dress there's a lot of things you test on it and if it all works together that means you can do a bunch of other projects right so at the time this is when they had to build a team of really amazing crazy engineering guys from Korea like the people who actually build industrial robots for you know for factories and Samsung and all right it was some the the challenge I think the magic is there I kind of help them to stylize it maybe but I feel like the the credit is the team that deserves more credit I just got very lucky to be there I guess when they all started right all right that's super awesome I mean yeah I've seen some photos of the first iteration of that that giant like a very very like a thin frame yeah yeah and it's just crazy I mean it's it's massive and you know it's much bigger in person so what happened is like the first I think the first prototype was 3.6 meter and that was just this naked frame and I and I kept trying to beef it up because the problem is like when you have a cockpit is large from the side you have this like it looks very strange she looks like this big head with a like no leg day so and I kept trying to it up and they're like maybe make it a little taller so then should we push to the four meter and then I had to go a travel to Korea but I couldn't because I have something else going on so I skip one one trip and then I go there when I see the first time fully assembled I'm like oh holy it's this is almost too big right so that was very exciting yeah that's super awesome by the way they never really show the video would like legs cover on it yeah so you I think whatever is online is still just the cockpit is all like yeah yeah you guys saw the top part yeah because the thing is like we need to partially replace the frame okay to reduce the vibration so that's why we haven't showed the new video yet that's coming okay that's super excited so here it just says please give me all of your secrets okay and I have all of your secrets all of them all of them as it pertains it pertains to your work I just I just how can I be as good as you okay well I think we'll have enough time to and three three hours should cover it okay perfect you know if I I think it all starts with like personal philosophy mm-hmm because this is the foundation you build everything on top because sure I can I like I can make like a demo show all you guys let's say here's my hotkeys I use this keyboard like I you still serious gaming keyboard they got like 22 extra keys just because so I can have more hotkeys this is like one of the little things that I really like this secret I even did this they have this software where you can track which buttons you press more often so I rearranged you might have keys so I have the ones that I use more often I have it here so I don't have to move my hand right already so little things like this so I could just just let's say give like an entire kind of breakdown those little things but if you don't have your personal philosophy down it's not going to be a sustainable strategy I mean it's just gonna be a tricks you don't want tricks you want to technique and the only thing that will give you technique is the personal philosophy is what you build on not just as a professional but there's an individual right and there is like a few you know writers and authors and motivational speakers that I like one of them is Jim Ron is like one of the old-school guys and you know both me and my wife were like that guy because he's the way she presents the sort of common sense wisdom is just saw some it's because it's it's so true but also it's kind of funny that you don't really register that on write every day you know he's like so one of his things about building a personal philosophies is accepting a full responsibility for your life even if your life sucks right it's just this is the only one you have you know we all play this crazy gene lottery some some of us will have bad health by 30 just because you know our grandfather had it from his grandfather for whatever reason so there's a lot of things that are just we don't really choose that and I think is it's not just there but also like I say there's political environment the economy the industry state there's a lot of the things that if we start to get into how things are not so good right then it's just we're gonna spend a lot of energy and this will affect how our mindset and the thing is the trick is if you if you're some somehow find a way to keep your mindset positive you will be able to solve problems faster more efficiently it's more healthy for you and I think this is where all starts if you have to really invest in the mindset and the philosophy of like okay I accept full responsibility for my life and just don't complain things if things suck fix it if you can't fix it don't complain about it but you don't want to be in between it that you're like you can I'm not happy but you don't really want to fix anything you don't know how you don't want to be in this dormant state you let's say you if if there is something let's say politically in this country which are happy you either become political activists and you make a meaningful contribution or focus on becoming a good artist right but this is not this is not something I advise everybody doing if everybody is different right I just know like for me it's I'm so easily distracted by everything was going on that the only way for me I can be productive it's to consciously shut off everything that it's not bringing me to like my long-term goal as an artist and this is a tricky balance right but it's important a thing to