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Interview With Todd Akita
The Technical Director of Psyop talks about his career, the competiive market in New York and XSI.
September, 14th, 2004, by Will Mendez, Bernard Lebel, Raffael Dickreuter
 |  | Todd Akita, Technical Director at Psyop.
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Can you tell us abit about yourself and your career?
I am a part of the CG team at Psyop, and I've been here from nearly the start of the company, which is a little over 4 years. My role here varies from project to project, sometimes I may lead an entire project from start to finish, and other times I will take on just a portion of it. The bigger the projects are, the more we tend to divide those responsibilities amongst ourselves and it's not uncommon for a project to have 2-3 people sharing that role.
Before I started with Psyop I had been a freelancer in the NYC area, and had mostly been working on my own. I was at Nickelodeon working on these mocapped toonshaded characters when the partners contacted me and aked me if I wanted to help out on some really cool projects.
For about the first couple of years, Psyop was a pretty small operation - I think that it was really people's willingness to work really really hard and do whatever what was needed that really got the company off the ground.
At that time everyone then was freelance, there were no salaries or benefits and we were all working around the clock but we were happy to do it because the projects we were working on were so much better than what we'd been doing at our salaried jobs that we had all just recently quit. So on the one hand you didn't know if the work would keep on coming but at the same time I don't think anyone for a second thought that we'd be happier or better off by staying where we'd been.
Can you tell us the definition of PSYOP?
It comes from the military acronym for a division responsible for what are called "Psychological Operations". Their motto is "Persuade, Change, Influence". Having a name like that is kind of a way of acknowledging that of all the work that we
do for advertising and broadcast is really a not-so-subtle attempt on their part to make you "buy this" or "watch that" and that we are an active participant in that effort.
PSYOP has been around for quite a few years and very successfull, how does the company keep being innovative and creative in a tough NYC market?
I think Psyop has been successful because of strong ideas and strong design. And when I say that, it's with total respect for the designers and directors who fulfill that role, I mean -- if you were to separate the idea itself from our actual execution of the work, the written textual briefs and the 2d styleframes that they do are pretty distinctive in and of themselves.
We're also lucky also to have directors and designers who know how to work with 3d. It's really easy to design something that looks better in a still than it does in motion and when that happens probably one of the reasons is that it wasn't really conceptualized as part of a moving image to begin with.
PSYOP is very well-known for the ad campaign with Lugz. What can you tell us about doing this work?
It was lot of fun to work on! We put together this motion test to win the project and when we saw it for the first time pretty much everyone who'd been working on it basically shat themselves cause it was so cool.
Like we'd had no idea it would look like in motion all together since everyone was just working on their little bit on their own and we had never seen it move before. I think Lugz was a great project since it let everyone contribute a little bit of what they could do best.
That was like, Marie, Marco, and Todd Mueller directing. It's kind of a quasi-democratic process in terms of how things get directed here, sometimes it can be hard to know who is the boss. At the end of the day it makes the projects stronger but I think too that Psyop as a whole is more of a design collective, as opposed to a company composed of individual directors and designers.
Is working with companies like Lugz giving a lot more creative freedom than more "corporate" clients?
Yeah, maybe -- it depends what kind of freedom you're talking about. I can't say too much about the client relations since that's not what I do, but I would imagine sometimes those things can be a double-edged sword if you don't handle it properly. The fact that we can do that at all is more of a testament to our producers. Good communication goes a long way I think.
You've worked a lot with the toon shader to create original design with it, and you produced tutorial to show its use. What's so special about the toon shader?
Until I started working at Nickelodeon I'd never had to use the toonshader in production, and until I did I'd never really realized how difficult it could be to even *try* to replicate a cel animated character in cg! Back then I was using Softimage 3d, and the first generation toonshaders had pretty good controls over blending and tapering, but they were nothing compared to the second generation XSI toonshaders. I think VW was really the first project where a big part of the project was dependent upon using the toonshader in a way that would communicate a sort of hand-drawn, human quality. Retrospectively we could definitely do a better job knowing what we know now, but a lot of it was learning how to play that instrument.
Michael Arias, who wrote the toonshaders was especially instrumental throughout that learning process. Those tutorials are really just a little bit of what he himself passed on to me throughout the course of those productions, and I kind of saw doing those as a way to maybe give something back, let all that information remain still undocumented.
Are all the animators at Psyop from an XSI Background? If not how was the comfort level in cross training them from another application?
We're actually mostly from a softimage|3d background! Most of us actually didn't get in to XSI until version 1.5 -- and it wasn't quite until version 2 that *everyone* was basically thrown in to it headfirst. I remember that when that happened, there was a lot of shouting around the room to nobody in particular, like "how do you do this?", and a lot of shouting back.
We've had a lot of people crosstrain from Maya and Max though, it seems to be fine. Ther're actually quite a lot of maya people cross-training here at the moment for some reason.
The Psyop Anthem seems to remind us of the old School House Rock themes from back in the day, how did Psyop come up with the concept and what was the main audience for it?
