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Interview With Kent Seki
The Creative Director of Pixel Liberation Front talks about Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, The Matrix Revolutions, the process of Previs, XSI and the cg industries in California and New York.
November, 19th, 2004, by Raffael Dickreuter
 |  | Kent Seki, Creative Director at Pixel Liberation Front.
| | |  | Previs for the "The Matrix Revolutions MHH" Sequence (artists: Laurent Lavigne, Peipei Yuan; Supervisor: Colin Green).
|  | Final image from Bombay "Drift" by Psyop (Previs by PLF artist: Kent Seki).
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Tell us a bit about your background and your education
I was born and raised in San Jose, CA. I have been interested in art since I was a child. After graduating from high school, I attended Yale University and majored in Art, concentrating in Graphic Design. Upon graduation, I moved to New York and became a graphic designer. I worked as a designer for three and a half years, mostly in print with some multi-media design. I met Colin Green, the founder of Pixel Liberation Front, through a mutual friend in 1994. In 1997, Colin gave me the opportunity to join PLF in the New York office. I had no experience in 3D whatsoever, but he was confident that I could learn. I learned everything about 3D and production on the job. From 1997 to 2001 I worked primarily on commercials and motion graphics with the occasional trip out to Los Angeles for some feature film experience. In 2002, I moved out the Los Angeles office and eventually became the Creative Director.
What are your sources of inspiration?
Greg LeMond won the Tour de France in 1989 on the last day by eight seconds, erasing a seemingly insurmountable 50 second deficit, completing a comeback from a near fatal hunting accident. Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France in 1999 against all expectations after fighting cancer, and now he has won a record six Tours. Creatively, I admire and take inspiration from anybody that does something different or is willing to take creative risks. For anyone to push for a unique vision is both refreshing and inspirational regardless of how successful it is in achieving that goal. I recently saw “Eternal Sunshine On a Spotless Mind.” I really enjoyed that both on a story and technical level. As far as CG goes, I am constantly inspired to push myself after seeing the great work of my co-workers as well as my peers. Recently, Andy Jones our Chief Technical Officer showed me some great real-time shader work that he developed for a project.
How do you find your background as a designer helpful being now creative director at PLF?
The principals of good design are universal in all visual mediums. The issues inevitably come down to what is the best way to express some sort of narrative. I also find that coming from a design background allows me to have a slightly different perspective on the work from a more traditional CG artist.
Please present Pixel Liberation Front (PLF) to our readers and what different kinds of work the company is doing.
Pixel Liberation Front is a visual effects studio located in Venice, California. Founded in 1995, PLF pioneered the process of previsualization – recreating the physical production environment in 3d, and animating the principal actions of a sequence well in advance of shooting. In addition to previsualization, PLF has created and composited final 3D elements for feature films, commercials, games, and music videos.
Can you describe the production process for Previs.
Previs usually starts out with a script and for the most part some storyboards. On occasion, we have worked without boards. From there, we usually take our cue from both the art department and visual effects department to create assets. After the assets are prepared, we move into shot design and sometimes sequence design. This part of the process usually collaborating with the Director, the VFX Supervisor, and the Production Designer. Once we have hashed out the Previs, we move into a technical planning phase to determine the best method to execute them. In some cases, we move into a Postvis phase where we line up plate and greenscreen photography with Previs in a sort of “proof of concept”.
What do you think about the current state of Previs in the industry and how do you think will it evolve in the upcoming years?
Previs has become a more accepted part of the filmmaking process. It is increasingly used and has come a long way since PLF began in 1995. As a result, there are more people doing Previs. This has created a wide range of quality in Previs and probably some misconceptions about its effectiveness. When executed well, Previs can help a production move forward without infringing on any other department or job on a production. It should be a resource rather than a burden or a threat. The purpose of Previs is not to tell anyone what to do, but to help people solve creative problems. Previs has the potential to act as a central source of creative information and problem solving for a production. It can act as a bidding tool while also acting as a design tool. I very much look forward to seeing how Previs is used in the future.
Can you tell us what challenges PLF faced when doing Previs for The Matrix Revolutions
That question should really be posed to Colin Green, the overall Previs Supervisor for the Matrix Sequels. As far as my involvement, I can speak to the specific challenges surrounding the “Mjolnir Hammers Home Sequence.” In that sequence, Jada Pinkett Smith drives the Mjolnir through the intricate tunnel system back to Zion with the last working EMP to stave off the Sentinel attack. For that sequence, Ben Procter concentrated on the tunnel design while Laurent Lavigne, Rob Nunn, John Lee, and myself focused on the shots and animation. The challenges included how to represent a swarming mass of sentinels and how to create the dynamic cameras that VFX Supervisor John Gaeta requested while still telling a clear and effective story. We also had one team working in Los Angeles and one working in Alameda on the same sequence so organization and information management was also key.
