The 3D Art Direct Podcast: 3D Digital Art | Artist Interviews | Digital Art Conferences | Sci-fi and Fantasy Genres

Welcome to session 14. This digital arts interview is a little different, since I’m interviewing the husband and wife team that run the GeekAtPlay studio website which is totally focussed on education for 3D digital artists. What delighted me most about Vladmir and Amy Chopin’s efforts for teaching 3D Digital Art applications is the sheer amount of content they provide. Today is May 2nd 2013, and I’m looking at their YouTube channel – GeekAtplay  studio and I can see 7 new videos uploaded one day ago.

Now admittedly, this is probably to do with the fact that Vue 11.5 has been released and Vladmir is showing what’s new for this version, so this is probably a few more than he would normally upload, but during our interview  he mentioned he had created around  1500 training videos.  In fact GeekAtPLay specialise in Vue, so if you want to start digital art with creating 3D environments with a great sense of realism, you could download a trial or free version of Vue from e-onsoftware.com and start looking at Vladmir’s training videos on YouTube.

Now Amy Chopin is equally busy, she’s the author of 3D Art Essentials, which is a great start for 3D digital artist in getting to know the basics on the history, the terms of 3D art. But it covers modelling, posing, texturing, creating scenery, animation and rendering.

Vladmir is originally from Moscow, Russia and now lives with Amy in Utah, in the United States. I started asking Vladmir about his early experiences with film and classic animation whilst in his teens.

Find out more about our free 3D Digital Arts magazine, Podcasts and Digital Arts Conferences at www.3DArtDirect.com

This session is a little different from what 3D Art Direct podcast normally presents, since this time we are exploring the making of a science fiction series –which will be a drama/comedy produced with the aid of crowdfunding.

The series is called C.A.S. Nobility – that has the tagline of “These are not the heroes you’re looking for.”. Nobility is the name of the starship in this series with a curious crew of characters on board.

The project is notable because of it’s story, and because of the amount of passion and power behind the project which is generated in gigawats by E.J. De la Pena, the producer AND because he has managed to cast the actress Claudia Christian (from Babylon V) .

This project was brought to my attention through Danny Gordon, who is the new conference and community manager for 3D Art Direct. He is one of the 3D artists on the project and invited me to follow the production of this series. I’ve always had a great interest in the production and what goes on behind the scenes of sci-fi television series and films.

I mentioned that this series was going to be funded by crowdfunding. What is crowdfunding? It’s a financing method that involves funding a project with relatively modest contributions from a large group of individuals, rather than seeking bigger sums of money from a small number of investors.  In this case E.J. De la Pena (E.J. for short), the head of production for this series is using Kickstarter.com for the crowdfunding campaign.

Now if you’ve never been to Kickstarter.com, it’s definitely worth a visit, firstly to check out E.J.’s campaign for Nobility and to contribute to his project. Secondly to see some of the other projects going on. Forinstance a few months ago, we noticed that a new version of the classic 3D vector game Elite was going to be remade through Kickstarter.com, so there are some projects definitely related to 3D graphics that are being funded through this clever means.

So I’d urge you to look at E.J.’s project at nobilitytheseries.com, view the fun campaign video he has created for Nobility.

In this first interview with E.J., we find out how the whole project started, how Claudia Christian came onboard. We learn how the story and characters were crafted, we talk about the Nobility ship design and discover some of E.J’s production team.

This session’s podcast has a wonderful interview with Paolo Ciccone, author of the reality software for Poser and Daz studio which helps these applications take advantage of the incredible LuxRender engine, allowing photo realism for Poser renders. Version 3 of this popular software is about to be released as I record this session on the 7th April 3013.

Paolo originates from the city of Trieste in Italy and originally worked as a software engineer for Borland before entering into the digital arts world with Reality. He has over 30 years’ experience as a software developer.

Paulo also presented at the Poser Expo : Runtime Live conference, held between the 22nd and 24th of March 2013, which was the first ever conference Poser users, presented through our 3D Art Live webinar service in partnership with Runtime DNA. I give a special thanks to all the presenters that did an  incredible service to the Poser communities in the professionalism of their content. Many attendees found the content of the eleven webinars rich and rewarding, especially as they go over the recordings of the conference.

