Interview With Eric Thivierge Eric Thivierge on working with SpeakeasyFX to create 'Sesame Streets': Abby's Flying Fairy School. The First Animated Muppets. Made with Autodesk Softimage Software. December, 22nd, 2009, Written by Ed Harriss
Can you describe what it's like to work at SpeakeasyFX to our readers?
Working at SpeakeasyFX is awesome. We have a few requirements though.
1) You have to own a nerf gun.
2) You have to love to work in 3D
3) You have to name your computer after your favorite drink. Alcoholic or otherwise.
We love to have fun here and we all get along. Many times you'll have a situation at work where there is a lot of butting heads between certain people so it makes for awkward situations. Not the case at Speakeasy! We all really get along and love to hang out with each other. Lunch is awesome because we usually all go to the same place. So there were times where we would have a 13 person horde bombarding the local eateries. We are also all really dedicated to our craft and to the job at hand. We buckle down and put in long hours when it matters. We know it just has to be done. We make it fun by cracking open a few brews and ordering pizza or Chinese as well. Basically, if you love to work on 3D projects and want a great environment to work in,
SpeakeasyFX is where you want to work.
What features of Softimage are your favorite?
The modeling workflow is awesome. It's really easy to get your models roughed out and add details. All the commands are at your finger tips. No need to go hunting through menus to find a command to split edges. It's just right there.
I wouldn't be an XSI fan if I didn't mention ICE. It's super easy to get particle systems working and really easy to quickly modify them and see results fast. Compounds are amazing too since it saves you from having to redo tons of work. It really saved us for our particle effects for the Abby show. The scripting SDK is pretty awesome too. I've dug into Python within the past few years and have built some really handy tools for our pipeline and for my rigging process.
What areas of Softimage would you like to see improved?
I think more stability and bug fixes should be addressed. I know 2010 got many of them but the ones that have been around for ages should be looked at. There are numerous ones that have been mentioned on the XSI mailing list that have been around for a long time. I also think that they should just keep pushing forward with the ICE integration. I know the FX Tree is not really being developed any further, but one thing we wished we had during production was the ability to make compounds in the FX Tree for our composites. Would have saved us tons of time for sure. Having a huge spider graph sitting in front of you trying to figure out where the composite needs adjusting is just stressful.
Explain your role at SpeakeasyFX and what responsibilities it involve?
At first I was one of 4 generalists on the project. As the project grew and when we brought more people in I started taking on many of the responsibilities of a floor TD for the animators. When they'd have a more technical issue I'd be called over to assist. I had just gotten back from Sheridan in Toronto 6 months earlier from a Digital Character Animation Certificate program so that gave me a greater understanding of where animators were coming from.
Soon thereafter some characters were sent down the pipeline and we had to make a decision on whether or not to use the built in Biped Guide to make our rigs. Since Muppets have a different movement about them we would have had to do a lot more customization to the rigs and try to piggy back our own setup on top of the Biped rig. In the end I volunteered to rig the first of the many secondary characters on the show called "The Pinocchio Process".
We had an assortment of bugs and a bunch of Marionettes to rig. With the help of one of our junior generalists Mitch Lotierzo, who was working under me, we knocked out all the rigs within a few weeks. The animators were happy with them and didn't have any major issues with them so Scott gave me the title of Technical Director after that.
I also handled a lot of the magic effects in the show since I had some previous experience with ICE. I wrote a few scripts that automated our magic setups so you just selected the objects that needed to pop-on by magic and hit a button and the ICE tree and shader were setup automatically. All in all, if there was a technical issue anywhere from animation to the render farm I was the first guy on call.
What's your advice to 3d artists who would like to work at a place like SpeakeasyFX, what sort of special skills should they try to develop?
Well there are a few roads you can take really. If you want to be an animator, I'd suggest really buckling down and learning your animation principles. All of our animators are from AnimationMentor.com. They are absolutely amazing. Highly recommended by SpeakeasyFX. The other road you could take is to be a generalist. We try not to specialize too much here at the studio. We are a small studio so being a generalist makes it easy for any of the generalists to jump onto whatever task is at hand.
This is also a reason ICE was awesome to use on the show, because if we needed someone to jump on magic setups, it took 5 minutes to show them how to use our automated system and what parameters on the compound to adjust. So being very versatile is the key, however, having a specialty helps too. So learn how to do a lot, but dig into one area that you really like.
Working in episodic animation can involve very long hours, do you get burned out or are there enough slow periods to balance it out?
Slow periods? What are those? Ha ha, no there were times where the workload eased a bit. Most of our production was an all-out haul to the finish line though with a few overnighters sprinkled in. I think coffee helps a lot when you have to put in those long hours. Some don't really like the taste of it, but it helps keep you awake to get your work done. A sacrifice I was willing to make. I can't say it enough, but working alongside the awesome crew here certainly helped. We make each other laugh and keep each other motivated so that was good. Making it a point to go to the bar for some much needed chill time helped too. Blow off steam, throw back a beer, and play some trivia helped keep morale up.
Do you think being proficient in traditional art is important for a 3D artist?
YES!!! There were a few professors back in college who didn't respect 3D as an art form. Pshh... they never took the time to understand exactly what we do. I think 3D is a mixture of traditional artistry and technical artistry. You have to understand color palettes, color balance, color values, composition and how colors work together.
Texturing painting as well. Just because you paint on the computer, it doesn't take any merit away from having to understand how to paint. Alongside the traditional aspect comes the technical though. You have to understand how to model a character or prop, how to apply the textures, or how to rig a character as well. I think our field takes even more artistic skill than the traditional arts. You could call it a hybrid I suppose. If Da Vinci was alive today, I could definitely see him working in the 3D field. He had both the technical understanding and artistic skill I think it takes to go into the 3D field.
