The VFX Artists Podcast

Share Knowledge - Keep Learning with María Carriedo | TVAP EP43

October 17, 2022 María Carriedo Season 1 Episode 43
The VFX Artists Podcast
Share Knowledge - Keep Learning with María Carriedo | TVAP EP43
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

In this episode, we chat to María Carriedo, CG Lead at Freefolk and former colleague of Daniel's at The Mill.

Born in Mexico, María studied VFX at the prestigious Gnomon School in LA before working at Psyops on commercials. Since then she moved to London to work at The Mill before her current role. In this interview we learn about María's journey into VFX and her approach to continuous learning and development.

As a lead María is involved in the hiring process so her showreel advice will be invaluable to any 3D Artists seeking new projects. While trained in Maya, María mostly works with Houdini so we discuss the merits of the 2 giants in the 3D industry as well as touching on Zbrush, Unreal and the new Solaris/Karma renderer in Houdini.

There's a lot packed into this interview so you will want to check it out!

Einstein image credit: Smart Energy/The Mill, "Join the Revolution"

00:00:14 : Current role

00:00:32 : Education and beginning of career

00:14:34 : Showreel advice from the point of view of a hirer

00:19:15 : What seniors can learn from new entrants

00:20:33 : What qualities make a better 3D artist

00:26:17 : R&D Stages of a project

00:29:25 : Reference from everyday life

00:33:54 : Solaris and Unreal

You can watch all our episodes on our YouTube channel.

Thank you for your support! We appreciate you!

