Interview with Patrick Conaty
Can you give us a short introduction about yourself like age, location, employment etc?
 Sure. I’m 24 years old, grew up in Calgary AB and now living in beautiful Vancouver BC. I’m currently seeking employment and if my master plan goes accordingly, I’ll be working in no time!
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?
There were a few reasons for choosing Vancouver Film School (VFS). They have a great reputation for pumping out great talent in their 3d animation + Visual Effects program. I was also attracted to the curriculum where you study general 3d for the first 6 months and then chose a focused area of study for the last 6. I’ve been interested in fx and compositing for some time now and that was one of the areas to focus on. But I also wanted a good general background in 3d before getting into compositing. I’m glad too, because it not only informs the compositing process, but I realized I loved modeling much more than I thought I would. The teaching atmosphere was great, and very intense, but only for the first 6 months. There is much less direction during the latter half, which is ok, because it really challenges you problem solve on your own as well as learn from your peers around you. Overall it was a great experience.
If you could invent your dream job, where would you work & what would be your job title?
That’s a great question. If I could invent my dream job it would involve working very closely with a tightly knit group of friends with similar interests but slightly different styles and skills sets. It would be less about particular job titles and hierarchies and more about a collective of ideas and collaboration. I think the type of work we’d create would be more experimental and more about an audio/visual experience than anything else. Being an experimental company, the focus would always be on pushing new boundaries as well as mixing new mediums and new ways of experiencing computer graphics and film together. That is… in a dream world where we aren’t bound by the client’s particular needs…
What are the main programs that you use when creating your images?
Like most people, Photoshop has always been the foundation and staple for everything that I create. I use it for editing raw photos, creating texture maps, logos, web design and compositing. Beyond that I use XSI for modeling/texturing/animation. Maya for fx work, which I haven’t needed to use too much yet. I use After Effects for compositing and Premiere for cutting it all together.
Tell us in detail about your MTV hits projects that you have added in the demo reel, water and sand splashes in that project are real or you simulate them from live references.
 From the start I knew I would film those elements separately and comp them in post. Despite being an interesting challenge to do with particles or simulations, it was just too easy and practical to use the filmed elements. It was also a hell of a lot of fun to spend an afternoon at the beach throwing rocks into the sand and the ocean! When I filmed these elements I tried to match the camera position, angle and time of day to the original plate that I had shot. This way, not only did the splashes look more correct in the shot, but also it was easier to mask/integrate them in because it was just water over water, and sand over sand. The only exception was the first sand splash where half of the sand explodes in the air in front of the water, and some over the sand as well. For that, I used a combination of “key light” with a couple small masks, which seemed to work quite well.
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