What do you do in your spare time? (With a job like yours, do you have spare time?)
A lot of the time I get home late when working in production. A typical day for me is 8:30 - 7pm. So by then I usually get home make dinner watch a show on TV and putz around on the net for a bit, then lights out. When I do have extra time I'm usually try to keep learning. I always want to know more and open up my versatility. So I've learned to script in Python in my spare time. I'm also trying to understand vector math a bit better since ICE has been released.
During production on the Abby show I would usually be working on a small tool here or there that would help us at work and make our lives easier. I built a renaming tool that you can grab off of XSIDatabase.com. It's an essential tool that I use daily. Aside from the 3D stuff I like to jam out on my electric guitar (Blood red B.C. Rich Warlock with a Widow Stock head & a Gibson SG Standard), hang with friends, and go see some movies.
If there is such a thing, what does a typical day at SpeakeasyFX involve?
Roughly, a typical day would include coming into the office, grabbing coffee, checking Woot.com for their latest item up for sale and discussing with the other generalists, and digging in to some work for a few hours. 11:50am has been termed Car-o'clock. Many of us drive to work and that is around the time we have to move our cars to the free lot here near work. So we move the cars and talk about where we want to eat lunch that day on the way back to the office.
We go back and forth about our lunch options until someone finally makes a decision and then we head to lunch. Get back from lunch and dig in again and a few minutes later it's already 6pm and time to start wrapping up for the day. As discussed earlier we may also be getting ready to hit the pub or head to one of our co-worker's house to have a movie night.
What do you remember being one of the most challenging aspects of the production to get right and why?
Well, I'd have to give that one to our Head of 3D Andy Zazzera. He had the pleasure of doing all of the R&D on our fur setups for our characters. Getting fur to look right on Muppets is not an easy task. Not only do you have to style it, you also have to shade it and make sure it can go through the render farm with no problem. He spent many hours tweaking fur systems and balancing the shading and the fur styling. I think he's hit the mark quite well though.
Having a full time job and working on XSI Database must have been quite a challenge. How did you balance your time?
Well to tell you the truth I put XSI Database on hold for a while. I haven't been developing new features or creating content for a long while. I wanted the site to be filled with user contributed material really so I set it up so anyone could sign up for an account and add to the library. The site has suffered a bit though since I haven't really kept pushing it along. Like many others work has to take priority. I'm still interested in pushing the site further and always willing to help the Softimage community. Hopefully there will be some new and exciting activities amongst the community in the coming months.
Is there anything that was a huge challenge that you overcame easily because you used Softimage instead of something else?
A huge challenge for the production was the amount of assets that had to be created. We created over 500 props and characters for the show. There was a discussion about using Maya for the project but we quickly came to the conclusion that it would require a larger team and an R&D department for tools development. Our experience with Softimage led us to the conclusion that if we had a small but strong generalist team, we could get the job done with the tools already present within the software. The overall work flow inside Softimage allowed us to get assets ready for animators while simultaneously push them through the rest of the pipeline and prep for render.
Another cool thing about Softimage was the FX Tree. We used the FX Tree to composite the show which allowed us to stay within one piece of software for production of the show. We didn't need to go from one software to another which kept the pipeline streamlined and as least complicated as possible.
Did anything funny happen during production?
During one of the more stressful periods at the studio Scott bought us a keg of beer for working so hard. When the keg was delivered he tried to sneak it in using the back stairwell. Unfortunately the keg "decided" to take a tumble down a few flights of stairs. Needless to say Scott's keg drop has since become a fond and funny memory at the studio.
Was there anything about the production at SpeakeasyFX that really stood out?
After our Producer Sally-Anne Syberg assembled the team and we were a few months knee deep in production the whole crew started to bond together. Many people tell you that during production on a project that there were people on the crew that didn't get along and that there wasn't a true team spirit. The crew at SpeakeasyFX was nothing like that. We all got along great and we had fun while doing the show. If one of us came across a hurdle we couldn't get past, all we would have to do is turn to someone else and ask for help and you could both work on getting the problem sorted out. Teamwork was always present, start to finish. Late December in 2008 we were running up against a really tight deadline which required some pretty hefty hours. All hands were on deck for a few overnights which at one point totaled up to about a 96 hour day with little if any sleep. The dedication that was shown was just awesome.
You know you've got a good thing going when you come in the office each morning just to see who could find the biggest most powerful Nerf gun on the market or who has modded theirs to shoot 10 times faster and 10 times more powerful. Some even built remote control robots with Nerf guns attached! Going out and throwing back a few beers with all your coworkers is great too. We would share funny stories and talk about what we were all doing on the project. Just an overall great time spent with co-workers.
Can you give us any interesting technical info about the show?
SpeakeasyFX was contracted to produce 13 8 minute segments for Sesame Street's 40th season. In addition to the 13 8 minute segments, we also had to produce interactive episodes concurrently that will allow children to play games during the episodes while they watch them online. In total we completed 136 minutes of HD footage in little over 1 year with a team of less than 30 people.
Are there any parting thoughts you'd like to share?
The animation on the show is absolutely amazing. Our animators are simply awesome. Our
animation director Jan Carle gave the animators a direction to go in with their shot but also
gave them the freedom to put their own gags too. This led to friendly competition in trying
to top each other for the funniest gag. Lets just say there might be a reference or two to
some classic 80's cartoons and movies.
