Interview with Robert Kuczera
Which software and renderer are you using for your CG work and what’s the main reason of using those?
Well...I use Maya and Photoshop and depending on the project Mental Ray for rendering.
I was also playing around with Vray…a very powerful renderer, but now really ready for Maya what is a shame. I use Maya because I started to work with Alias Poweranimator, but I think all other software is as good...3DsMax...LightWave, XSI all are very good packages.. I am just not used to work with them. For my short film Dragon Slayer I only used the normal Maya renderer.
 What you enjoyed the most Films, commercials, music videos, short films and why?
This is the difficult question…all of the projects have some pros and cons…but I really enjoyed my time in berlin working on HNA…not because the project was so great... More because the people in the team were great and I really enjoyed Berlin as a city.
And Munich is great...very different to Berlin, but I met my girlfriend here ;) You see, it is more important how the work environment is, people and city that the project itself..
Which is difficult to animate – realistic characters, cartoon characters, animals or reptiles and why? Please tell us about the commercial “Bundeswertpapiere”.
I think all of the different styles have their pros and cons…but I think realistic animation is most difficult because a) everybody knows how a human is moving, so if you do it little wrong, everybody sees it straight away. But I also think it is very boring to do realistic human animation, because it is “simulating” and not really animating and motion capture will do the best results.
This is different with creature animation, because here you can bring your own style in.
And most fun are cartoon characters… this is real character animation…you can express yourself and bring in most of your ideas.
For the commercial Bundeswertpapiere I did the animation for the turtle. So we had a director, an animation director and a supervisor who worked with on the commercial… there were also rigger and modeler and so on, but I didn`t have much to do with them. So the director briefed me and told how the character looks, what are his needs and so on, this is important for every shot. When I had an update on the shots, showed to the animation director and if he said, the animation is good enough, we showed it to the director and with the animation supervisor I talked about any issues with the pipeline, (rig etc).
 Please explain what major problems you see in the upcoming artists animations and what 5 tips you like to give to improve?
I think that the animators nowadays have a lot of opportunities learning animation. You have very good schools, DVDs and books... everything you need.. So easier to got a good animator. But because it is so “easy”... there are more animators on the market and the companies can choose who they take and they can also lower the rates.. As an advice…practice... practice... that’s it... and see how other animators work. In general I think there are 2 kinds of animators, the talented one and the one who work really hard to become good animators…
What is your advice for those who want to create their own animated short? Are there any basics which need to remember while directing/working on short film?
Yes, 3 things, get a good story, plan your time, and based on the time you need a good design, so you can concentrate on the animation. Because the story and the animation of the character helps in selling the film. I think even if the look and the characters don`t look so nice, but the story is strong and the animation is really good.
That’s my main advice… what also would be very helpful, if you do your short in a team… so you don`t have to make decisions on your own. And you can divide the different areas of 3d to people with different skills.
Thanks a lot Robert for taking out sometime for us from your busy schedule.
Artist Website: www.3dcharacters.de
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