recognize that unless you start thinking like that it's it's will be will be harder to make a very substantial progress because we like we get bombarded bold like there's negative news or is that and this and you need to find a way to filter that so it doesn't get to you because at the end of the day your positive mindset you wake up you want to do kick-ass art if you don't have these Minds that you're not excited about it you're not gonna do 100% and the thing is like if you really want to do well you want to do 150% right you want to overachieve you want to out learn outperform at the end of the day and and you really need to protect that so I think this is where it all starts and then after this you know you don't don't wish things were easier wish you were better right that's actually from Jim Rohn like he says that a lot and they're like things and I think that also like from the guys that he would and a lot of time you hear people complaining he's like hey this is not good this is not good and also you hear about something like hey if only you could motivate this guy he'd be such an amazing performer right right and he's like no motivation is not where it starts it starts with your personal with your mindset where your philosophy because we open what yeah what if you guys an idiot right now you have a motivated idiot that's not gonna do any good right so that's why I think it all starts there and which kind of like transitions into you know the how you perceive stress and I think this is in I think there was in the book also called flow awesome book highly recommend that where they talk about how our perception is of stress is what really damaging us like if it's a negative stress we're talking about right it's not the stress itself it's how we proceed it if we perceive stress is negative let's say all we have this deadline is crunch time and this if you think this is bad for your health it will be bad for health if you will think oh my god this is such a great opportunity for me to grow to become better and like build my mental stamina and also let's say if that's the case maybe I'll improve my eating habits so I can let's say be more energetic if you if you look at the stress is the source of opportunity it can change everything that's how you frame it right right exactly yeah and before I used to think yeah I just kind of like felt brainwashing but reality is the perception will affect your way of thinking because if you if you let's say you in a process of working on this design and something and you're like I'm not really into it I think this project is not that and the boss is an ass for whatever either if you come up with all those different reasons and but you still think I'm gonna keep working on it that baggage of all the that you came up with will be distracting yeah it will it'll be just hard for you to come up with this awesome work it's just if you want to use your full potential use your full potential be think positively like enjoy the opportunity you've had if this is stressful think about this is okay I'm gonna grow through this opportunity this is the challenge I'm gonna grow through that so I think this kind of thinking is is one of the key elements where I I think it's where all sorts because once you have that then you think about it okay all right now let's learn this software let's master this tool right if I don't have time to learn it during the day let's take a week off one of the thing about taking time off to learn new stuff if you take an unpaid time off it's really powerful when you don't make any money and you save money you feel like yeah that fire burning yeah I better not mess around like this is I had a winner like I saved some money just so I can do like a sabbatical and I work way harder than I was making money that's why if you get like a paid vacation just go enjoy a vacation go with your family go to the beach have a drink like enjoy that you earn it right right if you want to do like a legit sabbatical when it's like a boot camp make it unpaid make a point to yourself that you're better not waste time right that will really put like an energy and and and your intention in that in that in that time and I feel like this one of the sort of responsibilities to ourselves we need to learn psychology but not like people our own psychology we need to understand who are the people as a person certain other people to know okay what are my weakness it's like I am very easily distracted and this is why I don't want to check facebook too during the day I had like at some point time I had a web blocker thing that wouldn't let me to shake news Facebook at some other web site unless it was Sunday and by the time it's Sunday I don't care about anything it was like this thing where I did this I think for like half a year yeah just so I feel like I'm in control so things like that things like that and then then once you have all that then okay let's talk about motivation and and then you realize it's it's also there is like no magic there right it's just like personal hygiene it's your personal responsibility you don't expect when you wake up somebody come and take you to shower and wash you or like brush your teeth I mean I dream yes one day we'll have a robot that can do this right but for now you still have you deciding it are you deciding it not yet okay we'll get there got your next project for you yes just like personal hygiene your motivation is your personal sponsibility you can't just wait somebody can evaluate you you have to work on that yourself and there's a clinic books programs and just look at the person look at