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Interview with Michael Meyers
CG Car Modeling Supervisor Michael Meyers talks about his involvement in the movie "Speed Racer", what it takes to be a good modeler, the cg industry, XSI and his career.
May, 12th, 2008, by Raffael Dickreuter
 |  | Michael Meyers, CG Car Modeling Supervisor and Concept Designer on Speed Racer.
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How did you get started in the cg industry
I got started in 1996 after I got laid off from Warner Bros. I worked there for 6 and half years in Operations. Yes that’s right, Corporate. Which basically sucked. (Not that I am knocking it for those who enjoy the Corporate world, but come on, look at me. I was a singer in a metal band as my primary career goal, and the corporate gig was my day job). But I digress.
My wife was an Ink and Paint Cel artist at Warner Bros at the time. You know, traditional style, actual ink, paint, and acetate. Anyway, she had all these coworkers/friends who were going into “Digital Background Painting” as they called it, which is basically matte painting. So when I got laid off, I started sending my corporate resume around, and was none-too-happy about it. See when I went to WB, I had hoped to go into the Creative Services Department. I have always been into sculpting, and really wanted to get into doing maquettes in the Art Department. I used to do a lot of little sculptures that I would sell at the Sci Fi and Comic Book Convention at the Shrine, (before I got the day job) to make a little extra cash. Unfortunately my boss and the Director of Creative Services didn’t like each other much, (really not at all, the word hate comes to mind), so I never even got so much as an interview. Anyway, I ended up going up the other side of the ladder, and was basically miserable.
So when I started to looking for another corporate job, I thought, “what, am I nuts?” Anyway, I called my wife at work one day and told her, I wanted to do something different. You know, something creative. She said “like what?” But I didn’t know. Being the great wife that she is, she said “well, take some time and figure it out, I want you to be happy”.
So I started looking into the matte painting thing. I figured I could do it as I was into airbrush and could draw, so I thought, why not? Well, I ended up finding a trade school in Hollywood, and knowing nothing, I let them convince me into taking a compositing class, which was not exactly what I was looking for. The good thing was that while attending the compositing class, they offered me a couple of tickets to Siggraph. That changed everything.
I went to the convention, and happened to walk up to the Softimage booth as they were demo-ing 3D, 3.4. I think it was. Anyway, with my sculpting background and understanding the whole concept of 3 dimensional space, I knew, this was the career for me. So I went on a mission to find 3D trade schools, which at that time were few and far between.
I found a little trade school in Burbank called “Video Symphony”. I think they had been known for Avid training, and were now branching into 3D, offering a 90 day “Immersion program”. So I signed up. It was one of the hardest things I ever did. Basically covering every aspect of 3D in a 90-day program. We had to produce an animated short from beginning to end. Script, storyboards, modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, rendering, compositing, and editing. The whole enchilada. All the while, learning each process. I dove into it hard. Class 8 hours a day, lab another 6, and then 12 hours Saturday and Sunday. It went on like that for 90 days straight. Besides doing my own work, some of the other students were paying me to build their models. Not everyone is cut out to model. To me it came easy, and it is what I enjoyed most. Which is still true today.
About a week from graduation, I was asked by a teacher to model some stuff for a commercial he was working on. I did it, and from that point on, I was in.
What kind of education do you have ?
Besides the Immersion Program at Video Symphony, I attended a few classes at Cal Poly Pomona, unrelated really. Other than that, only high school. I guess I attended the cliché “School of Hard knocks”. As anyone in this industry knows, every job is like “on-the-job-training”. You never stop learning. Every job is different. Every job forces you to learn something new. So while you may no longer attend school, you are never really through being educated.
Tell us about your involvement in Speed Racer and your contributions to the film
My job sort of morphed over the course of the film. I was hired onto Speed Racer initially as a sort of “Previs” consultant with the task of helping Art Department integrate there designs into the 3D world for Visual Effects. Sort of a Liaison between the 2 departments. I was brought in with the objective of modeling a few cars over the course of couple weeks to help them figure things out and help them gear their designs to be more VFX friendly. Apparently it went well, because at the end of the first couple weeks, I was asked to build the Mach 6 from home over the month long Christmas break. So I built it, and sent it back via Ftp. I honestly didn’t think I was going back at all.
Then the next thing I knew, I got a call from production asking me if I was interested in coming back in January, I was like “you bet”. When I went back, I was invited to a few production meetings to discuss a game plan for VFX with the guys from DD and all the Previs guys. Within two weeks, I was asked to stay on as the Modeling Supervisor.
