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Interview with Ben Procter
Concept Illustrator Ben Procter talks about his work on 'Transfomers', combining 3d and 2d techniques, XSI and how to make the career switch from 3d to illustration.
September, 26th, 2007, by Raffael Dickreuter
 |  | Ben Procter, concept illustrator and lead robot illustrator on 'Transformers'.
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How did you get started in the cg industry and why?
I became interested in 3D right after college when got a job helping to art direct a CD-ROM computer game. I was really fascinated watching the 3D artists do their work (especially my old buddy Jin Song, who was at PDI last time I checked), and I quickly began to learn about cg lighting, texture painting, etc.. At that point Pixar was really hitting its stride with movies like "A Bug's Life", and I pictured myself becoming a lighter at a large animation or vfx studio. As it turned out, though, my first proper cg job was for a tiny (now defunct) LA-based matte painting company called Digital Firepower and involved a lot of modelling, which I had to sort of learn on the job. I'll always be grateful to my buddy Eric Hanson, who didn't know me from Adam when I emailed him from NYC, for giving me not only a bunch of job leads but also the confidence to make the West Coast leap into an unknown vfx world. My second cg job, which lasted much longer and really got me going in the industry, was with my good friends at PLF. It was working there that I really expanded and honed my 3D skills, and cemented my habit of working with XSI. I give a lot of credit to Colin Green, Kent Seki and other PLF alums for teaching me so much and exposing me to the art department world that I'm now a part of.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
I'm afraid to admit that I don't have any exciting, manly hobbies like hang-gliding or rebuilding old cars. I would say that my free time gets taken up by seeing friends, hanging out with the wife, and spending time with my pets (including two horses, who are lovely but time consuming!). The only books I read regularly are sci-fi novels, but these are a big source of inspiration for my imagination and work. Ditto for sitting on the can with a nice stack of art books and Japanese hobby mags. ;) I also have some personal side projects, but the sad fact is I probably spend a lot more time thinking about them while I drive to work than I do actually sitting down and writing/drawing/etc.. Such is life for a busy commercial artist; I bet a lot of your readers can sympathize with this one.
You have done a variety of things in regards to 3d, which one has been the most exciting and is your preferred area?
That's a tough one. The great thing about 3d is that it's such a flexible tool and can be integrated into your workflow in so many ways (especially if you can paint as well). I guess I'd say that 3D is most satisfying when there's time to really finish something out with detailed geometry and textures and render it as nicely as you can with minimal overpaint. That kind of fulfills the craftsman's instinct best...to really fashion something elaborate and then show it from many angles, as opposed to doing a heavy paintover where you only end up with 1-2 views and much of the detail never makes it back into the little virtual world you're building in 3D. Paint sure is fast, though.
When creating illustrations for a movie, how closely do you work with the art department or director?
As an illustrator, I typically work for the production designer within the art department. So I'm right there working alongside other illustrators as well as art directors, set designers, graphic artists, modelmakers, etc.. It's an amazing work environment filled with incredible talent and quite a bit of fun, too. The degree of director interaction depends on the show, but for the most part illustrators do get to present their work to the director and get feedback straight from the horse's mouth. On some shows, illustrators can even be hired directly by the production, with no production designer involvement at all. Frequently this happens with a movie that's in development, where the director and producers want to have illustrations on hand in order to help get their film greenlit by a studio. But the typical pattern for me is reporting to the PD, who reports to the director.
Transformers - See more of Ben's artwork for the movie.