the let's say you know online gallery just go check out station or whatever right there's like plenty of ways to get get inspired and feel that fire going but you got to recognize that that motivation doesn't last just like passing this and last you have to you wake up just like you you woke up you go brush your teeth you woke up and you motivate yourself like this is your person's disability because you have a day ahead of you and you can just wait and be like kind of half half sleep you know and so that that I think is super super important to have you have you ever thought about putting out a line of motivational posters hmm have you ever thought about putting out a line of motivational posters I had the I had a secret board on Pinterest okay I think it called like prime yourself or something like this without a tag just would save a lot of like similar quotes from Bruce Lee and stuff like this is pretty cool yeah I kind of stopped but it was it was cool cause like every time I would go on Pinterest for some form I just reference reference yeah yes he liked some some good posters yes so whatever works for you I think the thing the thing is you're gonna try something let's say it works and then eventually the energy of is gonna run out because you it becomes casual you get used to it so that's why that's why you have a poster on your wall you have to change it in three months you have to like refresh that energy so right now I have like three postures I think one there's like the course from Zig Ziglar and then there's was from I think Jim Rhon there's like things like that and so when they let's say I'm rendering or let's say I'm exporting an obj file so I used to like when I'm exporting there's like 30 seconds I could check my Instagram or I could check like let's say news or something but the thing is you guess you get derailed you can distract it and then eight hours go by and you're like oh and then you're like oh I might as well just take the day off right right so no gosh so so that way it's like I say you export stuff you just read what do you got on the wall you know all this but just because you know it doesn't mean you apply it all the time it's just hard and it doesn't get easier right you just get better at it but it doesn't get easier gotcha and so you have worked on you know gosh just so many projects is there any dream project out there that that you or any challenge that you're looking to you know forward to tackling at some point in your career there's quite a few yeah I mean there's like kind of wishes right there not really there's really goals that are write down if you write down a goal then you have to do it right right like a dream is the goal with the deadline right so if you write it down then that's it there is like some that I'm thinking about that I like the idea of maybe learning more about architecture maybe even getting like an actual formal education in architecture Wow eventually then also I like to try a little bit like maybe in prosthetics like a real-world prosthetic and maybe see in a way maybe there was a way to make it look more affordable but cool-looking right I think that the people who missing the glimpse they because when they have the standard prosthetics and when you look at them I think I think I saw this commercial where you see this guy and he lost I think his Park is like and they showed like a real tragedy tragedy which of course that is but they should this really crappy looking prosthetic and it the thing about it it just looks creepy because we have like a large shape transition into this tiny stick and it just looks really creepy and I'm thinking like dude if you have like a really badass looking leg right it would change it wouldn't you want to be able to sell like this is so bad so I'm thinking like something like this would be really awesome to make like a series maybe affordable prosthetics that are actually cool yeah there's quite a few attempts to radio there online I'm sure you guys saw this project like an art project I forgot the artist name but there's quite a few 3d printing with yeah yeah exactly the one there's like one really cool words got like sort of like a stiff armature and the muscle they all was looking like kind of electrons former shells on top so he's got a lot of negative space right but the overall silhouette is kind of more buff so it looks both like robotic and also very healthy I love how you're just you analyze that just in those design terms I mean that's that's what they design it so like it really like inspiring to see that so I would love to maybe someday do at least some of that I also want to make at least one video game okay like so right now I'm learning how to program with blueprints Unreal Engine and this is like so much fun because like I was when I was in university and Moldova to get my degree as a programmer I think I didn't really like the how you call that the syntax itself like the writing code maybe I'm like I'm more visual but now I know because I know a little bit about the overall like logic you can just do this with nodes it's just more visual and it feels just more fun to me what what don't you know like because I feel like that might be a shorter list but it's awesome that that that is something that you're looking forward to and then going to school for architectures - that sounds sounds crazy so I look forward to stuff you're gonna be putting out really cool yeah so in the gallery right now we have kind of a showcase of just just the lot of work there's a lot of work and and and it expands I think a few years correct right yeah it might be