so hi welcome to the VFX artists podcast this week we have Maria carriero hi guys lead CG artistic[Music] so um tell us a bit about yourself and uh and what you do yeah well I'm Marianne I am currently working at Freeport I'm indeed and therefore four or five months now but I guess I should start or at the beginning uh I'm from I'm from Mexico so I went to school into uni there uh I did a Comedia design so it was like a graphic design with a little bit of 3D but uh when I got into my 3D classes I realized that's what I wanted to do so I found a school in L.A called Noble School official advice and uh yeah I decided to pack my bags then go there for two more years and uh yeah it was it was amazing such as at school I honestly recommended um it's been going I think it just turned 25 years now it's it's one of the pioneers of VFX I guess if you can still get their tutorials online like you don't have to go to the school but yeah so good and um I got my first job in La thanks to my teachers at Norman um one of them was working at sayok Stephen delala who doesn't work there anymore but he was my lighting teacher and I guess I did a good enough job that he recommended me for internship but yeah it was good brilliant yeah I got to work on some cinematics and just some commercials so that's kind of how I got foot and the door so when was this man here this was oh God uh I'm in Industry seven years now so this was uh after I graduated so maybe 20 15. more of us right 2000 2015 maybe yeah yeah something like something like that I can't remember sorry but but yeah I started psyup that was my my first official job um as an intern then when that internship ended another one of my teachers would normally recommended me for a position a digital domain um so I I went there as well for a freelance project for uh It was a commercial for collaboration with Ferrari and fancy watch brand called float I've never heard of it before but very expensive watches but it was it was really nice I got to work with industry veterans and just learned from the very best so yeah it was amazing um it's an interesting place to work at but yeah really good yeah so because we so we met at the Mill in London and like a while ago so I just wondering how what was your journey from La so you've gone from Mexico to L.A yeah and then did you go straight to the UK after LA or did you work in other studios in L.A or did you work in somewhere else yeah so I finished school and then I worked in L.A for two years I believe yeah two years um after DD I went back to Scio because you know I had visas and all that in the US I thought Mexican uh it's not that easy so silent knew me a bit better they offered me a one-year Visa so I stayed with them and then uh you know Trump started and uh brexit had just happened so I knew that if I wanted to stay in the US it would be a bit harder so I kind of needed to do a jump uh to the UK before they checked the rules because oh sorry something I didn't measures I'm Mexican Spanish as well so I have a Spanish passport which allows me to work in the UK at that time before brexit happened so because it had happened but they hadn't changed the rules yet I managed to move and did an interview with the mill and thankfully they hired me so yeah so that was five years and a bit ago so yeah that's kind of how I started here really cool so have you always worked in commercials yeah I did a little bit of cinematics um and a little bit of film but like not a lot it was more like helping at DD or a tire pen at the middle when something came up that they needed help with um but I really wanted to work on long form so on film or episodic because I had been working in commercials for so long and it is cool you do learn a lot in commercials and I would recommend it for anyone that is starting because it's so fast-paced and you get to do a lot of workflows and put on a lot of different hats that you you really become a better artist but I kind of have had enough of questions I wanted to try it my uh my skills in like a film or episodic sort of workflow so that's why I ended up moving to Freeport so yeah that's what I could do brilliant can you talk about what you're working on I guess you're still under NDA at the moment yeah I mean we actually just um and I don't know if you've heard of it but not yet but we'll check it out yeah it's kind of like a look at this I guess the the easiest way to explain it would be like Harry Potter but instead of wizards they are fairies and if they go to this Fairy School and there's like a lot of magic effects and you know like Monsters and it gets pretty dark and yeah it's it's an interesting show it was uh it was really cool to be part of it so so yeah I'm excited to to see it cool and so as a as a um as a lady you're managing a team of artists at three folks yeah so freakov is quite small so it's been an interesting Dynamic um and since I came into the project where they had already started I was more like co-leading I guess you could say because there was a lead already on it and he kind of took me under his wing and to show me their Pipeline and their workflows and I was involved on it um I guess it's a co-lead I would say so I would I would keep my comments with fresh eyes because I came in when they had been working on it for eight months or so um and also did some shots of my own so that was really focused up I'm a lead but I still an artist at heart so I just still love to work on the box you've got to stay on the box just tell people what to do absolutely so what's your tool of choice is it uh Houdini yeah so Houdini and I guess Maya but this public so I believe it's more of the future of the effects and some more interesting to work with uh that Maya nowadays in my opinion um so yeah that's been my weapon of choice did you find the transition easy or difficult or is it was it particularly challenging no it was yeah