3DTotal
- Tell us a little about yourself. Mike
- Hello,
My name is Mike Brown. I'm currently
a Senior Animator at Sammy Studios in
Carlsbad, CA . I enjoy mountain biking,
sculpting, working on my own episodic
short titled Nyxies: Creatures of the
Night and BB-Q'ing large quantities
of meat with magnesium road flares.
I also spend a lot of time with my fiancé
Christy.
3DTotal
- Who inspires you artistically?
Mike -
My
biggest thing right now is small independent
short animations. There's some amazing
stuff being done by one person or a
very small team people. Rustboy, The
Mr.Man Show, Lot of Robots, Poor Bogo
and Theme Planet to name a few. I'm
also heavily influenced by a few comic
book artists. Jeff Smith's Bone is great
and Michael Gagne is brilliant. I love
story tellers. Odd World has been a
big inspiration as far as games go.
I've also been blessed to have had the
opportunity to work with some amazing
artists so I'm always looking at their
stuff and wishing I was as good as them.
Phil Saunders and Ron Lemen had a big
hand in shaping my skills. Victor Navone
is someone I’ve learned a lot
from as well.
3DTotal
- You experimented with stop motion
animation when
you were
younger. What attracted you to working
in 3d?
Mike
- I remember the first time
I saw any kind of computer animation
equipment was around 88. It was one
of the early Symbolics systems and
at the time I thought it was so primitive
and clunky that it would never go
anywhere. Then of course, Toy Story
came out and I did a double take.
I really had no idea it would evolve
so far. It was couple years later
when I finally got my first computer
with 3D Studio DOS R3 and started
figuring everything out. The tools
had already evolved a lot by then
so it wasn’t to hard to start
applying everything I'd learned doing
Stop-motion to the computer.
3DTotal
- Do you think 3d will overshadow traditional
2d & stop motion methods?
Mike - No, they’re just
different. 2D or traditional animation
as some people like to refer to it is
still alive and well despite what the
executives at Disney would have you
believe. It’s all about the story,
not the medium. 2D animation is booming
in the television market. 3D animation
is just the flavor of the month right
now in the theatres. Not because it’s
better, but because the people at Pixar
and Bluesky and places like that know
how to tell a compelling story. Just
look at Dinosaur and Final Fantasy:
The Spirits Within. Both were visually
stunning 3D movies and I don’t
think either was very successful at
the box office.
3DTotal
- You worked at Presto studios until
recently, which unfortunately
had to shut up shop. What sort of
state do you think the CG industry
is in at
present & where do you see itgoing?
Mike
- Presto closed their doors
in August of 2002. It was a tragedy
but life moves on. I don’t think
Presto closed because it wasn’t
successful or it was poorly run, but
because it’s become so difficult
for independent developers to get
a fair and equitable deal from the
large publishers. I think the single
biggest problem with the CG industry,
and more specifically, the gaming
industry today is the pre-school attitude
that a lot of people have of, “Wow,
you mean somebody will actually pay
me to do this job”. The reality
is, if you want to sustain a career
in this industry for longer than 5
years, you can’t work 100 hours
a week all the time. I think a lot
of little start up shops and small
boutiques have the same kind attitude.
They think if they pay their dues
and get their title out the door the
publisher will take care of them,
so they under bid their projects and
over work their employees. The notion
of a publisher taking care of a small
developer is simply not true.The bottom
line is publishers care about one
thing, making money. Once the title
ships they could care less whether
developer X or Y has what they need
to survive. Unless you’ve got
something they want, you’re
out on your butt. Maybe I’m
a little jaded but I’ve seen
and heard the same thing over and
over again. I read somewhere that
one of the titles Presto shipped while
I was there accounted for something
like 50% of the publisher’s
revenue
for that year. I don’t know
how accurate that is but suspect there’s
some truth to it.
How did they treat us in return? They
spat in our face, and although Presto
is gone,
they are still spitting in our face
today. I’ve seen similar treatment
from publishers
while working for other developers
as well. Once the title ships all
bets are off
