Interview with Jason Edwards
Hello Jason, could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background in CG and are you self taught or taken some training?
Hi, my name is Jason Edwards, I live in the U.K. and I’m a 3d Artist. I’ve been involved with ‘Digital’ Art since the end 1994. Before then and as far as I can remember, I’ve always had an ability to draw or paint, but I never took it seriously despite my family and friends going on at me to go to art school. I just wasn’t convinced I had a talent. I just wanted to do my thing and travel. After I’d ‘worked out’ my travel bug, I went back to work and got a job printing people’s photographs. But to pass the time while the photos were developing I would sit and draw my friends and colleagues as caricatures. Then one day purely by chance, the Director of the company approached me after he had seen my sketches hanging on the department walls and began to talk to me about my work and would I be interested in working on an Apple Mac with a bit of software called Photoshop that had the ability to manipulate photographs. I didn’t know what the hell Photoshop was at that time but it sounded like it could be fun so I agreed. But before I could take it on fully they wanted me to do an art test. I was given the task of creating a greeting card design from scratch which would be used in conjunction with peoples holiday snaps. So that night I sat down and did exactly as they’d asked. The following day I presented the work and they gave me the job on the spot, with a pay rise as well. The following months were then spent being trained to use Photoshop 3, an Agfa film recorder and scanner. Once I’d finished the training course my job as a photoshop operator began, and I ended up doing a whole gamut of work, from photo restoration to creating advertising posters along with more greeting card designs. After about 3 or 4 years with Photoshop I got into 3d and like Photoshop it was purely by chance.
I’d bought my first copy of Computer Arts magazine and I’d seen images of the original Wipeout Game for the Playstation in it - I became hooked. A few copies later I got hold of Strata vision 3d on one of their cds and learnt that and the following summer I enrolled on an evening course for 3ds Max 2. After passing the course I landed my first 3d role at a company called GraphicFX (later to become Striker3d) using Lightwave 5.6 (a bit of shell shock coming from Max) to create a well known 3d comic strip here in the UK called Striker that features in our biggest tabloid newspaper, The Sun. I gradually moved up in the ranks in the 4 years I was there to become a ‘hands on’ Production Manager to oversee Britains first 3d produced comic book. The aforementioned jobs allowed me to hone my skills as a digital artist as well as get me up to speed with very tight deadlines; it was all learning on the job. Moving on from Striker, I went on to help create another 3d cartoon strip called The Premier, again for the Sun Newspaper. I was pretty much the senior guy there and was responsible for a lot of Storyboards, character models and rigs along with prop and environment modeling with 3 other very talented artists.
So, you are a freelance character modeler, please tell us what qualities, skills character modelers must have and why you have chosen freelancing in place of fixed job?
I think being a character modeler is one of the most challenging areas of 3d. I’m very passionate about characters, be them realistic or cartoon. Characters are all about evoking emotion, and enabling the audience or viewer to relate to something as opposed to an environment which is about mood or ambience.
The most important aspects to know (in my opinion) straight off the bat are anatomy, form and observation. Without a grasp of these basics you are going to be in trouble, and of course there are the skills to put all these things together for an image or painting.
Freelancing? Hmm? Yeah it has its perks but overall I actually hate it, it’s such a lottery trying to find the next job to pay the bills, for me it’s too much pressure just to have a life. Some people love the freelance circuit and hats off to them for doing it, but it’s not for me - I’m only visiting. (Laughs) I think I’m just bitter as I was one of the unlucky people to have been layed off full time work in the last year due to the so called cost cutting. Hopefully it will end soon and we can all get back to a bit of normality.
What is the reason of choosing Maya in your arsenal, in place of other 3d programs? Which thing you like to change or improved in future version of Maya?
Well my choosing of Maya came from a) using Lightwave 5.6 and b) watching the dvd extras of the The Mummy movie when it came out in 1999. A colleague and I were watching it at work one lunchtime and we were staggered at the stuff ILM were churning out on that and also the Podrace for Episode 1 which I’m led to believe was made using Maya V1.5 – anyway we pretty much convinced ourselves that was the way to go with 3d, so we managed to get a demo of Maya 2.5 with Alias Wavefront in London for a couple of hours and we were sold, then it was a case of convincing the boss to get it, which we did!
I’ve now used every version of Maya since then except Version 7. So I’m kind of married to it in that respect and am very biased toward it, I don’t even have to think when I use it anymore, I just do it. I’d would like to see just one version of Maya on the market with all the trimmings made available at a reasonable cost, not the heavy tag it has still right now and I must admit because of this I have recently considered making the move to Modo and possibly Blender.
