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3DTotal: What is the best piece of advice you have ever been given ?
Steve: “Get out of art before you’ve wasted any more time on it. You obviously don’t get it, and you never will.” I was told this my first year in college by a snooty professor who didn’t like me because I didn’t fit into his definition of an artist. I learned that day that opinion was the artist’s first and perhaps greatest obstacle, and decided that my only honest critic would be myself. I have a real pet peeve about this idea of “talent.” A thing that you either have or you don’t, from birth. You can cultivate it if you have it, but if you don’t have it to begin with, you’re wasting time. Sure, some people take to this or that quicker than others. Some have more experience. But I believe everyone is capable of fulfilling their own wishes. And naysayer’s who themselves failed, attack the ambitions of those who are inexperienced, too often succeeding in killing a dream. We get one life and we should be in charge of it. And bugger with a rusty railroad spike what anyone says to stop you! Ian McCaig, a concept artist at ILM, has the philosophy on art I most relate to. He said, and I’m paraphrasing because I don’t remember exactly, that “Art is a language we learn and use even before we learn to speak. As children, we all scribbled, and often could draw a recognisable house, dog, person, or whatever, before we knew the words for them. Everyone knows this language, it’s just that many of us are out of practice in ‘speaking’ it.” So maybe that’s the better bit of advice? Whatever you want to do - art, music, accounting, whatever - there’s never a “too-late”. You may need more time, you may be inexperienced, you may start out absolutely and laughably, bad. The hospital staff may know you by first name because of how many times you’ve come in with a paint brush lodged in your ear, or choking on a guitar string. But, so what? That is a stage we go through. Bad is where all good things start.
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3DTotal: You portfolio covers both 3D and 2D, but where do you see your strengths and weaknesses with regard to both?
Steve: Even though my portfolio is full of 2D stuff, and the 3D stuff is mostly out of date, I’d say I’m stronger in 3D. I have a lot more experience with it. But most of my 3D work is under NDA’s until the stars burn out. So what I consider my best stuff isn’t public. My 2D weaknesses are thus: I have trouble keeping things loose with a natural feeling flow, and letting brushstrokes and paper texture show through like in a traditional painting. My composition could use some work, and I’m really slow with perspective, so half the time I fake it and then wonder why everything looks a little wonky later. Unless I’m doing an environment, I tend to neglect background. Too much of my work is single characters in action poses. But hey, that’s what I get asked for! I think my strengths in 2D are with lighting, and a decent sense of volume and depth. I like my rendering style, even though many of the artists I’m a fan of are looser. I think I manage to bring life and vibrance to many of my paintings. When I have time for it, which is sadly seldom the case, I feel I have a knack for details. Also, I can juggle cats without getting scratched. In 3D, I’m a very fast modeller, and I think that having a background in traditional skills is extremely helpful. I think it makes my 3D art work better, and if I’m working with concept artists I seem to have a much easier time interpreting and converting the concept into 3D. In 3D, I have a better feel for proportions and keeping things feeling like they’re where they should be. But I’m not the greatest animator. And I’m slow with rigging a character. And I can’t write scripts or expressions to save my life. I’ve done 3D professionally for ten years, and I’ve worked to try and minimize my weaknesses. One more is that splitting my time between 2D and 3D makes it difficult to keep up with the rapidly changing and advancing technology.
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3DTotal: Do you ever find that your 3D work helps inform your illustrations and vice versa ?
Steve: I feel that the two are invaluable to each other.
For me, the combination of 2D and 3D has been very synergistic. I can work out perspective and tricky lighting for paintings in 3D first, and for pre-rendered marketing images, and the like, I can paint over problem areas and add details that would be painstaking to build. More than that, 3D work has given me a much greater sense of volume. I understand and can visualise structures in three dimensions more easily and completely. And 2D work is where you develop composition, line, colour, rhythm, and all the visual principles that can contribute immensely to 3D pieces.
3DTotal: You mention 3D being useful at calculating perspective, but do you ever use 3D characters to help your 2D compositions at all?
Steve: I do. Particularly with tricky poses, or with a strangely positioned light source. I’ve also found it invaluable for epic battle scenes, and the like, to put a lot of characters down quickly and keep them in proportion with the whole scene. For some recurring characters, I’ll build them in 3D first, and then use them in the initial stages of each painting they occur in. This is most often the case when a character has things like detailed, segmented armour, and I want it to be consistent every time you see them. The prep time in building the rough model is always worth it for me.
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3DTotal: What inspires you as an artist and which examples of 3D rank amongst your favourite, and why?
Steve: Geisha, sake, swords... I’m inspired mostly by people. Every single person on the planet is a visual smorgasbord; usually quite interesting in many other respects as well, but at the very least fascinating visually. Fashion and make-up from all eras, particularly - surprise - the elaborate dress of ancient Asian cultures. I’m inspired by animals, so long as I don’t have to feed or clean up after them. I’m especially fond of undersea creatures, and as much as I hate to have them near me, bugs are just really cool. My favourite stuff in 3D is realistic but impossible stuff like the Animatrix “Last Flight of the Osiris” by Fransisco Cortina, Meats Mier’s work, and tonnes of the amazing stuff going into feature films. Pixar has the uncanny knack for making expressive animation look super easy. There’s still a lot to be explored stylistically in 3D. The technology is now where artists can really sink their teeth in without being overwhelmed by the technical limitations and steep learning curve of past software. I’m more impressed every day with stuff I’m seeing on forums and gallery books. With competition like this, I’m bound for a tragic career swing to fast food...
3DTotal: Computers have firmly established themselves in the world of design and illustration, but do you think this medium will ever reach the heights of paint and paper?
Steve: In some ways yes, in others no. I feel that, with more artists growing up in the medium, rather than converting, we’re going to see computer art become unique from it’s traditional equivalents. Right now, we’re working hard to make computer art look like oil or watercolour - to mimic the classic media. I think that’s going to get more realistic, but that we’ll also see a break from that: artists using the medium in new, original ways. Since computer art is realistically still quite young, most artists have not even been introduced to it earlier than fifteen or twenty years ago, so we don’t really have “old masters” of the medium. There’s no-one on the planet who has done seventy or eighty years worth of study and experiment in computer art. On the other hand, since there is no physical painting - no original - I think the future will hold more value for “real” physical paintings. (Well, until we invent printers that can glob on oils...) |
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