Even though I had the title of “Supervisor”, I was still the primary modeler for Visual Effects. I was always a “working manager”. I tweaked on every car that came out of Visual Effects in one way or another, in some cases totally designing from scratch, to participating in the final build, and even generating the textured proxies for Previs pretty regularly. I worked with my guys, the Illustrators and Set Designers to hone the designs and make them not only functional, but what the Brothers wanted.
Explain a bit the process of creating and designing the cars. To what degree did you guys come up with the unique design?
I modeled a few cars in the beginning, Warren Manser’s “3 Roses”, Jeff Julian’s “Zokea”, and then I developed the Geof Darrow concept for the “GRX”.
The GRX illustration was really nuts. Geof is amazing, but if you have ever seen any of his drawings, his stuff is really challenging to bring to life to say the least. (Sort of like trying to build an M.C. Escher piece.) The guy just approaches his designs in a completely different way, which in the end, proved to be very inspirational for me. So I hammered away at that for a while, and when all was said and done, everyone was really happy with it, including Larry and Andy. From my success on solving the GRX puzzle, I was asked by Larry and Andy to take a stab at making the Mach 6 a little more “Speed Racer” Jeff Julian’s design was awesome, but not exactly what they were looking for. So I took the nose off the car Jeff Julian design that I had built over Christmas, and came up with the design from the cockpit back. I really just went with “The Mach 5 on steroids” approach. I thought it would be cool to take the basic “trident” design cues from the Mach 5 and just push the envelope a little. Basically following the thinking of design “evolution”. Apparently it worked. A few little tweaks by the Brothers and we were in business.
Then Warren Manser and I collaborated on the frame, engine, and interior components. I would do some cutaway renders, and he would paint on them. I would build the new parts, refining, and adding a few of my own. We basically went on like that for a couple of days, build, render, paint, build, render, paint. It was super fast, super efficient, and it helped both of us realize the design in a way that I think is perhaps the most efficient design process I have been involved with. When I went to Berlin, Jeff Julian and I implemented the same practice on a few cars while we were there, with the same great results. It is really great to have the 2D and 3D people working together to develop ideas. Even now, I am working on “Transformers 2”, and we are doing much of the same process with the same great results.
In the very beginning, I came up with idea for the “in wheel” suspensions and developed some very rough animatics. Everyone liked the idea and it was integrated into the designs for all the cars. Aaron Holly, a kick ass T.D. loaned out to us from DD wrote some crazy scripts to make them work, and we were in business. So the chassis were built first, and we literally built up all the cars from the ground up.
I had great guys working for me, Mahito Mizobuchi, from Pixel Liberation Front and Gabe Köerner, from Digital Domain, in the first pass of the design phase in Burbank, and we made good progress. We essentially roughed out proxies from the illustrations the art department did at the rate of a car every 2 – 3 days from each of us. These were very crude of course, but enough to get in front of the Brothers for their first impressions of them. As expected, there were a lot of changes, as the original drawings were beautiful, but not always functional in the 3D world, and not always exactly what the Brothers were going for. So I was nipping and tucking them per the Brothers’ comments, a lot of the time, making it up as I went along. This was especially true once we got to Berlin.
Every car was reworked in some way, some just adding a wing here or lights there. Some got completely redesigned from scratch, and a few I totally made up on the spot with no drawings whatsoever. The most notable of these is recognized as “Viking Car” in Casa Cristo race. I was inspired by a picture I found of “Thor’s Hammer” while Googling anything I could find about Vikings that might give me something to work with. I literally designed that entire car in about 2 hours on my last day in Berlin. I was told I couldn’t go home until I got that car approved by Larry and Andy. Andy had me make one small revision, and I made my flight home.
I worked alone in Berlin for six weeks before getting modeling greats Marko Shobel. and Ralf Rendelmann. I pretty much gained the Brothers’ approval on all the car designs in those weeks and fed them to Previz as banged out the proxies. Once Marko and Ralf came on, we built out the finals together that were being handed off to Digital Domain and BUF for texturing and hero builds. We were generating between 3 to 5 final cars week, at times, all of us working on different parts of the same car simultaneously. It was a really tight schedule, and it was really great to work with such talented guys.
Many people grow up with the animated series, to what extend did you guys try to stay true to the original, and to what extend did you try to come up with new stuff?