even almost 10 years really or a there's like a quite quite a range there I think in terms of like when it was done yeah yeah can you give us just kind of what what are we seeing there can you just get my sure yeah I think the shortest sort of way to describe it is like what I what I personally feel is meaningful to me in terms of my growth as an artist and also maybe career as a highlights you probably you you you got to see some of the ghost Michelle stuff that was like a huge milestone for me and also the the you know the mecha 400 mariah is was a big one just like how difficult it was how much I learned but also going to see some like Celie personal art you're gonna see like this I think you will be there there's like the scowl on that like a really buffs maker looking bad and like so stupid but I like I like have like you have to have fun sometimes right right as an artist and so I hope that cross-section of work will be a kind of like sincere what what stuff I like you know you're gonna see a little bit of commercial a little bit of like silly personal work a little bit of luck maybe weird exploration work and I think as an artist you you gotta have a wrench you know it's like we spend so much time working and that if we don't have fun you gotta you gotta put stuff there that did you generally kind of yeah so I feel like this would be sort of a sincere way of what I stuff I like and stuff I want to keep doing and maybe stuff that was meaningful my career let's talk about talk a little bit about those personal projects you took the black Phoenix stuff going on right now what it's that how'd that come about oh so that was actually an attempt to learn how to become a 3d concept artist okay without doing any sketches and and being able to overcome the the huge roadblock which is speed right how you can make something faster now that looks good enough so that was there was kind of that at the core right yeah of course there was a little bit of a backstory to it but at the court there was how can I become faster more efficient and so I took a sabbatical when me and my wife we went to Hawaii actually nice and and we went there and I just worked like 12 it's not sure why I love that yeah I know why like I felt like a key it was just okay I feel like I'm on a vacation but I can cheetah I don't really have to go to the to enjoy the vacation he just season work oh maybe just a year so like we were there and right before that we went to like different locations like we went to Chernobyl for example to take H Yards photography and like for the actual you know the the spot that the area were like the reactionary things like that so that those photographs that Maria created later became back backdrops or the the mix right and also like they became a way for me to emphasize the story like a key if you see a mech that is in that specific environment it would it gives you an idea how you can refine the design and in that direction that that's why I think like having a nice ajar map for that would really help you to tell the story so the idea was that at the time I felt there was sort of this niche that I didn't see was yet sort of filled in three comes apart where you where I could just try to make a design where it was fast enough but also high quality and now that could be used for real project and I tried to construct a my day in such a way that where I would be able to really plan the day out and like a key if I give myself three hours for this part right so I say like this dog was like it was a one-day design project right so things like that right and what was I think very very critical for that project was that before I did the ten days of mech thing I spent like almost three months reinventing my workflow so that project itself was in a way like a test like an exam like okay now you have an exam this show me what you learned right yeah and that was like probably one of the most stressful like things I've done to myself like I would timer I was sitting like timers when I would go to restroom and like when I would eat it was like the day was like so packed that's crazy just so I could like yet I think like one of the days I had like an effective 16 hours working day and that was like really tiring well you were in Hawaii yes I was like while working and when I say sixteen effective work working hours that means it's not a clocked in from let's say 9:00 a.m. to like 4:00 a.m. or something right it was actual working hours right all right so Mike if I if I take a call if I go to bathroom I stop the timer and that was so freaking difficult so I you go going like on a real project right that was seemed like very easy so I think if you can make your own boot camps harder than real projects that would also build your like mental stamina and will make everything comes like it's easy you know like this like Navy SEAL guys they go through such insane practice and like training in terms of the stress level when people yelling them and they don't sleep for three days and then they don't eat and then they fight it all the crazy stuff right then they go to war it's like they're chilling right there like it's fine for them right I mean not literally but yeah absolutely well I mean if you're setting your benchmark at Navy SEAL that is yeah that's pretty significant so I think like it's just what was kind of interesting is also that I try to deconstruct every step of the consumer creating process in what is the nominal actionable step that I need to take if I need to export an obj and it takes me 13 seconds to see like everything I'm gonna write a script to so when I press