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3DTotal: Hi Heber, can our readers have a little introduction from yourself please, age, location, current employment etc..?
Heber: I’m 23 years old living in British Columbia ( Vancouver). I am currently employed at Propaganda Games as a character artist on a nextgen first person shooter for ps3/xbox360.
3DTotal: Can you tell us a bit about what a typical day at Propaganda Games is like for you?
Heber: Well I come in grab my coffee and head to dailies (art meetings everyday) where we discuss the art assets for the game and bring up any issues whether they are design / technical / or aesthetic , after that i execute any changes into my work whether its modelling, texturing , lighting or shaders in the game engine.
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3DTotal: A bit about your history, when did it all start for you and did you go to art college or are you self taught?
Heber: While in high school I became very interested in graphics and web design I absolutely loved the artistic and technical aspect that went into creating an image. Eventually I found myself wanting to incorporate more 3d into my graphics, once I discovered Maya I was hooked. I found myself completely absorbed in this new world I had discovered so I began reading tutorials from many websites such as 3DTotal (Joan of Arc) the more I learned the more I wanted to focus strictly on 3d so after telling my parents I was not going to study computer science I enrolled into a small technical school in Vancouver and then a year later I eventually made my way to Vancouver film school , after going thru their 3d animation & visual effects program and creating my student reel I was ready to go to work.
3DTotal: Aha! Vancouver Film School, here at 3DCreative we see this name cropping up a lot, so much talent seems to come out of their doors, can you tell us a bit about how they achieve this?
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I think ‘V.F.S.’ is a great 1 year program, very intense and at times rivals some of the 4 year 3d programs that other schools offer. What makes ‘V.F.S.’ great is the students by far, they seem to attract a good crowd from all over the world. The structure for the courses is very organised in that you have constant |
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presentations you have to make to your mentors (in a theatre, you standing at a podium). The constant feedback is what keeps a lot of the students working at a good pace and progressing and also the students before them who they are looking to beat or match in skill and quality.
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3DTotal: You describe yourself as a character artist, what exactly does this involve? What stages etc.
Heber: In my opinion a character artist is someone who can not only model, texture, render and everything in between but also has a good eye for aesthetics and design. Such artist has to be able to understand and breakdown a 2D concept image so that he / she may be able to successfully recreate it in 3d. We always hear how something that works in 2d may not necessarily work in 3d, which tends to be |
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very true in production so you must be able to come up with solutions very quickly and efficiently and be open to changes.
3DTotal: What software do you use, are you happy with your workflow and why?
Heber: My main tools are Maya, XSI, ZBrush and Photoshop. At work I use Maya and at home I use XSI. In my opinion XSI has the fastest workflow and subd’s and I been using it for years now and I’ve yet to find anything that matches it in terms of speed or quality. Maya also has a lot of nice features and it works so well in production since its open architecture allows the tds to completely rebuild any part of it to suit our needs or pipeline |
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