Tell us about your involvement in Transfomers
On Transformers I was an illustrator, and after nearly a year and half working mainly on robot design I was lucky enough to get Lead Robot Illustrator credit on the film. There were quite a few illustrators on the movie working on all kinds of subject matter, including environments, vehicles, props, keyframes, and even scenes on Cybertron. But from the start, I was one of the guys tasked to robots and because I got some traction with both Jeff Mann (production designer) and Michael Bay (director), it just kind of stayed that way. In the end, I helped to design something like half the robots. I say helped because the final designs emerged over time from a very collaborative process involving many artists. To give one example, I painted the front view of Blackout and it was approved as an overall concept, but Tony Kieme and I pingponged a couple different versions of the head (which incorporated an eye style developed by Ryan Church and approved by Michael for use on nearly all the bots), Scott Lukowski did the side and back views (having to invent dozens of details not indicated in my front view), and finally ILM had to interpret all the approved 2D concepting into the more detailed, animatable and transformable 3D model you see in the film. With some robots I helped Alex Jaeger a bit in the art direction of ILM's early modeling phase, but there were plenty more robots where Alex and co. just ran with it and the results were spectacular all around. In the cases where I did more personal 3D modelling in the development of a robot, I probably exerted a more complete design impact. The Scorponok and Frenzy models you see in the movie are more or less my models, beautifully detailed and textured by ILM to bring them into reality. Going back to my point about 3D craftsmanship, I'm particularly proud of these robots because I know that they passed through my hands quite literally. Even the puppets of these guys were milled and grown from my sub-d meshes. Every 3D artist should have the amazing experience of seeing their geometry miraculously made real and tangible...it's really cool. Still waiting for my cheap, high-res 3D printer.
What was the hardest part when creating designs for Transformers?
On a technical level the hardest part by far was my ultimately aborted attempts at a transformation animation, specifically for Optimus. It was pretty easy to rip up a truck model and make its parts "fly" into robot positioning with a minimal hierarchy, but at a certain point I wanted to re-engineer the anim so that the parts would end up in a posable character rig. I realized quickly that you'd have to do animated constraint blending between the character rig and a separate vehicle anim hierarchy, and at a certain point my attempts to set this up ground to a halt as I totally ran out of mental steam. The fact is that I'm not an animator or a TD, and this little sojourn into smarter people's territory was a humbling lesson in knowing your specialization and sticking with it! The upside of having done even the simple proto-animations, though, was that still renders of truck parts arranged into Optimus's robot form became the basis of final 2D illustrations in a variety of ways.
On a creative level, I guess the hardest part for me and for all of us was finding our way toward a styling language which was dynamic and alien enough to satisfy the director and production designer. Michael was very clear up front that boxy G1/Gundam shapes were not going to cut it in his live action Transformers world, and Jeff wanted to see mechanical complexity of both alien and terrestrial varieties worked in everywhere. Michael specifically kept hammering on certain pieces of reference in the library of ref sheets Hasbro put together, pushing us toward robotic compositions which were unusually proportioned and organically layered to the point where the alien anatomy/technology becomes slightly disturbing in its chaotic unfamiliarity. I played a big role here, but I have to give a shout out to kung fu master illustrator Tony Kieme, who more than anyone invented the thorny, biomorphic Decepticon look which informed all of our designs. Balancing against the alien factor, though, was the constant need to integrate whole, recognizable parts of the vehicles and their innards. In the end, Michael was happy and it seems that most of the fans came around to appreciating the new look, too.
To what extent do you use 3D and/or 2D to achieve the designs you want?
I actually wrote an article related to this topic for the Art Director's Guild Perspectives on Technology magazine. For a pretty full rundown of the relative strengths of 2D and 3D, from my perspective, I would refer readers to this article.
The overarching answer on 2D vs. 3D is that they can be combined in myriad ways and I find myself bouncing back and forth all the time. Sometimes a 2D sketch or painting will lead to a 3D model, which in turn is painted over to produce a final design. Or sometimes the fastest way to convey modifications to a 3D model, whether produced by me or someone else, is to do a fast Photoshop sketch over a render (even a low-res OpenGL screengrab). And then there are times when I'd like to finish out a design in 3D but I simply run out of time and need to gesture in missing details with paint. Having elements of both 2D and 3D techniques in one's arsenal is enormously useful, because it gets you out of typical 3D tight spots (like when your overnight renders are full of errors) and allows you to create elaborate spaces and mechanisms that would be hard to fully work out in 2D.
