Interview with Allan Mckay
Please tell something about yourself, family and your background in the CG.
 My name’s Allan McKay – I’m a visual effects Supervisor and Technical Director, originally from Australia – although a majority of my work up until now has been in Los Angeles and Canada primarily. I recently left Los Angeles to come back to Australia to work on Superman Returns at Fox Studios in Sydney. Prior to that I worked on a lot of films like Blade Trinity, Paycheck, Scooby Doo 2, Warhammer: Dawn of War, In the Rough and various other projects – as well as a lot of TV commercials, music videos etc.
I recently launched Catastrophic – my own visual effects studio/freelance site, specializing in visual effects, which right now is more for outsourcing effects from other studios who need high quality effects and with a set budget etc. Which has been working out great – I’ve primarily worked as a freelance throughout this but taken on a number of CG features, game cinematics and music videos, as well as various TV Commercials and what not. And so far it’s been a great experience.
In community you are known as “Particle FX Guy”, what u want to say?
Yeah it’s funny, I do get a lot of people coming up to me wherever I work – asking whether I can actually do anything other than effects. As much as I’m so happy to have established a bit of a name in various communities it also does pigeon hole me slightly to one area of it. Now that I’m complaining ;) I still found it enjoying when one of my mates last year from Digital Domain introduced me to another guy at Pixar as “The Particle Ninja”.
 What other training material is coming after Advanced Visual Effects Training DVD.
I’ve got a new DVD about to be released through turbosquid – which covers a lot more in-depth material on effects, more working as solid shots so it covers shaders, particles and handling the actual shots, and sometimes compositing them. So lots of crowd effects, liquid, procedural effects and other fun stuff, as well as scripting and advanced techniques.
I also offer consulting and on & off site training for studios and individuals, which so far seems to work quite well, as for a small fee I can usually talk with a studio and their staff before a project and devise the best approach and sometimes example scenes or scripts etc. to get them started on a job, which goes a long way in cutting down wasted production time on a project, which sometimes can be crucial.
I also plan to do a master class tour soon – and plus there’s some other stuff in the works. Basically try and give back to the community as much as I can in terms of helping others get to where they want to be as an artist & operator etc.
I have seen you’re all training videos, and those are always in Max, Afterburn. Etc. Do you favor any specific software/plug-in or do you consider all software packages almost the same.
I tend to use what gets the job done, I usually find 3D Studio Max with a few custom written scripts and plugins can go a long way, although there are a lot of jobs I also do in Maya. Both I find equal in strengths and weaknesses, so my preference really is on a job to job basis. I do like Maya’s flexibility, and I love Max’s ease of use. I’m able to do some shots in max within a couple of hours that take days to do in Maya, however I find I hit less walls with Maya as most things I can work around with a bit of scripting work, and other things Maya handles memory and larger chunks of data more efficiently.
 What projects have you been working on lately, and which project you enjoying the most.
I moved back to Australia to work on set on Superman Returns at Fox Studios in Sydney since then I launched my own studio Catastrophic, which has been booming with work. Most people are finding it a great way to focus their strengths in animation etc. and pass Catastrophic the effects work and more technical areas to handle. And with the pipeline and set up that we have right now for the studio it’s allowed for very easy and painless application of effects from other studios, and a good render farm always eases the pain as well!
Recently I’ve completed two CG Feature films, both for US clients, as well as a small handful of music videos & a couple of TV Commercials, such as lots of crowds work and digital pyrotechnics. Currently I’m putting together a large count of effects shots for a Citroen commercial for a very well known director. Although a majority of the work that comes through Catastrophic/myself is game cinematic work, so lots of Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 pre rendered cinematics right now for a lot of different studios.
And now with E3 in a little over a month away I’m plowing away on some very big title game cinematics during the pre e3 crunch! All of which look to be very very cool!
 To become a successful FX guy, do you find it necessary that you have knowledge of physics terms. If not, then which concepts must be clear?
Really FX and most areas of this industry benefit from being both technical as well as a creative artist. I wouldn’t have survived to this day if I were just a programmer or just an artist, so the real secret is bridging both of those strengths together to make yourself into an efficient as possible Technical Director. I tend to learn as much as I can on every subject I can, and keep myself thinking as both an artist, compositor and producer when tackling projects – as this keeps me thinking creatively as to what the client or director might want, and making sure I deliver it to the compositor in the most flexible and efficient manor so they can make the most out of every piece of work you output – and as a producer making sure everything is done as efficiently and cost effectively as possible ;) and lastly of course with as much technical knowledge as possible allows for either building tools or efficient scripts/expressions to get effects to not only work, but be easily changeable and replicatable now and on future projects.
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