What
does Pixel Perfect do next ?
Jason
Saunders kindly allowed us to
"interview" him on the 2nd April
2003. This is the full transcript from the
conversation:
B: Jason, tell us a little
about yourself:
J: I am 33 and live in Wimbledon Village,
London, with my wife Rosanna. I play as
much tennis as i can to stop my knees from
joining up.
B: How long have you been
using Real ?
J: Ooooh about 12 years on and off I guess.
As with many of today's Realsoft users,
I started on a humble Amiga
500 with Real3D.
Steadily threw thousands over the years
at Amiga
technology before the PC caught up. I must
get round to selling it all one day. PAR
anyone :)
B: We have all seen the
honeymoon shot of you newlyweds on the beach,
you better give us the rundown on that infamous
honeymoon (not too much detail pls) ;)
J: A bit of self indulgence eh.... ok.
Rosanna and I decided we wanted a totally
private, romantic wedding away from our
families. We both come from broken dysfunctional
families and figured a family wedding day
would be one big bun fight. We picked an
island called Parrot Cay in the Turks and
Caicos. A private island with one hotel
and nothing else. Perfect tranquillity.
We were married under a tiki hut on that
white beach in the picture and spent our
honeymoon there too. it was really wonderful.
B: Whats your background
Jason, what fields have you worked in ?
J: I studied art and design at Chelsea
Art College then went into TV Graphic
design for two years with English
Pockett, working on TV Commercials
and programme titles. Then worked for the
Moving Picture
Company, with the film production
and post production departments. I moved
to Stak Films
for 3 years as a production manager, filming
mostly commercials. Finally I turned my
hobby (Animation) into a job and set up
Pixel Perfect.
B: Can you tell us a bit
about Pixel Perfect ?
J: I set up Pixel Perfect around 1994.
Had a pretty slow start, as I was on my
own and trying to offer 3D animation in
the TV advertising domain. It was tough
if you weren't based in Soho with several
Quantels and SG's. I got a few TV slots,
my biggest success (financially, not creatively
:) was a 30 second tv commercial for Barclays
Bank in Kenya. It featured famous buildings
around the world made out of paper, folding
and unfolding in an origami style. I stumbled
into Architectural walkthroughs and Visualisations
with my first contract being a walkthrough
of the London Stadium in Hackney. It was
a 60 second sequence and took over 3 weeks
to render. I have worked on various corporate
projects, but in the last couple of years
have turned to concentrate on visualising
realistic environments.
B: You have a reasonably
new website, care to insert some gratuitous
self promotion about that here, and tell
us how you made it ?
J: Sure... www.pixelperfect.co.uk
how's that for gratuitous :) ...umm well
I designed it in Realsoft3D
and Photoshop,
structured in Fireworks
and Flash,
then finished off in Dreamweaver.
I recently updated my gallery section with
some new GI images.
B: You say you do commercials
and visualisations, does this mean you prefer
to do 3D work ? What sort of work do you
enjoy doing (illustrations, 2D, composites,
animations etc)
J: Yes I love 3D best. I still get a kick
out of starting with a blank screen and
building an image or animation. Its an extension
of what Photography or illustration is to
many as the scope for movement and change
is huge. As the conclusion of the dear old
Sculpt 4d
manual commented (my first 3d program),
'your imagination is your only limitation'.
(That's what I tell my clients when their
ideas look crap :) A bit of an exaggeration
for the abilities of Sculpt 4d, but it gave
me the impetus to learn and improve. I would
love to spend more time working on character
animation, but currently I am pushing my
visualisation skills and really enjoy it.
B: Do you use any other
software besides Realsoft 3D ?
J: On the 3D side, no not really. I have
stuck with Real
and Realsoft3d
as it offers a different quality render
to other programmes out there. I have nearly
jumped ship a few times, but we all know
the pros and cons of different tools. None
are the perfect single choice yet. Photoshop,
Afterfx,
Macromedia,
oh and occasionally Word
when I'm feeling dangerous.
B: Why do you use Realsoft
over other 3D apps ?
J: I believe it offers one of the best
rendering engines, Raytrace and GI. There
is stiff competition out there now, but
Realsoft
is still my favourite. The workflow for
me is the best by far. Its intuitive GUI
is excellent and saves me lots of time in
a production environment.
B: Can you give us a brief
workflow for a typical job of yours:
J: Ok, here's an example of a site in Brighton
I recently completed:
http://www.pixelperfect.co.uk/flash/North_st.html
You can see the two photos supplied by
the client (which are pretty bad). I was
also given plan drawings and some dodgy
3D render guides by the architect. I constructed
the design in realsoft, textured , lit and
GI rendered, then did some major compositing
and tweaking with the photos. Finally I
montaged the 3D render with the photo and
supplied it digitally to the client via
a download. Now I wait to see how badly
the brochure people have cocked up the colours
when its finally printed. Dear old CMYK...arrrgggghhhhh
B: Do you create all your
own objects or do you make use of libraries
such as RPC or marlinstudios.com ?
J: All bespoke builds by me for my client.
Except one object I bought years ago for
the Barclays
Commercial. I got a Statue of Liberty from
Viewpoint
for £500 (Ouch) as I did not have
time to build one in such fine detail.
B: Is Realsoft's support
important to your workflow ?
J: Yes I find the support essential at
times. From the User-list and Beta-list
to Vesa, Juha and dear old Andy Jones. I
see myself as more creative than technical,
so sometimes need help on the VSL side of
things.
B: Do you have any interesting
projects underway now that you care to tell
us about ?
J: Just embarking on a big pitch with a
design agency, to hopefully land a huge
contract with a large house building company
in the UK.
B: Do you have any pet
projects that you would like to do but cannot
for one reason or another ? (too busy, too
hard, no time)
J: Don't we all....never enough days in
the damn week. Yes, I would love to get
started on my mini WW2 screenplay, that's
been in my head for oooh about 6 years now.
Damn those bills.
B: What sort of features
would you like to see integrated into Realsoft
3D ?
J: A better key framer, especially improvement
on animating complex skeleton hierarchy
rigs. Separation of animating skeleton translation
from individual joint angles, creates posing
headaches at the moment. There are work
arounds, but I'm looking at fast workflow
solutions. The hair / fur feature will be
nice and I don't think it will be long now.
I am most interested in the GI improvements
at the moment.
B: And finally, is there
anything you wish to say to the RS community
?
J: Howdy. Keep up the great efforts by
all the RS folks. Its a very generous user
base, with lots of helpful advice and goodies
that surpass many other user lists out there.
The freebies and user support is and has
been vital to many of us over the years.
I hope everyone has a great year ahead and
wish you all safe and well in this battling
world we are living in.
All the best ... Jason
Jason, thank you very much for taking time
out to talk about Pixel Perfect with us.
We all wish you the best of luck with future
work.
Bernie
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