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3DTotal: So, the usual question to start with… where did the 3D adventure start for you?
Alessandro: Well, I started more or less 10 years ago, employed as a CAD operator in a tele-communication company. So I started playing with the 3D functions of AutoCAD and I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to learn the fundamentals of 3D for myself. So I practised by myself with the early release of 3D Studio Max (1.0) and after a year I already had some kind of portfolio put together. In late 2000 I decided to make a living out of my passion for 3D art, and so I submitted my portfolio to Milestone (a game developer company), and luckily they hired me in charge of 3D artists.
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3DTotal: So where are you’re currently working at the moment?
Alessandro: I`m currently employed at Los Angeles based Blur Studio in charge of character modeler .
3DTotal: And what are you are working on? Or is it secret?...
Alessandro: No secret at all! I have various personal projects going on, all of which involve the making of 3D illustrations; I really want to push my illustrating techniques much further. I have this personal project of depicting “La disfida di barletta”, which was a historical event which really happened in Italy in 1503. I want to represent the moment of the fight between Ettore Fieramosca and Guy la Motte. You can see some of the work in progress for this piece, here. |
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3DTotal: In your career so far you have created characters, cars, artifacts, robots, scenes… Do any of these give you more joy, or do you just love the process of 3D creation?
Alessandro: Every model I have created since I started out, or at least the great majority of them, have been made with a precise purpose. I’ve always been more fascinated by the final result of modelling/texturing (which could be a cinematic or a still image), rather than the process itself. I love to contextualize things! Of course, I had to spend a lot of time (and still do) dealing with the technical aspects of computer graphics, but I
love the artistic process underneath much more. To give you an example, I’m much more focused now on volumes, forms and colour schemes, compared to in the beginning when I was totally focused on topology and the cleanliness of my meshes (we love quads, and we hate tris) and complex shaders. I guess it could be considered a natural evolution; you have to love the process and the technical aspects at first, because those are the fundaments with which you can free the 3D artist within. Then it’s up to you to decide what you want to do. In my actual artistic phase I really do prefer using 3D for illustrating purposes, rather than photo-realistic usages, even if, from time to time, I’m commissioned to do cinematic models - that’s probably the fine artist in me.
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3DTotal: You have worked a lot on Marco Spitoni’s ‘Code: Guardian’, what was that like?
Alessandro: It has been great seeing how much love and passion Marco poured into his short, and into those few models that I did for him. He had a strong vision about the overall feeling of his short since the very beginning, and modelling for him has been really pleasant and not constrictive at all, because he gave me complete artistic freedom… as always. There were almost no modifications once things were done (which happens very seldom working for my usual clients), because he knew that |
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I would have given my best to do things right… and l that’s what should happen when things are made
in people’s spare time when they share a mutua passion and when no money at all is involved. We are buddies, we love CG, we loved this idea, and so we did it! He was also totally open to suggestions from the team (I asked him if it was a nice idea to put a cameo of the ark of the covenant into the short, and he was like, “Cool, why not?!”. We are both lovers of Spielberg’s movies and so we went with it. The same happened for the picture of an aviator’s wife; I was supposed to do just a quick still image (a few
frames), but I took it so seriously and enjoyed creating that old style of female face so much, that I
decided to make a couple of high resolution rendered portraits, and luckily those renders have been featured in a lot of forums, which is great satisfaction, believe me. He’ has been a great source of inspiration to me, which I can confess. Part of my popularity over the past few years has come from
those models, and I publicly thank him for allowing me to be a part of his awesome project - it will
always remain a sweet memory of mine. |
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