Interview with Pete Draper
What qualities or education required becoming a Visual Effects Director / Lead Visual Effects Artist?
Experience mainly, knowing exactly what you and your artists will need when it comes to wrangling with the assets in post, ensuring you’ve got everything noted down with respect to camera settings, position, on-set lighting, tracking & lighting helpers etc, clean plate passes, advising how vfx shots should be filmed so it makes life easier for everyone back at the facility, and advising of how a stage should be lit to complement an effect that isn’t (currently) there, which can be the most challenging to explain! Oh yeah, and trying not to get in everyone’s way on set! Away from set as the lead effects artist I’m designing tools and visual styles for key / hero shots, ensuring that the style and quality of work is maintained throughout and liaising with other key HoD’s. Again, experience really comes into play with this mainly having a good eye for detail, especially when replicating natural phenomenon, knowing the tools you are using inside out and spotting any problems early on so you can advise a solution; again, it’s simply about experience…
Which area of 3d do your really enjoy doing?
I tend to do a lot of particle & fluid work more than anything these days, yet I do find material & shader development enjoyable to be honest. But then there are days where I find that modeling is my thing and I am perfectly happy building stuff. I guess that’s the way I’ve developed my skills over the years as I’ve always been a bit of a generalist as I worked for small companies and did the occasional bit of freelancing when I started out which I think, for me anyway, is a good thing as I’ve been able to cover the majority of the software so can mix and match features from all corners to get the result I need. Saying that, I’m also starting to get back into 2D work and find that thanks to an old friend’s new site (www.happytoast.co.uk) he’s given me the inspiration to put pen to paper once again for fun for the first time in years and develop a new style which I may take further as a personal project. I’ve also had the opportunity to meet some key 2D designers including JAKe and trusty friend Curtis Jobling who have added to the inspiration.
What are your hobbies and where you see yourself after 5 years?
I’m starting to get back into running after several years sat on my apse in front of a computer and am looking forward to getting back onto a bike. Apart from that, the usual… socializing, meeting new people and boring them to death with CG speak, traveling to far-flung climes and boring them to death too. You know the usual...! I like my movies – the more abstract, thought provoking and challenging the better, plus those which are shot differently with good composition and editing; Children of Men immediately springs to mind – have a look at the cinematography, grading, composition and length of shots and try to envision the amount of prep and planning that some of the shots took, especially towards the end of the film. I must admit though going to the movies can be more of a critical experience than an enjoyable one as I tend to still be in VFX mode where I tend to look for matte lines, bad keying and tracking problems which is wrist-slappingly wrong and it ruins the experience. I really need to stop doing that, but it’s a force of habit that a lot of effects artists I know suffer from too…!
On which projects you are working these days, and which project you enjoying the most.
At the moment I’m working on numerous (undisclosed, sorry!) projects including a clean-up VFX job on a feature, documentary, titles & commercial work and we are ramping up for production on a vampire horror-comedy feature which I’m looking forward to as the script calls for some really interesting and challenging shots of various people being taken out in various gory ways! Should be a fun shoot to work on!
Thanks a lot Pete for taking out sometime for us from your busy schedule.
No problem :-) it makes a change from working through my lunch break…!
This interview was first published in the CGArena Free PDF Magazine Apr07 Issue. Download your copy now
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