Interview with Aasa Ooraikul
Hello Aasa, could you tell us a bit about yourself, location, employment etc. and what first inspired you to take up a career in the Arts Industry?
 Hi, my name is Aasa Ooraikul. I’m from Thailand. When I was a kid, I saw my brother drawing on a comic book and I felt like “This is so cool!! I want to make my own comic too”. That’s when I found a world of imagination that I like. I got a bachelor degree of Interior Architecture from Assumption University where I started learning 3D software and decided my future career as 3D artist. During a time in University, I took a part-time Maya course for 6 months (twice a week). After graduated, I’d been working at CG Company called Imagimax Co.,Ltd. for 3 years. We don’t really have a clear position in the company so I had to do almost everything from modeling, texturing, lighting to compositing, sometimes animation. With a variety of position that I had, it forced me to understand the entire production pipeline. Afterward I decided to go study abroad because I wished to improve my skill and open my vision. Since then, I’d been studying at Vancouver Film School and I was able to finish my demo reel last month.
You recently graduated from Vancouver Film School, so what’s the reason of choosing VFS over others and how do you rate the overall teaching atmosphere?
The reason why I chose VFS is because I like creating my own model. Every time I watch modeling reels that come out of VFS, it just blows me out and makes me want to achieve that quality. VFS is a great school. I met a lot of talented people and learned a lot of stuff. Also the atmosphere in VFS made me feel like a real world of industry. We have a huge room where students sit together and working on their project. It forced us to help each other and share comments with other classmate. On top of that, we get comment from our mentor as well as we have people from industry come to look at our stuff as a Lab assistance which is great. One other reason is because 3D program in VFS is a one year program which is suitable for me because I don’t want to spend too much time studying.
In Siggraph 2007 you are one of the guest speaker at Pixar Booth, tell us how the feeling of Guest Speaker at Pixar Booth was, and are you nervous?
The day that VFS told me to be a guest speaker at Pixar booth, it was shocking. I was scared because English is not my first language and I might screw it up during the presentation however, I know this is a rare chance that not many people get it. So after a discussion with VFS 3D Animation Head department, I decided to go. It took me 2 weeks to prepare everything such as Power Point, Maya scene file and my script for presenting which I had to memorize everything.
The day at Siggraph, I was so nervous in the beginning but when I started talking, it just goes with the flow. I feel relaxed and being myself. Everything went smoothly and people seem to pay attention on my speech. It’s a good experience that I’ll never forget. People at Pixar are also nice to me. I got a lot of stuff from them after my presentation for example: T-Shirt, Cap, Book, etc.
The topic was “Creating a Dragon with Zbrush and RenderMan for Maya”, Please tell us some important points in detail for our readers too which not able to attend the Siggraph due to any reason!
The point of this topic is pretty much about how I used RenderMan for Maya on my demo reel and how it has an impact on my work flow and my final render. I started with pre-production which is how I got the idea and how I applied into 3D space. Then I talked about production on how RFM helped me to achieve what I wanted. In the end, I talked about post-production which is about how I composed my scene and what kind of render passes that I used.
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