I guess um they all do the same thing but you just have more tools you could do me I would say um uh it's a different way of thinking because it's not based uh and it's not destructive which is why I like the most about it you know like you have your notes and your chain of notes and you can always change something you never really you could break it but you can always trace it back to where it broke and fix it and sometimes Maya is more like a closed box it breaks it takes a little bit more start again yeah so yeah I really like Houdini I've started learning it if they haven't already cool so um as a generalist what sort of tasks are you mostly doing[Music] um you usually get involved since pre-production well at least it's a league so you get scripts uh you hop on the bid and you more or less see what um the effects needs you're going to have and see what kind of artists are you going to need to tackle it um so I guess you you would usually start in assets so I love asset building I guess that's how I started although I turned into a journalists so modeling sculpting texturing look the room all that sort of stuff um and then I guess you would uh moving to lighting as a journalist like yeah because I guess you also have reading and animation and all that but I don't consider that yeah you should leave it to the professionals um so I guess when you move into lighting afterwards and then do a little bit of slap comps uh to help comp um understand what you were trying to do with lighting you know like you have some special passes or IDs or whatever you you have put in your scene to kind of help make the effects look better uh so yeah that's I don't know if that's what this this is the question that's cool so um did you find it actually because you use nuke for slap comms did that make it easier to transition to Houdini just using um yeah I guess it's it's similar idea of like it's not based um of course one is 2D you want us to do your yeah because you could do a little bit of fitting in your file but yeah it is a similar way of looking at it uh just gets a bit more complex I'm not the best comfort so I don't know I'm sure you could get a lot crazier look if you wanted to but but yeah it's similar way of thinking it's just something these numbers you can always go back or you know duplicate a whole branch and something else stuff like that and I know you've moved everything to Houdini it's even even modeling and and you're talking about modeling and texturing the asset build are you still doing that in Houdini as well and sculpting and things like that um it depends on the asset uh so I still feel like hard service modeling in Maya is a little bit better maybe it's because that's where I ruined it and uh it's pretty robust of what you can do and it's quite easy um you can do the same Houdini but it would mean learning the certain tools that I have in modern learning I kind of focus more on my Houdini side on like the procedure of modeling of things which you can't really do in my uh so like saying little procedural models that you know will help you in like a bigger scope project so like um I don't know like variations on on little houses or uh you know like a bridge um it's just it's so vast you can literally do anything that your skills allow you to and it's still something that I'm learning uh but yeah to your answer I still model mostly on Meyer unless it's more procedural modeling which I'm still kind of learning how to do and then sculpting I would I would keep the sculpting at least more high-end sculpting inside brush um and if it's like a quick sculpting I would do it including me like a Terrain or like just little little things that you kind of do right now but if it's like very high-rise um separate so I guess that's why I'm a journalist because I just like all the different tools yeah absolutely I think that's much one thing I mean with um as a compositor I had to learn Shake I learned After Effects and then I learned shake and then I learned nuke but that's over like 12 years I've only and I've obviously only really used one at a time I never have to like bounce between them whereas I felt as a generalist you constantly I have to add add another software even if it's just a renderer you know even if it's just moving from like Mantra to Arnold or Arnold to Unreal you know yeah yeah it keeps it keeps changing and so I guess you have to keep it educating yourself uh and try not to be left behind because I guess something I have noticed in the industry is um maybe industry veterans are a bit more reluctant to pick up new tools but when I talk to students um they're very keen to learn and I love seeing them like for example we were interviewing for a position of Freeport and I was so surprised and so happy to see that this artist was starting to learn Solaris and um just picking up new workflows in Houdini that that the industry hasn't really moved forward on yet because I guess it's so hard to implement in new pipelines that uh it really takes a few years to bring in new workflows so yeah I try to to keep learning and to grab whatever new software like watching tutorials that's as much as I can and talking to students because they always bring in something fresh uh from the industry you know because it's just good yeah that's very cool that's very cool so are you um are you getting in you find yourself getting involved with some of the recruitment process now I mean obviously you won't just started free fog but yeah yeah uh I actually I'm very happy I've been um um fortunate enough to to help on that so we were running an internship scheme called future call so I I interviewed some people along with the head of CG um our recruiter uh so we went through all the reels and just really found one person we bought two one was more TV so I didn't select the 2D person um but we got an effects artist in to work on our project so