3DTotal: Can you explain your fascination with aircraft and aviation as a subject, and maybe describe where your interest stems from?
Wiek: My fascination with aircraft might have had something to do with reading Biggles as a kid, but also living close to Volkel Airbase, seeing jets roar overhead every day. The walls of my room were covered in posters of aircraft and I used to draw aircraft all the time – even being so bold as to send my drawings to big military jet manufacturers when I was about 10 years old, for which I got some nice posters in return. Once in a while we’d go to an air show, which was just amazing – there’s nothing like seeing a jet on full afterburner roaring along the runway, or the sound of a spitfire as it flies past. When I was old enough to cycle the 20 kilometres to Volkel, I’d go there to watch the F16s take off and land sometimes, or visit the local air show by myself. Later on I worked all summer so I could pay for a hang-gliding course, which
was just amazing! My interest is mostly with modern helicopters and old aircraft; for instance early
Second World War but also early jets. There’s something romantic about old aircraft: the smell, the
sound, the simplicity. I guess the same thing that can be said about old cars – they’re just special. And don’t get me started on flying boats! Surely one of the most interesting and good looking forms of
transport ever! It’s mainly military aircraft that interests me; I guess the way they were flown and their performance speaks to the imagination a bit more. Why fly at high altitude in a boring straight line if you can be down in the weeds dodging trees and hills? Then there is the historic side of things; the way individuals could actually make a difference when they were flying (instead of being just more cannon fodder in the trenches), and were facing enormous odds, like in the Battle of Britain, stretching human endurance to the limit. By no means would I ever want to glorify war: it’s a nasty business that has never done anyone any good.  But at the same time we should not forget about the past. With my artwork I try to make the past come alive, and not just from one side. On both sides, in every conflict, there are people fighting that have fought for what they believed in or fought because they wanted to defend their family
and friends, or simply to live another day. 		 
    3DTotal: When starting a new image can you talk us through the stages of preparation and how you go about deciding on the lighting, composition and any historical significance behind the picture?
Wiek: The first stage of preparation is the creation of the 3D models with their appropriate shaders and textures. This is a fairly lengthy process that can really make you ‘forget’ your original intentions that made you build the aircraft in the first place. Dependent upon detail levels, creating a model can take between two weeks and three months.   Anyway, most of the time I get to research or come up with ideas for new images during the build process, which might result in the need to create more models (for a dog fight, for instance). I have a big list of aircraft that I would like to build, which all interest me for different reasons. Sometimes I build specific models on request for a commission; sometimes I build a model because it fits with my existing collection. Once you have your model, it’s time to research the appropriate markings and paint schemes that fit the aircraft and the image you have in mind, which sometimes comes after you have the general layout of the image done.  To be honest, the way I come up with a composition varies a lot. For some images I have a composition in my head when I start, whereas for others I have a general idea of what I am looking for and the image evolves as I go along.  I read a lot of pilot biographies and books describing actual events specific to the aircraft in question.
 
Whilst reading the book I mark sections that make for interesting background stories for images with post-it notes. But more often than not I make images that appeal to me as artwork – not because they are a photograph of an exact moment in time as it happened. You could say most of my images are moments as they could have been. I’d rather create something that most photographers wouldn’t have had a chance to shoot at the time, and would look a bit more filmic. Sometimes the inspiration comes from a certain background photograph I have taken which just begs for a certain scene. Photography is another big hobby of mine, which comes in very useful when looking for backgrounds.At other times the backgrounds might be completely painted, or combinations of 3D, photographs and painting. I am
looking into painting more and more for backgrounds as it enables you much more freedom in composition and lighting. Obviously, these background techniques come into play when you have a composition that works but not an appropriate background yet. I might find a composition that works in
3D by placing the aircraft, camera and lights in a certain layout, placed in a real simple background gradient that signifies placement of horizon in the picture and gives an idea of colour.  Then in
Photoshop I roughly paint in a background to see if it really is going in the direction that I have in mind.  Another thing I do is keep an ‘unfinished’ folder One of my curses is having too much inspiration for my own good.  In the old days it caused me to rush and get an image done so I could work on my latest idea. Nowadays I try not to; I either finish an image to a level that I’m happy with it, or else it goes into the ‘unfinished’ folder. In there I have many concepts and unfinished pieces that have the potential to be good images, but I either had no time to finish them, the models weren’t textured yet, or I just couldn’t finish them for other reasons. Once every so often I go through that folder and pick one to finish.
   
 

3DTotal: What software do you generally use, and after the rough Photoshop block in, how do you integrate the aircraft successfully into their backgrounds?
Wiek: For the 3D side of things I exclusively use modo at the moment (on Windows); it offers everything I need for still images and is the best modelling software out there with some very useful baking
and painting tools thrown in.  After getting the render as close to final in 3D as I can, Photoshop is used to do a lot of post-processing and painting to get it to where it needs to be. For background integration I use a combination of fresnel reflection and global illumination to get colours that fit in with the background. Then in Photoshop it’s a matter of cleaning up the edges and doing some corrective painting where needed. Animation, I’ve not got around to doing in it yet, but for that I used to use LightWave in
combination with custom written tools in Visual Basic to be able to do what I wanted. At the moment I am learning Houdini, which we use at work. That should be an interesting tool to add to my pipeline as it enables me to build the custom solutions that I used to code in VB - things like cloud rendering for instance, but also getting animation data directly from flight simulations. 

