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Interview with Sze Jones
The Character Modeling Supervisor of Blur Studio talks about modeling girl characters, Kitty Hunting and her career. Two of her cg girls were featured in Playboy magazine.
May, 15th, 2006, by Raffael Dickreuter
 |  | Sze Jones, Character Modeling Supervisor at Blur Studio.
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How did you get started in the CG industry and why?
In my childhood, my family provided me with art, dance and music training. I attended an art high school in Hong Kong, Jockey Club Ti-I College. At the age of 16, I left Hong Kong to study abroad and completed a visual communications program at Northern Lights College, British Columbia, Canada. In 1993, I transferred to a 2 years college and majored in Graphic Design at Morris County College in United States.
Back in 1993, there were not many affordable colleges with a computer graphics program. The magic year was in my second year in college. I took an elective class about special interests in TV and movie graphics. That was when I fell in love with movie magic and computer graphics. The first system I worked on was called Wavefront 3130. My first assignment was a daring attempt to model a desk lamp that I failed miserably.
After graduation, I began to search for a 4 year college to pursue art education.
I continued loving CG and would often read CINEFEX to learn more about the industry. There were not many CG forums yet and I couldn’t afford a high-end $15,000 SGI. I learned CG modeling in NURBS by reading the user manual from the glossary. I spent many late nights practicing and doing R&D in school. Besides attending computer classes, I also enrolled in art classes such as airbrush, 2D cell animation and inking at Joe Kubert Art Center, and storytelling and comic art seminar at a School of Visual Arts.
In 1997, I graduated from William Paterson University with a Masters of Art in Computer Animation. Right after I graduated, I got my first job as a character modeler at a local game company called Hypnotix where I was making models, fixing animation and editing video in after effects. When I saw the first game I completed on the shelves of electronic boutique, it was truly an unforgettable moment!!!! A year later, I got an offer to work as a character modeler at a 3D online content creation company, Viewpoint Corporation aka. Metastream. Besides learning how to model, texture and write scripts in xml for online 3D content, I also learned a great deal about model optimization, organization structure and topology for digital scanning.
Currently it’s my forth year working at Blur Studio. As a character modeling supervisor, I am responsible for making characters for game cinematics, ride films and commercials. Also documenting and ensuring models meet the requirements for our production pipeline.
It's known that Blur has a special work environment , tell us a bout what it means to work at Blur.
Working at Blur on game cinematics and modeling female characters is a great honor and it means a lot to me. I have loved playing games since the birth of Atari and Nintendo. I used to tape the gameplay and cinematics with a VCR and replay them to appreciate the artwork. Back in college, my favorite games cinematics were Tekkan, for the very cute girls and cool secret characters; Final Fantasy VII for it’s amazing graphics and great environment; Resident Evil, for its many surprises and it's the greatest zombie game ever; Metal Gear Solid, for its great game play and i love the characters’ proportions and designs on snake and sniper wolf. Other favorites were Parasite Eve and Grand Turismo. It was so rewarding after spending hours playing to finish a game and then see the grand finale cinematics. Game art has evolved a lot since then. But gamers’ expectations and standards rise even more. Being the artist behind these game cinematics, it’s important to put lots of effort into making todays game characters and cinematics.
Kitty Hunting
Tell us what a regular day looks like and what kind of challenges you master
I start my day checking e-mail to see if there are any models that need to be checked. Next, I would look at the last sample still I saved out from the previous night with a fresh eye. Then I start modeling, doing self critique, look for reference and tweaking shapes. Throughout the day I help with any modeling questions and problem solving for projects in the studio.
What is your favourite project you recently worked on?
My favorite project is modeling Cabalist and Lyra for the E3 Hellgate trailer.
You model almost only girls, what is you prefer about modeling girls?
Modeling girls is very challenging. They need to look sexy and pretty from any angles. The proportions have to be accurate or else they don't look right. There are lots of subtle details I have to add to make them look alive. Make up, hair and skin tone have to compliment each other as well.
Tell us about the modeling process of Kitty Hunting, what kind of reference was used etc.
Kitty hunting was a mixture of various faces I collected from magazines and references. Kitty was built from a box. Then I sculpted and refined her shape using the proportional and poly modeling tools in XSI. The majority of the time spent on Kitty was on the topology, ensuring the edge flow lines up with wrinkles and the locations of the facial muscles.
What features in XSI do you find very useful?
I like the proportional modeling tool, and the transparency setting for the wireframe display in the viewport.
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