Interview with Yousef Ikhreis
What’s your comment on the Autodesk acquires Softimage?.
It was like a shock or bad Joke, and I asked myself: for god sake why is the fate of Softimage to be dealt like that? (He) doesn’t deserve that …then after accepting the fact, I thanked my god...why?
1- Crying can’t turn anything back.
2- No one can blame Autodesk because they are a successful company
3- Autodesk is the most powerful company that is able to understand and undertake Softimage.
4- Autodesk has excellent knowledge and experience in the CG industry ;( its obvious).
5- Softimage has a solid history and very powerful to compete (no doubts!), so...Softimage will stay alive and healthy, because everybody loves the power. Also the words of Mr. Marc Peti reflect that.
6- Who can guarantee that Softimage will be down in the near future?
7- By looking at the last two versions of Maya (Autodesk) we will notice very good enhancements, such as the n cloths, n particles, selection tools, UV folding, animation layer, speed…, all of that should be considered as a confident points.
8- As we remember, when Adobe acquired Macromedia everybody thought that all Macromedia products will be distorted or metamorphosed, on the contrary Flash has great features with Action script 3, bones, Animation tracks…
9- If you are a wealthy rich man and start to bankrupt, and you have a Rolls-Royce car that you love very very much, but you have to sell it, and you got two buyers, rich arrogance man who knows how to deal with such a car and strange man who has no license to drive, for whom will you sell the car? Of course to the rich man because with him it will stay clean and live, I know you will feel that your pride is heart (I am so sorry for Softimage developers and employees) but this is the fact. Facts are the strongest words.
10- Hatred waves are increasing for Autodesk, EA, Adobe, Microsoft... but these things are always happening form the beginning and changing naturally, look at ZBrush for example, they are the innovative of Digital sculpting technique, and everybody thought that it will be dominating on the digital modeling industry, but look around you now, new Mudbox, Silo, Modo created their own displacements,… even Softimage or Maya after three or four releases will be able sculpt as we do in ZBrush, on the other hand for the last release of ZBrush it’s revealing their pure vision by working three steps ahead. Everything is changing whether Autodesk or Adobe or any else, but now it will be faster.
This is a NEW ERA, and I agree with Mr. Kim Davidson President and CEO of Side Effects Software.
As an Art director you have worked on several projects, can you share the experiences when you think why you are in this job, or how to overcome the obstacles faced?
The most important mission for the Art director is visualizing the ideas with extra spices, our work starts from idea or request from the riverside A (client), and inventing or recreating ideas and concepts to be visualized in new image through the dashing water (deadline) to the Side B (the audience), and back to the Side A, where the audience will turn to be the dashing water instead the deadline, sometimes it could drag the Art Director to the waterfall or to the Side A safety with river virgin.
Every task or project is a new river with different new sides, rolls and conditions, sometimes the river is wide and deep with storming winds, sometimes the water is shallow, cold and freezing, or torrential with dangerous broken pieces, other times the gold is shining under the water, or there is no Side B - the client at the Side B is dead (ran away)….
Every project is a different challenge. One of the most obstacles that we face is getting the real talent and creative minds around us within the perfect scheduling. Creative people like Mercury you can’t catch them easily.
I love Art Directing because it’s always pushing me to think more and more.
- The client: who is my client? How he describe his request? How he move and waive his hands? What he likes? His artistic awareness! How can I move step ahead and impress him? How to earn his trust? How much is he paying? …
- The audience: who is my Audience? His age, education, culture and tradition! What he expects to see…
- The media type: is it a presentation show? Demo reel? Magazine? TV? Internet? CD, DVD…
- What is the plan…?
- What are the words that I need to choose for communicating with the Storyboard artist? The graphic designers? The animator? The editor…every work type needs to be addressed with his special words and vocabulary to understand you clearly…