the button it just does so now like when I because I switch a lot of it with the software in Softimage you have two scripts right so when I press home it exports an obj to desktop when I press insert insert it imports it exact same so the way if I go like ZBrush from like other packages it's like very very quick so that's that stuff really really helps so little things like that I tried to really pack so deconstruct what can I speed up this is when I created the first like back to execute bash and in funny enough I still use it these days which is like sometimes you just like okay I'm running out of time I need some block joints here some peripheral and you can sell those online those are available so you guys can pick it up online I've used search yeah and I did the same thing for like shaders like a build a library of shaders and like some pictures so when it come when it came to the actual like Phoenix project I could just like go straight into design and not this is what I started doing that thing that I mentioned earlier sorry when I would plan what kind of design I want to make the night before so I would write down the list of things I want to have in a design and what kind of thing there is like I'll say with the robot I knew I want to have like a box he had I want to have like a handle on the on the back want to have like some you know some covers for the mechanical joints part but most endemic so immediate least I didn't have any references like a flavor shoot with images I only had a list and when I went to bed I was just like Richard a list and be like okay okay okay let's do this and I was just keep visualizing and then that would give the deadline an itch and I would have a thing like defeat was like okay 25 minutes it was what kind of it if I spend more than means I'm not doing something else so that's that's the thing she actually not thing I wanted to mention is like if every time it says yes to something that means you say no to something else right and this is like a good thing to keep in mind because especially when you know as a professional consumer is you want to be able to hit what is most important about the design first and then you do all the cool stuff later right so so what are let's say what are the three key things of the design that would bring the 80% of the designs in temp like and then you attack them first what's good about this approach if you successfully achieve that you have all this all that chunk time to do cool stuff for all the extras while you already have a peace of mind that you are kind of you kind of made it there right and the thing about if it's important to be relaxed and and then feeling in control because this is where all the good ideas come from if you don't feel at least I'm just freaking like from from my experience let's say what I had in Robocop I was always just sweating and just like age is so freaking hard that's how that whole project was for me because I wasn't as prepared in terms of tools I didn't know a lot of things about like it just wasn't as prepared and it was always in this crisis mode and I think it's if this is not sustainable you could you know if you have a say some of you guys have a project like this right now you can choose Bruce Forsyth with like working hard but working hard will only you know it will fail your project but working smart will save you a career right and you want to be investing in that too right so that was kind of like a big learning point I guess gotcha and I want to ask you about this because I I heard this online just for my own amusement your your personal computer yes I heard which 100 sir well the one that has a 7/10 80 cards yeah that's right how many how many gigs of RAM so that computer has 128 but my other is 182 that's insane yeah I was so I got the Box machine like few years back when I was in France farmers and Michael Bay wasn't very patient he's like just render this right like all right let's see what's the best out there so I got this like liquid cool I do SEO machine I was still using key shot which is a CPU rendering right yeah software so which means if you have a nice you know multi-core liquid-cooled overclocked dual Zeon's it will make things faster right and this is when I invested the first time it was like hey do I want a new car and your computer and it was totally worth it it was like I was like you know what I can do I can make so much more the thing is I feel like this is when I start sleeping eight hours again okay because like I can make things faster right because I noticed whenever you have to let's say whenever you make a design and usually in terms of like the how it feels like as a weightlifting it's the modeling and the design and when it comes to 3d rendering it's like I'm gonna I'm enjoying this right but it's so really like 10:00 p.m. is gonna take let's say like a 4 or 5 hours by the time you were like done with it you can't you're just like you already ruined your schedule right no schedule I mean like you're healthy regime right right and this would happen to me all the time I was like okay I need to fix that so the bottleneck was rendering and then it happen again with this computer because I was still using keyShot and I was working with Panasonic with doing some product design for them and they had very specific look that trying to achieve that I couldn't but some reason couldn't really replicate in keyShot but then I tried it an octane render and for that specific product you went very smooth but then they want to have a specific scene in a presentation where a lot of this light would be like secondary bands