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3DTotal: Hi James, could you introduce yourself to our readers and tell us why you chose to become a 3D artist?
James: Hi Chris, my name is James Busby, I’m 28 years old and I grew up in Northern Ireland, just outside Belfast. For as long as I can remember I’ve been interested in art in some form or another, and I always knew that I wanted to work in the entertainment industry. I was lucky enough to have very understanding parents who supported me throughout my early education, where I made what were considered at the time to be fairly obscure and miss-matched GCSE choices: Media Studies and IT. After high school I studied Media and Film at college for a further 2 years, and it was there that I started dabbling with 3D Studio R4, using it to create some very primitive digital sets and props for various film projects. In 1998 I moved to Bradford to study Electronic Imaging and Media Communication, where I began to develop my 3D modelling and animation skills. In the summer of 1999 my friend and I spent 3 months making a fully animated science-fiction short, called “The Human Race”. We had no idea what we were doing and had very little technical knowledge, but we ended up producing almost 2 minutes of animation and winning first place in the ‘Cinemagic Film Festival’. From that point on I was hooked and knew I wanted to work in the CG industry. |
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3DTotal: I hear that you have just started you own company, ten24, could you tell us a little about it and what projects you’re currently working on?
James: It’s a very interesting, exciting and stressful time for me at the moment; having worked at ARK VFX for the past 5 years and a further 2 years before that at Argonaut games, I felt it was about time to do something different and start a studio of my own. We’re based in Sheffield, in the very nice little office in leafy Broomhill; it’s a great place and one I think we were very lucky to get! I can’t talk about any projects that were currently working on as we’ve only been trading for a few weeks and all projects are ongoing and as such subject to NDA’s; however, we are hoping to specialise in high resolution character creation automotive modelling, illustration and advertising for television and games. Alongside providing a full concept to complete animation and modelling service we’re hoping to provide larger studios and advertising agencies with a cost effective alternative, should they need to outsource projects. We believe that during these financially troubling times a small company like ourselves with low overheads based in the north of England is ideally suited to this task! |
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3DTotal: How does running your own studio compare with working for ARK or Argonaut?
James: Well the first thing that has struck me is how easy my life was before I decided to set up ten24; going to work, getting paid at the end of the month and going home in the evening safe in the knowledge that the next day would bring with a it a very similar routine to the one before. Now things are very different – there’s much more to think about when it’s your own company. It really is an exciting time though, and I’m really enjoying finding my own work, pitching for projects and strangely dealing with the whole business finance side of things. |
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3DTotal: Looking over your portfolio, you have created many characters that you have modelled with a tremendous amount of detail. Could you tell us how long you would spend on a character from start to finish?
James: It really depends; sometimes I like to take my time, so if I’m really interested in developing some nice new topology then I will spend a lot of time re-modelling, but if I’m in a ‘slap dash’ mood I can knock a head out in a few hours using a base mesh that I have sitting around on my hard drive! Generally though, I prefer to take my time and do things properly – fewer mistakes. To make an entire character from start to finish, including textures, posing and rendering, I would say it probably takes me about 2 to 3 working weeks, but this is an ideal time – it really does depend on deadlines. I can knock them out a lot faster if needs be, it’s just not something I like to do.
3DTotal: One thing that strikes me about your work (apart from, “God, that’s amazing!”), is the amount of detail that you put into your textures. Could you tell us how much time you spend getting these to the level that you deem them to be ‘perfect’?
James: Texturing is probably my favourite part of creating a character. I generally spend a lot of time on the facial textures - as much time as I can get really. UV layout is something that I put a lot of time into; I like to unwrap a face with as little distortion as possible, which generally rules out using any kind of automated unwrapper, although I do use Headus and Unwrap UV from time to time. The more details I can keep unmolested in the UV, the easier it is to paint the map in Photoshop without resorting to projection mapping and baking. I don’t think I could say that any texture that I have made has been to a level that I would deem perfect, as I don’t like to think of my work as ever being finished and I’m very self critical. If I was to concede that something I had made was perfect, then that would imply that there was no room for improvement, which in my opinion there always is! |
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