Tell us about your involvement in Superman Returns and what illustrations you had to create
Sadly, much of my work on Superman Returns never ended up in the final film, because at the last minute a big introductory sequence where Superman returns to the shattered remains of Krypton was dropped to help keep down the running time. But at any rate, I worked on a variety of elements for this lost sequence, including the destroyed planet itself and both the exterior and interior of a large crystalline ship which has carried Supes from earth. The interior was fully built and photographed as a translucent, glowing set which I've only seen in one photograph in the Art of Superman Returns book. Bryan Singer's group has made noises about including the lost sequence in a sequel film, and I sure hope they do that so I can see how it turned out! Also cut from the release was a scene where teenage Clark Kent discovers the hidden remnants of the Kryptonian space pod which brought him to earth as an infant. I modelled the pod in 3D, once again working within a crystalline, alien style of construction.
Happily, my work on the Fortress of Solitude made it into the movie, at least in some form. I did a full interior model which became the basis for a partial set construction, and was also used by Collin Grant in storyboarding the FOS sequence and by Jeff Julian in his concept illustration of the Jor-El ice crystal holograms. In developing the FOS interior model, I took a good look at the set from the Donner Superman films, as production designer Guy Dyas wanted everything for the movie to harken back to the earlier designs in some ways while at the same time taking them to a new level. Taking a ton of screengrabs from the Donner films and roto-mapping them into roughly matched 3D camera views, I was able to more or less reconstruct the basic layout of the old FOS set, and from there we added greater scale, a more intricate composition of angular elements, more crystalline growth detail, and a big vertical construction/launch chute for Superman's crystal ship.
I also modelled a FOS exterior entrance staircase, based heavily on Tani Kunitake's storyboards, which became an important part of the exterior set for Luthor's island grown from the seafloor.
What do you consider the highlight so far of your career or what is a sort of unforgettable event in your career?
This is surprisingly easy - watching the robot designs we came up with come to life at the cast & crew screening of Transformers. My hat is truly off to ILM for what they achieved not only in terms of photoreality and integration, but also in terms of performance. The transformation and fighting animations, of course, were just insanely cool, but I was equally impressed by the emotional credibility of the robots as characters. The conceptual design team gave ILM good raw material to work with, but they really added the spark of life which turns designs into characters and it was amazing to see this before my eyes and know I'd been a part of creating these incredible alien beings.
What features of XSI do you find very useful
Many of XSI's rendering features are just great, such as the render tree, render region, passes, and the ability to override rendering properties with groups and partitions. Sometimes it seems I apply nearly all my materials with groups; as a concept illustrator I don't have time to give specific materials and textures to lots of objects, but I can drop all my objects into a palette of material groups which I can then adjust on the fly.
I also appreciate XSI's ability to handle lots of geometry and heavy hierarchies. The simple fact that XSI will tolerate nested instancing many, many levels deep (at least most of the time...) completely informs the way I model and set up scenes. With some complex environments I work on, it's almost laughable how little true, master geometry exists in the scene - when I turn off instances in a viewport, it's a ghost town! XSI's handling of SubD's is also amazing. I take it for granted that I can just dial up and down the SubD level of objects while I work on them, but for modellers using more CAD-oriented packages it's like magic to have mesh smoothing that is so instantaneous and nondestructive.
Which areas should be improved?
My main problems with XSI center around modelling and import/export, and they're so specific that I'm not sure it's worth fully airing them in this forum. But let's just say that there are some really basic modelling tools, such as extruding a profile along a path, which are essential for architectural modelling but are virtually useless in XSI because they do not behave as they should. The lack of proper Bezier curves (eg. the ones that have existed in Softimage Classique forever) is a huge problem for architecture and mechanics as well. As for import/export, I would really love to be able to bring in IGES NURBS geometry from CAD modellers with at least some level of success (rather than zero). And one simple export feature would improve my life immeasurably - a button on the OBJ exporter which expands all instances into true geomety. I would walk a mile over hot coals for that one. ;) My holy grail 3D dream tool, which isn't necessarily specific to XSI but could be integrated as an importer, is a convertor which turns full-blown NURBS geometry (complete with all the trimmings, from Rhino or somesuch) into SubD geometry according to various resolution and tolerance params. I'll probably grow old and decrepit waiting for that one, but it would be rad for artists like me who straddle the amazingly separate worlds of CAD/CAM and animation/cg.