that bounces which would be like the light that I need to render with a lot of GPUs or have a long rendering time right and on my other computer I only have to think one Titan X car and just wasn't enough it was just like if I would use like a standard like MN occlusion rendering mode it would be fast enough but it won't be realistic and whenever I would use like PMC or the path tracing it would be just so slow it would take like let's say two three hours per image so this is when I decided to get the 7/7 GPU card because then again okay okay I need to win in my sleep because if I was sleeping enough it's not sustainable it's not healthy eventually the things gonna break right and it's like okay I've done my share of like not sleeping from like 18 to 29 I guess right right like I need to be a little more smart about it so that was kind of thing so my initial goal was just a transition to the computer but then I realized I could just used to so now I could steal like as a modeling I could render on the 7 GPU machine so that one's just for rendering okay and that that gives me sort of like a leverage so I can refine it and you guys know for you for anybody who uses octane like if you just switch an obj it just updates it it's very easy to update geometry I think you shot the same thing now but I really like how they implement in octane so with two machine that especially easy to handle so I kind of like the current setup my friends just got today an 11 GPU card 11g was like giving me like your computer's rendering battles the same guy this guy's Sebastian I think he's from Poland the original I think maybe he's in UK right now but he's like this crazy scientist guy who makes is like yeah cuz I'm like where to even yeah I don't even know where you would acquire something like right right right so now apparently sevens GPUs not bad okay 11 is like no that's 15 right which is another thing too I think is it good to say is like a try never die I don't want I'm not an early adopter I'm not jumping under this train of like hey what's the latest greatest right I go just slightly before that it's so cheaper it's a little more stable and I would have done this like what you know with software with computers so far is working great because yeah I think a lot of people are ready to do that right right yeah yeah well cool so just kind of last question here and really it's not even a question I just want to give you the floor you to let us know what is going on in vitaliy world and if there's any kind of advice that you want to leave you know the audience with tonight right we've already touched on a lot so so yeah if there's any any lasting worse you or any last words you gotta give and yeah what uh sure I I mean there's like a few things and I I'm pretty sure we're just gonna keep talking about this stuff like as we go to the gallery sure yeah like a one thing I found as was my kind of personal battle it's just procrastination and it was this thing that was like I call it late start so you wake up you're like let's say you listen to your music that it's like okay this this is good the references that and then you get like kind of pump up for it and then you have this sort of build up now your rack your and gear and then and then you're like you can work and then you can work for like 16 hours day and then next thing you wake up broken tired like your whole week just goes down here so like that you realize that sacrifice wasn't worth it that's like I went through that a lot and for me the kind of the way to solve it was it's so cool like action bias for action and and it actually came from like I was doing I was in Moscow and Moscow at that time and we had this guy from Georgia like doing boxing like we went to he was the trainer okay and he's think would be like don't prepare to hit just hit it he was like don't prepare for it at the minute I was like what do you mean don't wait just just go for it and then you adjust before just just just just hit it right so now the thing like I start to do when I wake up like I would go toward just just hit it right it's like even if you don't know if you're just like Wicky you you start your computer is the best it's like if you if if it's off just turn it on brush your teeth and when it's on okay start your modeling software just start modeling okay what do you have just something like along the lines that you what's your task today right this will create the momentum so starting the the bias for action it's just to me this is like when going back to what are the secrets right I feel like this is just so liberating because I realized at least for me like I never really found anything good and contemplation anything do good just came from action so I'd rather like a few mistakes here and there but I'm like I'm saying hi you're doing some yeah I'm doing it's much better to do doing something that they're doing anything and especially I think I feel like this procrastination thing it's almost like this disease if you if you let it just grow it's going to be even harder to overcome so the thing is like I feel is very very practical just just go for it right just go for doing stuff even if you're not ready if you're not sure you'll never be perfectly ready you'll never be 100% sure it's gonna work it's easier to adjust it later and this is like if you're going back to like 3d modeling this is why it's really awesome to to have a very very solid workflow for modeling because you get to if you mess it up if you're quick you can just fix it right away like it's okay to make mistakes to make so making a forgiving environment is really