Now if you couldn’t make the conference, we covered such topics as:-

The materials room, two rigging masterclasses, behind the scenes of reality 3, dynamic clothing, realityPaint, the GoZ plugin & preparing models in zBrush for Poser, composition and story telling with Poser, lighting, rendering, a UV mapping masterclass as well as history of Poser the software and it’s communities through the years.

These were all recorded and you can gain copies of these as individual sessions. But it works out at the best value if you purchase the entire set of recordings and as listeners to the 3D Art Direct podcast, you can use this code “reception10” to get $10 off the price.

Just visit www.3DArtLive.com/recordings

This session we have a fantastic interview with Clint Hawkins, who is the CEO of YUR Digital, a content marketplace website that also offers a forum and art gallery for digital artists. YUR hosts regular competitions and there is one running now at YURDigital.com with the theme “twisted” with first prize of “Filter Forge Professional 3”.

As we go into March, we have the world’s first Poser on-line conference. If you catch this podcast before March 2nd 2013, you can sign up for a free introductory webinar at www.3dArtLive.com. We will have a number of highly skilled presenters offering nine different tips for Poser and Poser Pro users. The introductory webinar includes details of the main Poser conference which will be on the 22nd-24th of March with at least 10 webinars on topics such as Morphing, Rigging, Reality3, Z Brush, UV Mapping, lighting and mastering the materials room.

Who will be presenting?

Included is Traveler from Runtime DNA, Les Garner from Sixus 1, Nightsong, Arki, Lady Littlefox, Phil C, Sergio from Xurge 3D, Chuck Taylor (Nerd 3D) and Ray Phelps.

You can get tickets while they are still available at the www.3DArtLive.com website in the “Event Registration” area. So if you are a Poser  or Poser Pro user, don’t miss out on this unique opportunity to connect with other users and meet some leading artists and content creators for Poser.

So I’d like to get into the main feature with my interview with Clint. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast and found it a valuable or enjoyable interview, please leave a review in iTunes to help other digital artists find this podcast and let me know some of your suggestions of who you would like to be interviewed in a future session.

This month's interview is with Syyd Raven who in her own right is an award winning 3D artist but has built the massive Poser centred community at Runtime DNA this community which started in 2001, with Colm Jackson and Eric Van Dycke.

RuntimeDNA is a large digital community in the 3D Poser industry. It provides a wide selection of digital content and provides a great learning environment for its members with a very active forum who are from all over the world. A large user art gallery also reflects the vibrant community.  The store boasts over 2500 products with more than 100 content creators.

In this interview we learn from Syyd:-

- How Syyd started in digital art.

- What has improved in the current Poser 9 and Poser Pro 2012 versions for texture artists.

- What were some of the early challenges when Syyd co-created Runtime DNA.

- The strengths of the international staff at Runtime. 

- All about the Runtime DNA community and how it was formed.

- The story of how her top two products were brought to market.

In association with Runtime DNA, we are creating a live conference for the Poser community, called "Poser Expo: Runtime Live". This will be a set of webinars held over the weekend of 22nd to the 24th of March. Sign up to our mailing list at 3D Art Live to learn more about this conference:-

http://3dartlive.com/

My interview this session is with Shaun Williams, who is the king of mass space 

model production, creating numerous models for the various games software he has 

worked on through the 20 years of his career.

In assoication with this I have been reading today that there has been a 

noteworthy article from the U.K.'s independent newspaper announcing that the 

Museum of Modern Art in New York has publically supported computer games as a form 

of art. This of course includes 3D games. There has been a lively debate over the 

last decade of whether games can be described as art. With this announcement from 

this prestigous New York art museum, then it looks official, that games can be 

described as art.

Visitors to the Museum of Modern Art will soon see Pac-Man displayed alongside 

Andy Warhol and Picasso.

Initially there are 14 video games, including the iconic Pac-Man, Eve on-line and 

Myst (Chuck Carter issue 12). to start off this new category in its collection. 

