3DTotal Artist Interview


		alp altiner	email_____website

3DTotal - Hi Alp, for anyone that doesn't know who you are, could you tell our readers about yourself?
Alp - Sure, and thank you for having me. My name is Alp Altiner, and I work as a Visual FX Artist/Art Director in the Film Industry specializing in Matte paintings, Concept Art, as well as 3D modeling, texturing, and lighting. Besides the Film work, I also do various work for Commercials and Video Game Companies

3DTotal - So what first ignited your passion in art. And did you attend any colleges/universities or are you a self taught artist?
Alp - My parents being both artists, certainly was a huge influence. I started drawing at a very young age, and when my dad got me into comic books, I sure was hooked and started drawing all the time after that. Later on, I knew I wanted to work in art related fields, but also was really into sound design and composing music. So, I think that's what really got me into going into multimedia and sound design at the Art Institute of Seattle. My dad was kind enough to also pay for my education in Europe, and I went to study at the Vienna University, after a friends recommendation. So being traditionally trained helped me a lot, and mixing it with multimedia related studies created more interest for me in Motion related design and development which led me going into Video Game and Film work eventually. But still today I draw all the time in my sketchbooks, and carry them around. I also worked as a comic book artist /inker in the past, for Image Comics, Marvel, DC, and many others where my passion for it all grew limitless.

As far as 3D and other computer software packages I am mostly self taught, and gained additional skills working in a production environment. But I am also always buying new software and studying them, since I also really enjoy digitally created imagery. A while back I bought ZBrush, Terragen and Vue5 which I study intensively on my own. Also thanks to many Tutorial DVD's that are available these days.

3DTotal - Did you ever think, when you first started out that you would be working on such projects as you have?
Alp - No,but I knew that one movie would lead to another and more related projects, since my goal was to continue in this field as long as I could. I have been very lucky to be working on some very cool projects and work with very talented team of artists so far.

3DTotal - Cool, so which has been your favorite project to date?
Alp - " X-Men 3 " and " Van Helsing " were two movies, I really enjoyed working for, especially since I also did many concept paintings for both movies, as well as matte paintings, and 3D related work. Of course " Superman Returns " will be the best project I was on, which is coming out soon. I also really enjoyed working on the Video Games Deus EX3, Halo, and the new Area 51 Games, where I on both did many sci-fi related environments, and character concept paintings.

3DTotal - When was the first moment that your realized that you had become a well known/
famous name in the Visual FX industry?
Alp - I think my very first interview was on CG Channel, and they showcased some of my work back then. As I continued working on more movie projects, I also was still painting in my free time, and updating my website frequently with new and more samples of my style and work. Also the fact that most of my work was heavily sci-fi related, people seem to enjoy the work I was doing and I started becoming more visible on the Internet with more Interviews, as well as publication of my work. I was also starting to get many e-mails from Video Game Companies for freelance Conceptual Design work.

3DTotal - Have you ever been to see a film that you have worked on, and pointed out to friends
/family/complete strangers and said to them "I did that piece of work"?
Alp - I have not seen any of the work I have done at a movie theaters yet, I usually watch films on the DVD's, and collect them. Of course mostly friends and family is who I share recent projects I work on. After a while you get use to doing the work, and it does not have the same feeling you had, when you first saw your name attached to a major project on the big screen, or other related advertising.

3DTotal - What are the main programs that you use when creating your images?
Alp - I mostly use a combination of Photoshop and Painter. Photoshop mainly for Matte Paintings, Painter for conceptual design work. I also do a lot of 3D work these days, where I use Maya for hard surface modeling, ZBrush for Characters/Creatures, and recently Terragen, and Vue5 for digital terrain creations/vegetation.

3DTotal - Do you have any special techniques that you are willing to share with us, when you painting?
Alp - I actually share quite a bit of my techniques and free tutorials in my personal art forum www.laborganika.com where various tutorials can be found there, since it may be time consuming to explain some of these techniques here. If you have any specific questions, anyone can post them in the Forum, and I would be glad to answer them.

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