really important and so that would be something I'd say like I bring up a lot when we talk about it's a for-sure action a bias for action yeah love it and then another thing is which is also kind of interesting it's find a way to to find a perfect balance of like your own stimulation level which is you know people have learned like introverts or extroverts and depending on what kind of person you are you need a different level to stimulation of to being of optimal performance and this is something I also didn't know until like somewhat recently like I was intuitively because I'm more introverted to me like okay I just got my music and I'm like I'm working anything more than that it's going to be distracting for a person that is more extroverted it it would be the more extra person would tolerate a much higher level of you know noise around it that's why you get people that work better at the office and you get even some guys they conduct work in the coffee shop it just actually work intensely there while they like chat while they have like YouTube open on there like laughter they still working to me this is like been insane oh yeah yeah yeah but I can a few more like extroverted so this is actually it's okay you just got to find a way to keep yourself stimulated so which I kind of like makes this sort of triangle of what I think is the foundation for a good performance you want to be perfectly you want to be properly motivated and you want to be properly stimulated and you want to be properly like prepared and by prepared I mean tools a form but technology once you have that because your motivation will like will be like it's something like a long term but also to get you going today but your stimulation will identify the level of you know intensity you work you want to we want to work intensely because that's just more fun right and like that's why I get your coffee gets your jam like it whatever the music you like and and find a level when you're like ok it's fun it's it's intense it's exciting this is one of the reasons why I also think deadlines are so important even if you do it even if let's say you do a personal art respecting and like taking deadlines seriously it's really important and again also because it makes the work a little more entertaining a little more intense it just makes a little harder that's one thing so you're a little more fresher more awake while you knit but nothing is that it forces you to find creative solution and if you have all the time in your hand you might be just feeling like ok you don't really have to stress out right and the thing about it is even if you work with say in a company or project where it's ok I just feel you will get so much more out of work if you enforce your own deadlines you don't even have to sell to anybody but I have it written down give yourself a key before the lunch I want to finish this part of the design and after lunch until let's say like a 4 p.m. coffee break or whatever right I'll do this thing's party and I feel this is also another thing how you can kind of boost your own sense of involvement and having fun it's to create this artificial sort of challenges yeah for sure I mean there's a lot of other things what how are we doing on time like are we I don't know yeah I mean I'm cool with like keeping going it's just how are we doing on time oh we technically finished want to stay for like a little bit more like yeah ok cool all right well alright so [Laughter] yeah thanks thanks thanks for like willing to actually listen my look just be a rambling so so what I really really think is also true is that you know being you know what when you have to compare being perfect and being fast like a valve being fast more just because you get to you get to make more mistakes and you will get to that perfect stage to the perfect state faster anyways right and just because it's just more productive in a real environment and also you will be more fulfilling for you so I think I think I saw it I saw this poster like motivation poster selfies like something like it ship it so or another one like done is better than perfect I need I need a poster yeah me too and it's it's I think it's artist never really finish the work we're just gonna find a way to abandon it okay should will you a band yeah I could noodle on to something right ever and just keep adding stuff on to it and they never yes I think it's very important to build I'd say control the environment where where what do you do it's a conscious decision it's not because okay I'm desperate I don't want to look at this thing I'm out there like oh I you really obsessed about it and you just can't stop so I think another part of motivation at least for me is to find a way to feel like you're in control and the simple reason for it as soon as you feel like you're in control this is when it's very easy to challenge yourself it's like whenever you don't feel I can control any extra challenge any extra press we're like instinctively psychologically we rejected and this is it's very very damaging especially I think it happens a lot in companies when let's say you're struggling with a certain project then let's say lead comes in he wants to do today is then you hear supervisor what's to done thinker then director says completely something crazy and you feel like all this stuff and you're trying to really do your best you're trying to you know fill the needs of your client there's a lot of stuff going on and and I feel it's it's it's just I don't hear people talk a lot about that sure because it's in everybody's power to change that if we if we're conscious about