that was yeah that was really cool and um true yeah sorry so as someone that reviews reels and has actually had to select people what advice would you give um for people's show rules for generalists and effects artists yeah I would say Obviously it was your best stuff at the start uh specify what you did on it because sometimes these over a project and I found that I would see the same shots in different reels because these were people from the same schools but I didn't know what part they did on that project specifically so put your best stuff at the start because sometimes they're so long I had to watch like hot or so then so I couldn't sit down and see every single piece so but you're most impactful shot at the start is specify what you did what software did you use uh what render um and I start with the end and maybe if you're applying for a certain company say you really like ilm or something I would say care to them uh if you can so show stuff that they could use in their production so if you like sculpting more like Disney character stuff or very stylish stuff I wouldn't necessarily send it to Island you know so send stuff to the studio that you're applying to that makes the most sense maybe that means having different videos uh to send to but I think that works better you know if it's a feature Animation Studio don't send um more VFX stuff you know just be a bit more make it more make it make more sense like yeah make it keep it targeted and also like um commercials and and feature films obviously yeah yeah I mean different I guess commercials um you were playing the same skill set so it's it's the shorter time frame and you always have like a nice product to to sell or an experience or something the commercial is for but the skills are the same um so yeah I would say the reels could be similar that's interesting because it used to be a big barrier but I think that was also partly because of um standard definition yeah there's some commercials nowadays that are just blooming blow me away they're so amazing and like the quality honestly is on Park to some of the effects heavy sheltered in some movies you know so um and when so with with the internship so you've obviously you're an intern yourself and you're you're dealing with interns now what advice do you give to people that are at an internship or some kind of apprentice or training role um I would say be very often and willing to learn which I think is quite obvious but um you know just ask the dumb questions it doesn't matter I much rather have an intern ask me questions non-stop than to sit there being too scared to ask me what to do or if they don't understand something on the pipeline or you know like uh something undershot is broken or they didn't quite understand the uh the tasks that I've given them I'd much rather have things to just ask so that and I I guess showing progress so if you're an intern probably your lead is going to ask you how you're doing at the end of the day and like whatever happened to work and all that but I guess just showing showing your process how how you start with the task um and what you can show at the end of the day I think that would be probably my advice but yeah just yeah brilliant I mean I've I had a similar as a lead I had an experience where I they weren't even trainees they were sort of mid but I might suggest a technique and they obviously weren't familiar with it but rather than saying what do you mean they've just gone oh yeah I'll do that and then I've seen the next version they they haven't done it and they probably didn't know what it was so and it it is that feared like no one knows everything all of these tasks are so big I mean even 2D which is I think not anywhere near on the level of the level of breadth of knowledge that you require as a 3D generalist no one knows all of it and so when you come to Houdini and then you'll put in 2D Houdini and zedbrush and Maya together possibly plus a renderer or two renderers and some of the renderers might be quite new like Solaris then I mean people just need to ask questions and and not stop yeah I think that's true for seniors as well I know and like I I also like checking in with with seeing what new tools have to learn and like what skills they have but I don't probably have you know because they're fresh out of school they probably have had more time to see tutorials and like see uh Beyond class or something so there's always something to learn from each other so I find that really cool and very interesting I mean that's absolutely true I mean as a student you have this opportunity um to really dive deeply into into the latest and greatest and in production you just have to kind of use the thing that you know is going to work because you can't risk not delivering yeah but as a student you should definitely not be afraid to experiment and yeah I guess the states are not that high when you're in this school project but if you have again movie or a commercial to deliver you can't really change your pipeline pathway you can't really test the new tool that came out or the new render or whatever sometimes we often get very focused on the tools and the software but apart from the actual software itself and the tools what kind of qualities do you think make people better um 3D artists easy to work with like it sounds so obvious but uh you could be the best artist but if you're just not nice to be around people or not you're going to hire you they're not going to recommend you for a job uh the amount of jobs I've gotten just because people tend to like me and they recommend me and I can back it up with my work I guess that was quite important so and it's the same if I know of a great artist that is also really nice boyfriend of course I would recommend them you know so I would say that um not being um kind of selfish with knowledge like I've I've seen sometimes in studios for an