3DTotal: Out of all the images you’ve created to date, which are your favourites and why?
I have a few favourites for different reasons, as follows:

Mowing the lawn: Even though it’s old now, it’s full of action and speed! This was one of the first images where I managed to achieve the style that I still like, where I used a lot of painting and matte painting to
get what I wanted. Plus it features one of my favourite aircrafts: the Fokker G.I.a – an amazing design that could have been much better known in different circumstances.

Furball: This one of my best, but at the same time the image that made me decide to stick with what I
want as an artist, not what everyone else thinks should happen. After this image, things changed forever.

Desert Spitfires: My best work in my opinion. I just love the spitfire – it looks great from every angle and is just a thoroughbred. This particular image is one of those that just clicked when I made it; it didn’t take extremely long to do but involved a lot of painting and post work. It’s one of the works I created in time for the aviation art exhibition last year; a lot of pressure and a short time available to create new work, and
yet pieces like this one and Furball came out.

   
 
3DTotal: What are the most challenging aspects to creating aviation art and what are the common pitfalls facing newcomers to the genre?
Wiek: The most challenging is that, to be good you have to be good at many different disciplines that all are not easy to learn. The modelling in itself is a big challenge with complex shapes; the UV-ing, texturing and shading are demanding for various reasons; historical research, photography, post processing, painting, lighting, composition - all of them take time and experience to master. I’ve been doing this for many years now and there is still so much to learn and improve on! What I find most challenging is balancing the time between creating new images, new models, learning new techniques, growing as an artist and actually finding the time to sleep. Another thing is that it’s hard to be original - there are only so many ways that you can depict an aircraft. A lot of people become complacent, cease to be innovative and cease to grow. When that happens, you cease to be an artist Common pitfalls are people not spending the time to observe. You can learn a lot from photographs, from other artists and artwork.  Buy some books from different traditional aviation artists, like Michael Turner or Michael Taylor, and look at how they find solutions for lighting, texturing, composition and background. Don’t copy, but learn! Talk to fellow artists, share experiences and techniques. Another thing: don’t expect to get rich doing this sort of work; well, not rich in money anyway. There is not a big market; most people only want to buy traditional art because they still think it’s a press of a button on the computer if you created something digitally. If you do sell work, it is never for a lot of money.  You’d make more money working in a supermarket restocking the shelves. Do this for yourself, because you have a passion for it – that’s all..
    
 

3DTotal: Tell us about the impetus behind your website, www.aviation-arthouse.com, and how you choose which artists to include?
Wiek: I have quite close contact with a couple of very talented artists who all had the same problem I had. We didn’t want to spend too much of our time marketing ourselves and trying to sell our art. It’s all about creating the art in the first place. However, these guys produce artwork at a very high level and have similar dreams to myself. We all want to be full-time aviation artists eventually.  The only way to get there is to get noticed and start selling. I had tried in vain to contact existing galleries, who are all allergic to digital work and basically sell the work of only a couple of very high profile traditional artists, it seems. So I decided to do it myself and invite my friends along for the ride. The idea is to only show work that’s of a very high standard, even though almost none of us are full-time aviation artists. The artists on display are all very talented people who haven’t had a lot of exposure. We’re still open for new artists by the way, but because it’s such a small world, everyone knows everyone it seems. In my opinion we feature the top 5 artists in the world of digital aviation art already, and would like to get some more traditional art up there as well, as it shouldn’t be an exclusive thing where medium is concerned.

3DTotal: You have a section on the site dedicated to tanks.  Do you see yourself branching into new categories, such as ships for example?
Wiek: Most definitely! Personally I want to do some tank artwork as well as it offers very different and interesting challenges. Ships I’ve made in the past already, I’ve just never done any proper artwork with them. If there are any artists out there who create artwork of ships/sail boats/tanks/trains etc. that should be featured on Aviation-Arthouse, they should definitely get in touch. It was never meant to be just aviation. For the tanks and ships, I’ve also registered another website name: http://www.oilontheboil.com.

3DTotal: Finally, do you ever play any war based computer games or flight sims, and if so do you find the historical detail to be accurate in the main, or do you see evidence of poor research sometimes, and finally do you enjoy these types of games?
Wiek: Well, I’ve always been a very active gamer both on consoles as well as on the PC. Obviously flight sims have been a part of that. In the past I’ve wasted many, many hours of my life playing shooters, race games, and strategy games and so on. In a way, for me, game play is more important than historical accuracy. I can enjoy games like Ace Combat immensely, even though they are complete fiction. Flight-sim wise, I find IL-2 most enjoyable. It is great for online play and I’m one of those sad people who have invested quite a lot into things like joysticks, rudder pedals and track-ir (head tracking equipment). Obviously it appeals to me a lot because I’m into Second World War aircraft. Besides the obvious bias towards Russian aircraft in the game, there’s never been a game with that much historical research and accuracy, I feel. I also have a copy of Microsoft flight simulator, but find it immensely boring, I must admit. My favourite games at the moment are Medieval Total War II, Call of Duty 4, Company of Heroes and Racedriver Grid.

   
 
 
 
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