You know, I wasn’t responsible for the design direction of the film, but I think it was always approached with being mindful of the original property. I also think the intention was to make it bigger, better, faster. I know there are purists out there who hate the idea of someone changing something they grew up on. I am one of those who was a kid when Speed Racer was actually on television in 1st run, (not reruns), and there was no bigger fan than myself, and I can honestly tell you, this film is exactly the way Speed Racer should have been done in this day and age. I am not saying this because I worked on the film; I am saying it because I truly believe it. No one could have done this better than the Brothers, and the rest of the crew. Period.
What modeling techniques were used mostly?
There was no primary methodology, we used everything from modifying primitives, to lofting nurbs patches, revolves, extrusions, you name it. Everything had to ultimately be Polys. And since the vendors were using different packages to render in, we had to forgo the use of hard edges, so we built the bevels and corners into the geometry we handed off so as not have to repeat work later.
What was the biggest challenge for you on this project?
Time, or the lack of it. I had great guys working for me, and great designers to brain storm with. The only thing I could have really asked for was more time or more guys.
Any special tip you have for readers what they should watch out for in the movie?
Don’t blink or you will miss something. It is fast, frenetic, and there a million little things to see.
Tell us about your contributions to other movies that you consider a highlight of your career so far.
Oh I would definitely say that Speed Racer has been the highlight of my career. I have worked on like 20-something films, and this was the best project of them all. The talent on this film was beyond compare. The end result is incredible. To have the opportunity to work for the Brothers and everyone else was a chance of a lifetime.
I have done a lot of other cool projects though, I built castles for “Van Helsing”, all the Necromonger ships for “The Chronicles of Riddick”, and the tower Lobbies for “World Trade Center”. I have also done designs, built, textured and lit Venice and San Marcos Square for the Heath Ledger Film “Casanova”, designed on and built establishing shots for “Serenity”, and have done everything short of compositing and editing for several music videos and commercials.
What type of work interests you the most. since you have done many different things from general 3d, to previz to modeling etc.?
I think I enjoy doing just about every aspect of 3D, but I gotta go with good old fashioned modeling and design as my favorite. I love to build things. Even on the weekends when I am at home, you will generally find me in the garage building something, or working on my car or motorcycle.
Which features of XSI do you find particularly useful for the kind of work you do?
Favorite tool: Geometry approximation. It beats the hell out of having to convert what you are working on to something else to know what it’s gonna look like. I like simple, XSI makes it simple.
The Polygon tools rock.
Selections: It’s nice to be able to tag some points, then switch modes to selecting something else, polys, edges, whatever, and then be able to go back to vertex mode and have your point still selected.
I also love the capability to make your own tool bars. I have all kinds of pallets for different things. Polygon tools, Curve tools, Shaders, etc.
Which areas should be improved?
NURBS. The Nurbs tools are clunky and non intuitive. They need to take some Cues from Maya where this is concerned. With the exception of the conversion to Polygons. I like simple.
What other modeling tools besides XSI do you use as part of your workflow?
Maya Sculpt Polygon tool, as well as Maya’s NURBS tools. I really want to get into Mudbox. I messed with Zbrush a bit, but I don’t care for the interface. Great tool, but they need to come up with a better work flow in my opinion.
Modeling has evolved in the past like 10 years, with the addition of Zbrush etc. What is a big missing piece of the puzzle that should still improve that would make your life much easier?
Well, I was going to say the throughput to other packages, but Crosswalk has improved that a bit. It would be nice if there was a universal importer/exporter that talks to every package (hey a guy can have a dream). Maya does more than XSI where this is concerned, so they Softimage needs to continue working on this. Soft also needs to emulate the Polygon Scult tool in Maya. Weight maps are fine, but they are not as intuitive as Maya’s approach to this tool.
What's your advice to a young artist who would like to break into the industry and become a highly skilled modeler?
Study the world around you. Try and figure out how you would approach building everything. Study technical manuals, not only for software, but for everything. Sculpt, and fabricate things. It really helps when you know how to build real things and understand how things go together.
Career wise, get in anywhere, be patient, get experience. Work anywhere you can, free, paid, or otherwise. Experience is key. Most importantly, stay current with the technology and techniques, and listen to those who have more experience.
Misc
Is there anything you would like to share with the rest of the community?
Keep in mind that this industry should be fun. Work hard, but enjoy life.
Links
Michael Meyers
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