artist maybe half a really interesting workflow and they're kind of I don't want to say selfish but you're selfish like the kind of guard that no one is just like oh I want to share this because then you're gonna know this way of doing it and uh I'm gonna be special anymore but I feel like if you can make production better and you build a tool or you learn a new workflow sharing is always what was good and you know like uh if you share your nose you're probably going to receive something like this will eventually so I would say that so be nice sharing knowledge uh and just trying to keep learning um as you said there's just always new to new softwares something to learn so don't just sit there and get comfortable because you already have a job and you know what to do you know just keep studying uh read all the Articles watch tutorials you know stuff like that yeah it's brilliant I've been with regarding sharing I'd say another aspect of that is always reward the person who shares I mean always like you know say yeah Mariah Carey who showed me this this great new workflow in Houdini that I didn't know and it I mean it's it's a minor thing but I think it one it gives them that immediate benefit but it kind of encourages more people to share maybe those that are being selfish and they see someone getting you know Big Ups And Kudos and maybe even job job recommendations or promotion recommendations because of stuff they're sharing yeah that might encourage them even if they're purely acting from self-interest to just also share their tools yeah of course I think I think that's pretty cool I don't think it makes any sense as well because I mean what happens if if they come in if they're sick one day or or they go on holiday for two weeks and you know their shot can't be moved forward yeah or it has to be redone because maybe they've done what they've done is perfectly fine but because no one else knew what they were doing or nobody knew knew how to do it they just had to use a different workflow and then suddenly whatever special resource that added is lost in the final shot that goes on the show yeah I guess that is it takes some time sometimes to your doing and the processing you're right from picking up the other people's shots but sometimes yeah it's uh you kind of need um right next to you to kind of explain what they were doing are you working all in the office or are you working from home or is it a mixed workflow uh it's a hybrid workflow although right now we're opposite so I'm working from home every day until November we were in Waterloo street so right across from NPC but we're moving to spitalfields area and it's a really cool office but it's a listed building and uh you know all the rules with historic buildings that it needs to be very well taken care of I think that's how you're hand digging because they can't get machines in and like stuff like that so it's still later that our office um but yeah in theory we should be there in November and uh so are there any particular advice when you are working from home when you're not direct indirect contact people of maintaining communication and and keeping things moving that are unique to work from home yeah so we always do uh what we call rounds in the morning so you you log in usually at nine and maybe we do around 9 30 to kind of get people some time to grab some coffee or whatever and rounds is just to say hello and see what you are what you're supposed to tackle that day so say like hey uh Daniel you're working on the show what are you going to do today uh okay cool and then you just give us uh the plan for the day of what what you're going to do and then you check in again later in like a dailies for example so you've already been working part of the day and you submit whatever you contacted dailys and then you will review it all together so it's kind of two calls maybe to chat with people and make sure everyone is on track when you're not working together I think that's pretty important and then yeah just chat individually if something comes up with your leader you want to chat with another artist about a specific short asset or whatever so yeah um I think with with management that I found with 3D especially some of the more advanced Houdini stuff um in terms of is it's quite hard to assess progress I mean it's much easier in comp you can see this shot is better this key is better you know everything sort of is advancing even if it's still a whip but sometimes in Houdini there could be a lot going on and you don't necessarily see a lot happening for a while yeah it takes a while it's all a process gets certain effect or how are you going to do a certain thing um I guess the is the slower stage because you're really setting everything up uh like our last project got the Build Together uh I can't mention what it was but there were a lot of trees if you remember or in fact something yes so just um I mean I didn't do the tree setup that was are amazing artist but just seeing that iteration well the effects on the trees and how they were going to move and like it took so long but once you get to that stage where you can use all the r d that you've used and really see it on the shot and start making more sense and then with comp magic it starts looking pretty because at the very start it nothing looks that nice it really needs that final uh Beauty pass and all that bandit.com borders too so it's all collaborative effort so so yeah this part maybe looks like nothing is happening but it's very important steps to kind of troubleshoot while you kind of you can't do what the the tasks that you that you have so yeah it's amazing how much r d we have to do isn't it because there are no two shots that are exactly the same there's always this oh how do I do this even if you've done it for years and you've done similar things but there's always like you say I've done smoke before