Anthem was partly an identity piece, but also political satire. It sort of hijacks the charm and singsong appeal you might see in a Saturday morning cartoon and uses it as the delivery vehicle for a rather insidious bit of consumerist propaganda.
You guys do mostly commerical work are there any plans for feature films?
Time will tell! We are definitely doing ever larger and longer projects at higher resolutions, but a feature film is quite a step to take. Although if the opportunity came up I'd be surprised if they'd pass on it...
What was the toughest job to date and how did you guys overcome it?
There were quite a few, actually. There were a couple of projects I remember from the early days where people were up for days on end and it was not pretty. I honestly don't know how we got through it, but we did. I'll be nice and try to avoid dropping names here though. :)
What do you consider some of the highlights in your career so far?
Without question the best projects that I've had the chance to participate in were the ones that I've done here at Psyop. Starburst, PDFA, Ace, Anthem, Lotto, Bombay Gin, and Nascar, they were all lots of fun to work on. Those were my favorites mostly because I felt that they broadened my repertoire at a technical level but also because the questions and challenges of those projects were primarily artistic in nature.
Psyop's a little different than a lot of other companies in that the partners are all from a creative background - and the way things are managed and the way decisions are made reflects that in a really good way. It's not always the best decision from a financial perspective -- A project like "Anthem" for instance, generates zero income -- so in a lot of ways I feel really lucky when those sort of projects come up. It's quite a privilege to be gainfully employed doing something you enjoy.
If you had to tell us your dream project, what would it be?
Before I started doing animation I was a painter, and it would be great to bring a lot of that back in to the mix. I suspect it will be another software generation before that happens in the way that I'd really like it to though. :)
How do you use XSI in your daily work?
I'm usually involved heavily at the front and back end of a project. So I'm usualy doing or at least supervising the modeling/rigging/shading, and also at the back end where I'm handling most of the lighting and rendering. So I guess that means lots of low-level poly tools, weighting and deformer work, and then lots of time in the rendertree and setting up passes and so forth. I try to plan for lighting and shading as I am setting things up so that things are kind of pre-sorted before they get handed off to people and
multiplied by like 100x.
What are your favorite features of XSI?
The pass/partition/override architecture is ingenious and a tremendous timesaver for what I do. Also the really low-level polytools make modeling easy and fun. I like it that there are tools to smooth weights and to smooth and relax geometries and uv's, those are real lifesavers. And the whole character guide thing has become pretty much indispensible now for us. Also the entire workflow is highly conducive to team play. Which is essential when you have a project as big as some of the ones that are in here now.
What would you like to see in furture versions?
Improved artist-based interfaces like brush-based tools and sketching and sculpting tools. I think an improved sketch curve tool could go a long way in terms of allowing people to build paint tools and such. I'd like to see those paradigms applied to things like the hair system and so forth.
What do you think about the current state of the cg industry?
The hardware is getting better and the software is becoming more accessible, and clearly the quality of the work that is being produced reflects this. I'm particularly encouraged when I see that individuals can create distinctive pieces of work on their own. There was a piece in the Electronic Theater by Taruto Fuyama called "Frank" that I thought was one of the most elegant and attentive interpretations of a comic in to animation -- and it was all done by one person. I think it's that kind of thing that inspires me even more than the big blockbusters.
What do you think about the competitive situation in new york?
Most New York work is commercials, with some broadcast stuff here and there. Both of them require pretty quick turnarounds and a lot of on-the-spot problemsolving. It might be tough because of the turnaround but on the upside, if you like variety, then you will get a lot of that doing commercials.
But we need more XSI people -- there aren't very many senior level 3d people who use XSI in New York! So at the moment everyone who seems to be able to play on that level and who uses XSI seems to be doing quite well.
What is your advice to a student who wants to break into the industry and work in the area of commercials?
Problemsolving is a really important skill. Like knowing how to do things in 2d, and 3d is a big plus. Also being able to troubleshoot things and decompose a big problem in to little ones is a big plus too. And that is not something which is necessarily taught in school per se, it's something you learn by working on many many projects and by seeing how other people do things and learning how to think outside your own head a bit.
That's one of the benefits of being in a place where there are a lot of people, you can see how other people do things and learn from that and I've been lucky enough to have really great modelers, camera people, and animators come through here that I could learn from.
What was the most amazing peace of CG that you have seen to date?
I really enjoyed "Hero"-- the effects work was subtle enough to let the film show itself as what it was which was a really beautifully told story and I think that requires a kind of restraint which is rather uncommon these days.
What do you do on your spare time?
I train Muay Thai (kickboxing). I usually come in to work a little later than most of the folks here since I usually stay here later anyway. Small concessions like that are really important in the long run in terms of preserving quality of life.
What is your favorite techno gadget?
Uh, probably my GameBoyAdvance. Not very high tech but I like that it is extremely tough and that it was very cheap.
Is there anything you would like to tell the rest of the cg community?
Maybe give a shout out to some of the folks here who help hold the ship together. Marco, Vuks, Pakorn, and of course all the partners here who've made Psyop what it is today and everyone else who keeps it moving forward.
Related Links
Psyop
Toon Shader Series
Psyop XSI Testimonial
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