3DTotal: Can you tell 3d Creative a little about yourself and how you came to be involved in the CG Industry?
Fabricio: Since I was young I was amazed by movies, special effects and animation. My mind was blown away when I saw Jurassic Park and became very curious and interested when I saw Toy Story. I kept wondering how they could do such amazing things on a computer.

I started with CG when I was 16 with 3D Studio 4 for DOS. I thought it was great the things that could be done even though being limited and when in college I studied harder.

Here in Brazil we didn't have any college specializing in CG at that time. The closest course was Industrial Design and so I graduated in this. I did some courses parallel to this because even in college

there wasn't any special training in this field.

3DTotal: How easy is it finding a job similar to the one you have now when the colleges lack the necessary training and will companies readily train applicants whilst being employed?
Fabricio: Working with experienced people was the way I learned the most things. Solving problems day by day forced me to develop new techniques and look for new software. Of course the courses I did in the beginning helped me a lot especially with the basics, but doing CG eight hours a day in my work and making my personal projects at home was the best course I had.

I can't exclude the importance of my college. I didn't exclusively study CG there, but it helped me to have a good visual sense and methodology. Understanding the foundation of drawing, human anatomy and perspective helps you to be a better artist.

Today there are more courses and colleges specialized in CG here in Brazil, and with the growing technology it is getting easier to be a qualified artist and find a new job.   

3DTotal: You won first prize in the recent Steampunk CG challenge. Can you tell us a little about the inspiration behind the idea?
Fabricio: I always wanted to participate in a CG Society challenge but never imagined I would have a chance of winning. I found this theme very interesting and so decided to give it a try.
When I was trying to have an idea, the picture of Pinocchio popped up. He is a well known character, charismatic and wouldn't be tricky to adapt to Steampunk because he was already artificial.

result. That's how I know when I must stop working on the image, when I don't know what to improve.

What was most difficult to me was Geppetto. I wanted to show a strong and forced pose with a cartoonish look and this was tricky to achieve. His expression should show a lot of things, he looks mad but not insane.

The light and mood was very important and hard to achieve and everything needed to be in harmony. Balancing all of this was really hard.