ARTISTIC ALCHEMY: THE PERSONAL CREATIONS OF VFX TALENT

By TREVOR HOGG

In essence, an alchemist can transform matter into something else, which oddly enough, describes the creative process where pieces of paper, canvas, clay or a blank computer screen are turned into works of art by combining and applying different materials guided by human imagination. In the world of visual effects, digital toolsets reign supreme, but that does not mean that traditional mediums of oil paint, pottery or watercolor have been tossed to the wayside. Outside of office hours, private collections are being assembled that, in some cases, have entered into the public consciousness through art exhibitions and published children’s books. To showcase the sheer breadth of artistic ingenuity, seven individuals have been curated, each of whom demonstrate a unique perspective and talent, which we have the privilege to share with you.

Liz Bernard, Senior Animation Supervisor, Digital Domain Art has been a part of the life of Liz Bernard ever since her graphic designer parents placed an X-Acto knife in her hands as a child. The creative inclinations have culminated in a career that has seen her animate the Alien Queen in Ender’s Game, video game characters in Free Guy and a lawyer with gamma-ray issues for She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. A major source of inspiration is a deep love for nature, which Bernard draws upon when producing each piece of ceramic, either through the art of wheel throwing or utilizing flaming trash cans.

“I took a day off because there is a workshop that only happens a couple of times per year at a local community arts center where you can do an alternative firing called Raku, which originated in Japan,” Bernard explains. “The idea is that you fire things in a kiln. While they’re still yellow hot, you open the kiln up, reach in with tongs and quickly take your pottery over to a prepared nest of newspaper situated in a sandpit; it instantly catches on fire, and you up-end a miniature metal trash can, which has even more combustibles, over your piece so to create a reduction atmosphere. You get these crazy metallic reds and coppers, beautiful colors that are hard to achieve with other firing techniques. It’s an unpredictable, chaotic, elemental experience.”

“I find that my animation background influences me heavily because I’m always wanting to find an interesting pose for something,” Bernard notes. “You can do a straight-on profile of an eagle or find something that has more personality to it. I love finding those personalities in animals. and I try to put that into my work.” There is a lot of experimentation. “One of my favorite things to do right now is called Sgraffito, where I formed a piece of clay into a bowl, painted the entire interior surface in black and scraped away the lighter parts. What I’ve been doing with these particular pieces is begin with a footprint of a local animal, like a heron, and then use the negative space to start drawing in random shapes.” A different aspect of the brain gets creatively simulated. “The reason I like this so much is because it’s so tactile and real. The images we make in the computer, you can’t interact with using your hands. This is a nice counterpoint to what I do daily.” Visit: www.lizupclose.com

Zoe Cranley, Head of CG, beloFX

Major franchises such as Jason Bourne, MonsterVerse, The Hunger Games, Wonder Woman and Mission: Impossible appear on the CV of Zoe Cranely, who has transitioned from being a digital artist to a CG supervisor to a more managerial role. Throughout all of this, the passion for oil painting has remained and led to an exhibition at the Seymour Art Gallery in Vancouver showcasing landscapes transformed into geometric shapes and blurred lines.

“It’s being in them,” Cranley observes. “You can paint or draw anything you want. I used to do a lot of still life and flowers which look pretty. but they don’t mean anything to you. Landscapes are so epic, and generally most of the paintings I’ve done I’ve been there, so I’m drawn back to them and can remember that exact moment. Being in Vancouver, beautiful landscapes are abundant wherever you go.” Unlike visual effects, the goal is not to achieve photorealism. “When you look at a picture that is real, I don’t have that desire to keep looking at it because you go, ‘Oh, yeah. That’s what it looks like.’ I love it when people recognize not instantly what it is, but then have an attachment. I feel like I’ve done what I had set out to do, which is to capture the essence of that place in an abstract way.”

“I’ve been using oils for at least 20 years and won’t go back to anything,” states Cranley, who is not a fan of digital painting. “There is something so magical about putting a paintbrush to a canvas. I like that it takes so long to dry and is so malleable for so long. You can do so many different things to it based on the stage of drying. Also, I like the science of the various solvents that you can use. So much of it is the fundamentals of design, color, negative space and composition. Generally, the meaning to me is what makes a nice picture.” The quality of the work and brushstrokes have improved. “I’ve gotten a lot more critical and precise. The edges are neater and I have learned to varnish properly. I have refined the process. A lot of people have said that I’ve gotten more abstract. Last year, I learned how to digitize everything, which was a whole process in itself.” Visit: https://www.zoecranley.art

Sigri de Vries, Compositor, Important Looking Pirates There is no shortage of high-profile projects to work on whether it be Shōgun, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Ahsoka or Foundation, but this has not stopped Sigri de Vries from embarking on a journey to discover her medium of choice. Along the way, she was hired to create the cover and 12 illustrations for the children’s book Balduin, die Entdecker-Fledermaus by Bianca Engel. “I was expecting more kickbacks and having to re-do things and such, instead I was given a lot of freedom with how I wanted to do the illustrations and what parts of the story I wanted to paint,” de Vries states. “I started with a few sketches of the various characters, and once I got the green light on those, the rest of the illustrations were smooth sailing.”