but now there's smoke in trees yeah it's crazy it's always uh something different and like I mean I guess you can't recycle some setups from another job and you know tweak it to make it fit this other job but there's always some time that you're going to sit down and put your thinking up and see what you how you're going to do this one um and yeah it to me is my my favorite part actually r d because it's really troubleshooting and seeing what helps and what doesn't and it's a lot of learning also you pick up some really cool techniques in this stage so yeah I love this part of the project but also once you see it come together and making it look pretty it's just so satisfying it's satisfying yeah I mean that's what you kind of always want to be at the beginning and the end I think the least satisfying yeah is when you're just in the middle of lots of projects that can be a little bit frustrating because you've neither had the fun of the r d you know you're getting to see how good it can look at the end yeah exactly it's just the old stuff I have to do if it's part of the job I mean it is also a job we get paid to do it so yeah you get all this cool fun stuff but you've got to do some other stuff as well yeah um what about um what is your approach to reference so with something very particular a very particular look what what is your what is your sort of go-to in terms of finding reference and and getting that sort of ready and and sharing it yeah I guess um it depends on a project but you can find reference from whatever you see especially if it's nature reference um it's it's all around you or trying to replicate replicate um reality so of course if you notice something interesting interesting like a trick or in a certain way or like a interesting brow texture like it's always good to take pictures so that's a good one um I'm not an animator but for example if if you were taking video of yourself trying to act something or like just finding online reference of what you're trying to replicate as a journalist I guess assets sometimes I don't have access to them so of course online I try to find everything pictures whatever I can get my hands on and I mean as as you're aware we do magical worlds sometimes so things that don't exist so trying to find reference of that uh can be quite challenging but of course you can always refer to other vfax shots um I don't know what whatever inspires you relief it's like a magic like the show that we we finished which is like very very magic I guess nothing is really real so whatever looks pretty and whatever inspired you you can always just make something in there so and then what about because obviously we don't get always the final say on on how things look what is your way of working with um notes or preparing for notes in advance yeah that was what was challenging I guess you you always try to hit the brief um in the way that client uh is expecting you to so trying to be clear with what you were given um we sometimes have to present different options um you don't want to flood the client through the options either but I guess you try to present two or three different options of what Eurovision could be and that hopefully they go with the one that you like the most but but not how it happens sometimes um on the idea you're making a product so you have to please the client uh that you're making things for so you kind of have to detach yourself a little bit from the final product and of course the secret um like I said link between you and the client is is production um as an artist what what do you consider makes a good producer um oh these ones this one's tricky because I had some amazing had some you know not so great um but I would say I producer that is on your side on the other side it's always I mean obviously I'm the artist right or one of the artists but sometimes at least in commercials uh you see some peruses that try to maybe partner to client a bit too much or be too agreeable with uh maybe client requests are outside the budget or like moving deadlines forward and just things that screw your art is over so I would take taking care of your artists first that would be great for a producer of course taking notes in meetings I have producers that don't take notes for some reason and I ended up doing part of the job uh that was a long time ago though um where else would be just keeping track of things because sometimes as a as a lead you have to keep track of so many other things in your own end that is good to have someone that uh who knows at what stage we're on when is the next deadline uh what we're supposed to send you know that that sort of thing so yeah brilliant um and since we've gone through a lot of we've talked a lot about different techniques and softwares and so on um I was wondering what you thought are likely to be the up and coming sort of workflows or tools that aren't necessarily already in pipelines yeah so so for example as I was talking before who didn't find anything possible use of USD pipeline um but I have I haven't seen um a studio yet using it fully I have heard of some studios trying to implement it for like halfway through our production and it really firing so then having to go back on whatever they were doing before but I think that's the The Way Forward um I'm very keen to see how it moves in uh how to reduce uh user current pipelines and move to the next thing um I think well why are still very much in use but I think that I'm seeing more people move to Washington uh for basic lighting rendering and shading um what else unreal I don't use so real uh yet but I think it's going to be it's already very um widespread widespread use but I think um I think they're gonna use it more like for example we're seeing it more in Virtual production and pre-production so a lot of previous being done or real I think that's really interesting because sometimes you