Which area did you find more competitive, being an animator or being an illustrator and how does it differ in the way you get hired?
Considering I worked at a grand total of two cg companies before becoming an illustrator, I'm not sure I have a very informed impression of what it's like to be a freelance 3D artist. But I suspect the way one gets hired is not so different between the vfx and art dept. worlds - when you're less experienced, you put a lot of effort into your portfolio and wind up showing it a lot, but as you work hard and develop both a contact network and a reputation, you frequently end up hired on reputation alone and you rarely want for work. One big difference, though, is the fact that film illustration is unionized, which cuts down the quantity of available talent enormously, making it easier for union members to stay working even within a much smaller pool of jobs. The culture of film art departments is also very friendly and team-oriented, so competition for jobs isn't at all cutthroat and everyone's always happy to share information about opportunities with their buddies. The hard part is getting into the illustrators' union in the first place, which is by no means easy or straightforward. So in a nutshell, I'd say film illustration is harder to break into but easier to survive in once you're there.
What's your advice to 3d artists who would like to dive more into the area of illustration?
For 3D artists who want to move from vfx into the conceptual design, preproduction end of things, there seem to be many opportunities just waiting for talented people who can create compelling designs and imagery. Every big vfx house has its own art department (however small), and the game and cg feature animation industries must have tons of visual development artists working in them to crank out so much richly designed content. (There are other concept artists who could speak to this much more knowledgeably; my experience is pretty limited to feature film.) Also, the field of illustration is not limited to pixel-based entertainment; I know people who do amazing work in architectural visualization or theme park design, and at least one guy who's done stuff for the DOD (scary!).
From the talent development standpoint, because at the end of the day it's the quality of your work which will allow you to clear the career path of your choosing, I would advise artists to give themselves artistic assignments outside of work and just go for it. It's important not to be too intimidated by the phenomenal illustration talent that's out there; those guys sucked once, too! Just make the effort to practice the kind of design you want to do for a living, and once your stuff starts to remotely resemble the work being put out by professional concept illustrators (which you still, of course, need to study very carefully to figure out what makes the best work tick), you can put it in a book and get some jobs. Don't worry if it takes a while to get to that point, or if at the end it still takes you four days to do something that a pro could knock out in two; keep at it until you have some impressive, eye-catching images which will get you work doing illustration, and then "learn while you earn" once you're on the job. Even for professionals, it takes years of on-the-job experience before you're doing your best work, or before you begin to really develop your specific strengths and overall artistic goals. As a guy with no formal illustration training who works among a lot of guys with big Art Center school loans to pay, I'm a strong believer in the "fake it to make it" school of career advancement. Anything you want is available to you if you're willing to work hard and take some risks, especially in Hollywood. I know this seems idiotically simplistic and almost Horatio Alger-esque, but it has worked for me so far.
In terms of specific, hands-on skills, I would say that 3D artists who want to illustrate would do well to learn as much 2D as possible because having the full 2D/3D toolkit will make it much easier for you to find work. There is absolutely a place in illustration for purely 3D work, and it's very likely that elements of your existing cg portfolio will become a part of the book you use to get illustration work. But if you can sketch out ideas with pencil or digital paint, it will make you a faster and more flexible collaborator on any visual development team. Adaptability is an enormously important skill for a concept illustrator; you never know what you might be working on the next day, and it helps to have an adaptable set of craft skills to match the open, flexible creative mindset you'll ultimately need to develop. So, to recap...just go for it!
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