One expert who advised the curators, said gaming could increasingly become “one of 

the most important” art forms.

The museum sought out scholars, historians, critics and legal experts from the 

computer game world to draw up a list that includes The Sims, a series which by 

last year had sold over 150 million copies. Art connoisseurs may raise an eyebrow 

as gamers will actually be able to play the titles in the gallery.

So perhaps in years to come, some of the work that my interviewee Shaun or you the 

listener is creating may end up in an Art Museum, with pride of place.

Enjoy the interview with Shaun

Welcome to session 7

And a warm welcome to those who have just found the podcast via iTunes or elsewhere. After listening to this episode, I'd invite you to leave a brief review on iTunes and we'd welcome any feedback to improve the content or your experience of these sessions.

This session is called "Sci-Fi Spacecraft Design: Is It Really Rocket Science?"

I'm discussing this question with two special guests: Rob Caswell who we've previously interviewed as a DAZ Studio artist in Session 3 and secondly Tom Peters who likewise publishes artwork on DeviantArt. 

They've both worked as illustrators for games and Rob and Tom have had an on-going discussion on sci-fi spacecraft design for some time. 

The crux of the topic is whether more science should be involved in sci-fi ship design, or should we just go with cool looking ships that would end up burning up in the nearest atmosphere.

After listening to the discussion, I'd love to know your thoughts on sci-fi spacecraft design - are you more pro-science or pro-cool looking design in not worrying about the science or somewhere in between. 

You can do this by replying to the session 7 show notes at 3DArtDirect.com or visit us on Facebook at facebook.com/3DArtDirect.

Welcome to session 6.

And a warm welcome to those who have just found the podcast via iTunes or elsewhere. After listening to this episode, I'd invite you to leave a brief review on iTunes and we'd welcome any feedback to improve the content or your experience of these sessions.

In this session I interview a British artist called Deedee Davies  who creates some outstanding artwork with Carrara Pro, Vue, Poser Pro and Photoshop. We cover items such as how to create artwork with impact, selecting a good colour pallet with complimentary colours for an image, wrestling with Poser expressions, creating artwork for book covers and to top it all we talk about a vampire personality test; what type of vampire are you?

If you own Poser and are struggling with any aspect of this software by Smith-Micro, I'd like to invite you to a live webinar Poser workshop that will be held on Thursday September 27th at 20:00 EST (Eastern Standard Time). This is an open event for any aspect of Poser that you want to learn in more detail, which Les Garner from Sixus1Media will provide tuition for. Due to the nature of this event, it will have limited spaces available. For those attending, you will get a piece of free Poser content created by Les from his store, which you'll get a download link for during the webinar session.

To register go to 3DArtLive.com and you'll see an Event Registration link at the top of the home page, or you'll see the event calendar in the side bar. 

For experienced digital artists that would like to partner with 3D Art Live and present webinars though our channel, please get in touch with me via the contact page at 3DArtLive.com.

I hope you enjoy the interview with Deedee and take a look at her portfolio at www.3dfantasyart.co.uk/

Les Garner, 12 years in the digital arts industry explains how he has  kept going during the ups and downs of his business Sixus1 Media.

We talk about ZBrush, which is one Les's core modelling applications in his workflow. We cover what ZBrush is and what makes it different from other modelling software.

We go over ZBrush's features of pixols and polypaint and it's advantage of producing models with a relativly low poly count but with high texture details - perfect for gaming models.

Listen to how ZBrush has made a fundamental difference to Sixus1Media's rate of production for models.

Discover Sixus1Media's top two recommended features of ZBrush and how they have been used in recent work. Les also reveals the top selling custom made and production proven brushes for ZBrush.

There's also a few key tips for those just starting out with ZBrush.

Finally there is a LIVE WEBINAR where you can get direct access to Les Garner for an introduction to ZBrush. This introduction will help you overcome the unique interface that many struggle with when they first learn ZBrush and give an overview of the most important basic concepts of this superb modelling application. There is a LIMITED number of places for the very first webinar. Get more information at www.3DArtLive.com where you can book your seat.