it if we're like very clear that okay there is a certain level of control that I have to exert where I have to yeah yeah you have to do yourself because nobody else will you know it's like it's kind of a brutal truth of you know the reality is if if you don't if you don't set your own sort of framework of how you control how things unfold or have a lens of fall for you then it most likely going to be chaotic and coming from all over direction so the finest environment where you feel like you're in control as soon as you do this it's much easier to build like highest standards for your own performance right because it's just like working out if you have a bad form it's you're most likely gonna injure yourself so having a control environment is super important because then you can actually less add more weight let's make this sense faster let's make design a little more slick let's do this it's much easier to build on top the structure is sustainable it doesn't fall apart and that's why it's so important to learn your tool and going back you know I was talking about sabbaticals and why I used to take like a longer sabbaticals it was because it's the only way to get so mersive that you then the knowledge of the software really stays with you for a long time so like I think one of the first time I learned ZBrush I was in Russia 2.0 I think I was still in university I took a week off like a Christmas break and I I think I told my friends I went to like some other town and it took the guys on the town I stayed in town and I just like disappeared it's just like disappear all I did it was like ZBrush learning and the thing is like I had the period of time when I didn't use the brush for like two years and then I came back I remember everything it was like ice you know if if you do a little bit of like a little pocket of time I'm like yeah I'm just doing like four hours every Friday or Saturday it's fine I mean if this is all if the only option right now for learning you can do please do it but if you can like really go deep into one software just doing that thing learning one thing let's say for a week or even to write just doing that that will stay with you like riding a bicycle and this is something like I kind of want to do more of that stuff too and I encourage if any of you guys have an opportunity sometimes to do some points even like three days I think like with octane when I switch to act and I think it was three days like day one I just really entire manual like things like that you know and then by the day three Oh actually I don't hate node nodes as much because I first I was like I didn't really like the navigation because I'm using a standalone version and at first I didn't really like it especially coming from Keisha Keisha if you guys know it's way more simple right throw everything and I was like mmm this reef is really worth it and it's like okay just give yourself three days and try to find like okay I'll push some other project starting date and then I a daughter project I kind of finished earlier so like okay this today's I'm not doing anything it's just obtained so I think that's kind of covers like [Music] [Applause] alright so so we have a little little he's gonna pick three winners now for these awesome prizes so we got we got three Robo dogs from the black Phoenix and they're somewhat of a limited edition so I hope you guys I'm done for today goodbye everybody get him so should I just like beak one randomly yeah I tried to shuffle them a lot okay good all right some guns for one right here and ticket the whole number or just a lot I think last three must be numbers yeah one four four one four four there [Applause] all right congrats Allah I I want to write a little okay perfect oh look at that I'm sorry Kyle just in case oh you try it on here oh you can't really see anything but maybe try this side I think I use the wrong side can really see okay okay we're gonna use the different work and let's just finish this thing yeah yeah yeah we'll way around yeah come back to tally don't disappear okay okay okay we're just gonna keep it yeah so we're just pretty here so yeah this is Kyle Kyle Kyle don't worry yeah we got you yes sorry a little technical it wouldn't be it wouldn't be a proper event without some technical difference okay that's not it's not a dig on you 0 7 3 0 7 3 oh hey so do we yeah we can get what you need Hanna okay about what some students yeah last one I'm gonna take them all home though and then they can come find me later yeah you're a terrible liar that's actually kind of creepy ray I just I just really like them okay they're really cool toys my last one zero three zero zero three zero zero three zero yeah what's your name Fernandez okay thank you yeah well okay so after we're just gonna get the marker yes okay thank you so much Batali yes Vitali thank you so much this has been really awesome they're so happy that you what to make it out here and okay everyone so we're gonna head over to the gallery in just a moment so come conversation can continue with Vitaly over there he's here all night so don't be shy you guys in a minute yes

Channel: Gnomon

Views: 34,337

Rating: 4.9797978 out of 5

Keywords: vitaly bulgarov, mech, mecha, 3d, hard surface, robot, mech design, robot design, concept art, 3d concept art, Ghost in the Shell, Hankook Mirae Technology, film, games, artist, digital artist, digital art, artist careers, artists stories, art talk, gnomon, gnomon school, vfx, zbrush, maya, wearable products, robotics

Id: ygAI6THuLM8

Length: 91min 33sec (5493 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 10 2017