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3DTotal: Well, judging by your latest images it looks like you are obeying the voice in your head quite well! It’s interesting you mention ZBrush actually as this is considered by some a good bridge between 2d and 3d. I know it is a bit technical, but do you think it’s a good one for your average Photoshop painter to have a play with? Mainly for people who enjoy painting characters, would you say?
Tim: I think one of the most rewarding things about ZBrush is that you can begin doing some fun stuff with very little instruction. It has its quirks for sure, don’t get me wrong. It will require some tutorials to master it, but right out of the box you can start doing simple stuff that is pretty exciting the first time you try it. I don’t ever remember having that kind of reaction when opening Maya for the first time. I think it was more like “Okay, so I’ve got a cube ... Now what?!” There are some fantastic tutorials on ZBrush Central. The stuff that really interests me is how you can work up amazingly detailed architectural forms and other hard surface models with it. I will say that, if you are looking to learn 3D, then I’m not sure that ZBrush is a good place to start. To learn the fundamentals of modeling, texturing and lighting, I think most would agree that you’re better off with a standard 3D package. Once you understand the basics of 3D then ZBrush will probably make more sense. Still, I would encourage anyone to try it, even if you’re not a painter. It’s just so fun!
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3DTotal: I usually round interviews off with, “What’s your dream commission?” Or, “What advice do you have for the readers?” But I think I’ve overdone those ones now! So, for you, here’s a special one! Throughout your career, please tell us at what moment were you most ‘pissed off’, and why?
Tim: Oh dear... I had a PC that I wanted to drop off a bridge more than a few times. I’m sure that’s not uncommon. It was a rage-laden letter to Corel about Painter 8 that landed me beta testing Painter 9 and contributing to the Painter community for a little while! That’s actually a pretty funny story! In Version 8 of Painter, if you saved in the native file format your image would become corrupted! I wrote this e-mail to them and was ripping mad. I lost hours of work! Then, shortly after, I was in Austin TX at the Massive Black conference and my friend Dan was chatting with Rick
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Champagne the Corel rep about Painter 9. Dan turns to me and says, “You should tell him about your problem!” Rick’s eyes lit up and he said, “You’re the guy!” It was quite funny and I really enjoyed what came of that. Most people that know me will tell you that I’m a pretty easy-going guy, and that I don't get angry very often. If I’m p*ssed off it’s usually for a pretty good reason!
3DTotal: You’re not alone when you say losing work is one of the most infuriating
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things that can happen to artist; it’s kind of a rush of anger and dismay all at the same time. Well done for being able to channel it into an e-mail and give them some feedback, that’s a much better result than a projectile mouse smashing against a brick wall!
Tim: Yeah, my walls are plaster and I’ve never been very good with home renovations. I have grown quite accustomed to saving multiple iterations and doing it often. In the past year I’ve become a bit obsessive with protecting my data with everything in triplicate. I have a RAID that is the main storage for all my work and then I have a 500GB drive I carry with me so if anything should happen to my RAID I have it at work as well. |
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Storage is so cheap these days. It’s just good practice to take steps to protect your work. I worked with a guy who lost all of the existing pictures of one of his children because of a drive failure and there was no backup. That’s a bad day!
3DTotal: Thanks again Tim for your time, I hope to bump into you again in the near future!
Tim: Thank you, Tom. My pleasure!
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