Experimentation is the only constant. “I always start with a sketch,” de Vries remarks. “I erase the sketch so you can almost not see the lines and then do the watercolor and a pen on top. I found that to be what I like aesthetically, but I’m still at the beginning of this journey where I’m experimenting a lot and looking at YouTube videos for inspiration and techniques. I follow a number of artists on the Internet and want to do what they do. I want to try everything. I’ve done watercolor, clay sculpting, digital art, acrylic and ink. It’s my hobby, so I’m just having fun!” Initially, the plan was to learn digital painting to do concept art. “I did a lot of landscapes and played around with compositions. I also did a lot of matte paintings at work, but matte paintings are more photo collaging than painting. As my journey progressed, I got interested in characters and creating them in a cute illustrative style.

“When I finally had enough money to buy an iPad, I switched from Photoshop to Procreate,” de Vries states. “Since then, I’ve been painting so much more. Procreate is so easy and intuitive, and I can paint and draw directly on the screen, which I love. What a lot of artists do is paint with an actual brush on paper, scan that and use it as a texture for a brush in Procreate. My next big project is a scanner/printer so I can do that stuff as well because it sounds fun to make your own brushes.”

Visit: https://www.artstation.com/sigri

Mariana Gorbea, Senior Modeller, Scanline VFX

Modeling creatures and characters is something that Marianna Gorbea does on daily basis for Scanline on projects such as Game of Thrones, X-Men: Dark Phoenix or Terminator: Dark Fate, but that all occurs within the digital realm. This expertise has also been taken into the physical world where clay is literally shaped and transformed into figments of her imagination. “I started with ZBrush and then moved onto clay,” Gorbea states. “The biggest difference is that you have to be mindful of what you’re doing with clay because if you mess up, those hours cannot be taken back.” Lessons have been learned from working with clay. “It has made me observe more of the whole picture, to be more careful with details, composition and how a sculpture looks from all angles; that has helped me to make better sculptures in ZBrush. The tools I use with clay, I try to replicate in ZBrush and vice versa.”

Gorbea is attracted to crafting fantastical creatures. “Mexican culture is fascinated with death, and some artists can turn dark things into something beautiful. I’m drawn to that, and that’s why I try to sculpt creatures and characters.” Designs are simplified for clay. “Building armatures is the hardest and trickiest part with clay. It has to be able to stand. You have to be familiar with skeletons. For example, if I’m making a horse, I’m looking at horse anatomy, how the bones are built and proportions. I build the armature first because if that is not done properly, it’s not going to work.”

Three types of clay are utilized: oil-based, polymer and water-based. “All of them are quite different, so I have to think about how I’m going to make a structure and base for it,” Gorbea remarks. “Water-based clay dries quickly, and I use it to make bigger sculptures that have fewer details. With polymer or oil-based clay, you get to spend more time with it and put in more detail; I use them for smaller sculptures. The sculptures are usually made of several pieces, and I create layers of detail.” Depending on the size, a sculpture can take five to 10 hours. “The hardest part of making a sculpture is to give it personality and convey emotion. If the face, especially the eyes, don’t work, then the sculpture is not going to work.” Visit: https://www.instagram.com/margo_sculptures/

Adam Howard, Visual Effects Supervisor

Interwoven with the space exploration universe envisioned by Gene Roddenberry, Adam Howard has been lauded with Primetime Emmys for Star: Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: The Next Generation as well as nominations for Star: Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Enterprise. However, his artistic eye has gone beyond the realm of Federation and Klingon starships as he paints with light to produce character studies of friends, colleagues and celebrities.

“The human face is a never-ending source of wonderful detail and surprise,” Howard explains. “Based on a photograph, I start with a detailed pencil outline that determines the overall shape of the face. Within that outline, I also mark out areas for shadow and highlights. I paint masks for each major area: face, eyes, ears, neck, hair, beards and clothing. Once each area has a clean mask, then I start the actual painting. First, come base colors and areas of shadow and highlight followed by middle ground detail then eventually on to finer detail. I paint in digital oils because I love being able to blend my paint to help give subtle form to each area. I also love the fact that by painting on my iPad, I can paint anywhere. I am not restricted to a physical studio or materials.”