have clients that are not like the effects Savvy and when you show them some previous uh like the traditional previous size just maybe done in like my every part it all looks quite ugly so it and it's not animated properly nothing has like nice textures it's not really brand new so sometimes it's hard for some people to understand what they're looking at but uh if you show them something more you know real or stuck a bit more polished they have better quality I think that helps um for a client to kind of understand what's going on yeah and uh it helps to make up their mind earlier yeah I'm not using it also in Virtual production so building your previous world and then taking that on shoot and placing your cameras um according to the world that you're building and not just trying to put your subject on like a green or blue screen and not really having an idea of what's going to be behind them I think that's really cool and it's really opening a whole world of possibilities for like um of reality effects and task working together I think eventually it's going to merge and uh it will probably be a real time under VPN but I don't think we're there yet I think we're a good 10 years per month and we've been kind of talking about real-time vendors since I started I think it's always been the idea yeah but it still seems to be one hour per frame yeah if you still have to render it in the end it's real time for an Indian if you want to use that for you know the effects but in the side for pre-production and virtual production I think it's amazing and it's it's already merging that cap that we had before so I think it also really help actors when they are in a green screen Studio like I don't know if you you've seen um I think what's the production of the whole bit when Syrian McClellan was a bit um I think he got a bit frazzled because he was acting on his own in this like green screen room and he was like oh this is no acting it's not what I signed up for I'm not really sure what went down but I think if the actors at least knew what was supposed to be behind them and like had a little bit more to work with I think that would really help everyone so yeah no it definitely until peace is also camera in dlps I mean I I don't know I often see a lot of shots where they're just framed incorrectly because the camera approach obviously framed the art the the the performers who are in shot yeah and there's something very important that should be in shot or perhaps they're focused on the actor because the thing that should probably be in focus is doesn't exist so they don't want to have the whole shot out of focus because it looks wrong to them right of course but in reality they're putting something in effect that's here and that should be in focus and not the actor so I think also people talk about the actors obviously because they're the famous ones but I think also for camera camera and lighting even lighter the gaffer you know when they put where they put their key lock you know where they set up the lights or yeah things like that I mean it can really really help yeah it's crazy um what are you learning at the moment what am I writing oh God I keep trying to learn things um well as I was telling you I've been the past two years or so I've made my transition to Houdini um so I've been trying to get a photo of Vex which is the coding language recycling Duty uh which you can't get so complex and like all the Geniuses Network it affects uh they blow my mind like all the maths and all that stuff so I'm just trying to learn a snippet of it to make my job a bit easier on some things so I've been very bad uh Karma Solaris um what else um I think that's it for a moment I mean that's plenty really anyone who's ever looked at Houdini knows that that's plenty um one we talked about your Early Education just to even get what kind of things were you strongest at school were you more sort of an Arty person or the math science person um more memory so anything that was remembering things so like history or geography all that stuff I was terrible at but um my side was actually pretty good and um drawing uh what else I was good at um and I guess philosophy those were like my top marks which is pretty weird combination but I guess it explains also uh the effects is that that Perfect combo of artistic and Technical so which I I guess is why I ended up doing what I do so you know I have the the technical brain which is it's you know sufficient to do what I do and then the artistic side of me that it's also something that you have to keep nourishing it just uh get better at your arts and you know never stop creating on your end I mean the philosophy sounds Oddball but I think anyone's actually worked in production and realized that if you're able to express ideas complex ideas clearly then that's a really important skill[Music][Laughter] I don't really feel any language barrier if I'm honest if I'm ever struggling it's actually because I have a really bad headphone so I'm sure sometimes you I anyone watching the podcast on YouTube will see me sort of Leaning that way and that's just because um I lost the cable to my good headphones I have this one I'm not selling you something like set up oh I have great I have great um Bluetooth headphones but um I when I when I use them for the podcast I have a cable and then you know how it is you always find that you have cables that are just not quite the right size yeah so there's a bit of that but it's been really amazing to finally get you oh thank you thank you um on the podcast and so I would like to thank you again for coming on and we look forward to um catching up with you again yeah I don't think so much done[Music]

Showreel advice from the point of view of a hirer
What seniors can learn from new entrants
What qualities make a better 3D artist
R&D Stages of a project
Reference from everyday life
Solaris and Unreal