Howard begins each portrait by painting the eyes. “Eyes truly are the window to the soul, and I try to capture the real essence of each subject by painting the fine detail and shape of eyes. Sometimes, it can be a really tiny detail like a single point of highlight on an eyelid that makes the person feel real. I love those moments when the face pops off the page at me as the person I am painting. Depending on the portrait, I sometimes work in additional detail over the final painting from the original pencil outline. This can assist in deepening lines around the eyes and accentuating hair detail. I used to do colored pencil and ink portraits on a plain white background.” The backgrounds have become more detailed. “This plays a big part in portraits, like my paintings of Ve Neill and Steven Spielberg, where so many films they have created are represented in the background. Sometimes, the backgrounds take longer to paint than the person.” Visit: www.adamhoward.art

Marc Simonetti, Art Director, DNEG

Initially trained as an engineer, Marc Simonetti decided to become a concept artist and has made contributions to Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, Aladdin and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. He has also illustrated Discworld by Terry Pratchett, Royal Assassin (The Farseer Trilogy) by Robin Hobb and The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. “When I started my career, the only job available was for book covers in sci-fi or fantasy,” Simonetti notes. “I grew up with that trend. Maybe I would have had a completely different style if I had tried fine art first. But that’s life.”

“Sometimes, I start with watercolors or pastels, but that is rare because we have to be fast,” Simonetti remarks. “The only thing that I try to do all of the time is to change my process because I need to have fresh options. If I stick to something then my picture will always look the same. At the same time, it’s trying to be as honest as possible. Most of the time, I start with pencil and paper because it’s the easiest one. Once the composition is set in my mind, there is an app, Substance 3D Modeler, that allows you to sculpt in VR, which is a lot like ZBrush. I use my Meta Quest headset to scout everything. I can put lighting on the model and find different cameras. I also can create a library by sculpting a tower or window that are used later on. Once I have the model, I can use Octane, Cinema 4D, Blender or Unreal Engine. Then I render and paint it in Procreate or Photoshop.”

Sketches are conceptualized without references. “I want to be as free as possible to set up a good composition,” Simonetti states. “However, when I need to fill the composition with elements, I try to have lots of references whether it’s architecture or anatomy. Everything has to be grounded. Even when I’m making an alien, it has to be believable. Same thing with architecture. I want people to connect with it. If you don’t have any reference for the scale, it takes people out of the painting.” Lighting is critical. “When I’m using 3D, it’s a huge help. I’m trying so many different lighting scenarios to fit the correct mood and to be as impactful as possible.” Visit: https://art.marcsimonetti.com/

Andrew Whitehurst, VFX Supervisor, ILM

Given that Andrew Whitehurst studied Fine Arts before becoming an Oscar-winner for Ex Machina, his belief that music, pictures, lunch and ball sports are the greatest achievements of humanity is not entirely surprising. The enjoyment of studying faces and drawing caricatures has come in handy. “If I know that we’re doing a digital face for someone, literally the first thing that I will do is type ‘an actor’s name + caricatures’ and search the Internet,” Whitehurst reveals. “If there are loads of good caricatures then it’s going to be an easier job because something is capturable about their likeness. If there aren’t that many good caricatures then it’s going to be much harder. There aren’t many good caricatures of Harrison Ford, and it was hard.

“There is an interplay between the way that I paint and what I understand about the world, which I have gleaned from doing visual effects for a long time,” Whitehurst notes. “I’m always trying to make something psychologically interesting. I love abstract art, but I’m not good at doing it. I started doing a lot of landscape paintings, and I discovered what painting is to me; it’s a way for me to meditatively spend time somewhere I find special or engaging in some way; and to have the opportunity to think about it, enjoy it, and try to capture something of it, but in a reflective way.

“If I’m going on location or holiday, I have a sketchbook with me,” Whitehurst remarks. “I will do black-and-white pen-and-ink drawings. Some of them I will scan and add color in Procreate later if I feel like it. The drawings tend to be a more immediate reaction to a place and have more of a comic book style because that is generally how I draw. I like to exaggerate and use a little bit of imagination.” The paintings consist of casein on wooden panels. “Casein has the advantage over gouache because when it’s properly dry, it doesn’t reactivate as easily, so you can paint over the top of it, and it’s slightly creamier in texture, so it’s a little bit like oil paint but is water soluble and dries quickly. I would paint in oil but for the fact I can’t have my house stinking of turpentine!”

Contact: @andrewrjw on Cara and Instagram.