What was PLF's involvement in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
Pixel Liberation Front was behind the 88 shots of the Brittish Royal Navy Flying fortress that materialize out of the clouds to protect the hero characters as they take off on their adventure. After Sky Captain (Jude Law) and Polly (Gwyneth Paltrow) land on the fortress captained by Frankie (Angelina Jolie), it comes under attack from ocean-launched missiles, and a squadron of Manta planes and Sky Captain must respond. The ship was designed by Production Designer Kevin Conran and features attributes of ocean liners, aircraft carriers, as well as various flying machines. WOT gave PLF the responsibility of completing a sequence that was in animatic form. PLF was given 3D models and textures of finished P40 and Manta Planes as well as deck vehicles. The fortress itself had been started by the modelers at WOT. PLF then up-rezed and completed the model, texture-mapped it, and lit it for the sequence all in XSI. In addition, a team of animators took the animatic animation to final, adding secondary animation, effects, and details to bring the Fortress to life. PLF utilized BatchServe as its render queue software as well.
The sequence provided many challenges to PLF. The chief challenge amongst them was to integrate into a production that had an established look in a relatively short period of time (three months). Working closely with the production, PLF required a team of 24 individuals to achieve this goal. In addition, all the final composting was handled by outside vendors (Pacific Title and Gray Matter FX). This collaboration required constant clear communication and an open dialogue to smoothly transition from raw 3D elements to final treated shots. The shots varied from tight closeups on the deck of the fortress to great vistas with hundreds of motion-captured crewmen actively manning the fortress for battle. The sequence also featured some of the only shots in the film that have completely exposed outdoor lighting. This posed the greatest challenge in establishing scale and detail in the fortress.
"Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" Fortress Returns (Shot FR007 lead artist: Glenn Burton and John Lee).
PLF chose to utilize XSI as its 3D package as well as mental ray with BatchServe for its rendering solution. PLF artists utilized the exceptional polygon modeling tools to up-rez the assets that WOT provided. XSI’s efficient animation pipeline allowed artists to seamlessly integrate motion capture data onto pre-existing characters to create the virtual extras used to populate the vessel by using the animation mixer. The Render Tree and integrated pass setup allowed the artists to create the surface quality and lighting necessary to match a look already created by WOT. These tools allowed over ten different artists to light shots while maintaining a consistent look across the body of sequence. The average number of passes on any shot was 50 while the most on any single shot was 221. BatchServe became the rendering backbone allowing PLF Artists to control the 70 CPU renderfarm. At any given time, there would be over 1,000 jobs in the queue.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" Underwater Battle (Shot UB006 lead artist: Derek Fisher).
The success of the project was due in a large part to the great team that we were able to assemble. Everyone from our office manager, Laura Zentil, to our Executive Producer, Sean Cushing, contributed. At the end of the project, our freelance compositor Tony Lupoi went on to finish some of our shots at PacTitle, and freelance 3D artists Glenn Burton and Eddie Yang worked on more shots for WOT at Stan Winston Digital.
"Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" Flying Fortress (Shot FF006 lead artist: Duane Floch).
Is there anything you can tell us about the upcoming Superman?
I can tell you that the Previs Supervisors Chris Batty and Kyle Robinson are very skilled and continue to work hard. Other than that, I think everyone is going to have to wait and see.
You are also responsible for finding new talent. What skills and characteristics are you looking for?
Aside from just solid technical skills, we try to look for people with good creative self-direction. For us, we have had much success with getting people who maybe don't come from a traditional CG background. People from design, architecture, or practical effects seem to have a more well-rounded design sense. That is not to say that people who go to school for CG are aren't productive artists. We have had some luck with them; however, much of what we do, especially in Previs, is ground in the real world, especially if you know that someone will have to take something that is made on the computer and translate that into a real-world situation on a stage. A Previs artist has to also be an effective communicator. He or she must be able to deal with different departments sometimes under great pressure. We also put a premium on speed. The more shots someone can finish, the greater the workload that they can take.
What do you consider some of the highlights of your career?
It's hard to really say. You always think the last big thing that you did is the highlight, but it's difficult to have any perspective. Certainly “Sky Captain” has been one, not only because of what it meant in terms of first time final shots in a feature for us as a company, but also in terms of the number of people we hired and the comradre of those people. I was thrilled to be a part of “Matrix Revolutions” and to sit in a theater and see my shots. In the commercial arena, Prevising the Bombay Sapphire Gin “Drift” spot for Psyop was very rewarding. To this day, I am proud to show that commercial to anyone. On a personal note, I always get a kick out of seeing my wife's eye during the opening of “MTV News” (it's in the background at the end).
What are your plans for the future?
I hope to continue to improve my skills both technically and creatively while taking on increased responsibility on projects. I would also like to help PLF grow and expand its capabilities so that it can adjust and take on new challenges as the market changes. Beyond that, everyone at PLF is interested in content creation of some kind. Whether it comes in the form of a short film, commercial, or music video, I look forward to working on some “home grown” projects.
How do you use XSI in your daily work?
XSI is the primary software package we use at PLF. Almost all of our 3D goes throughout XSI pipeline. We use BatchServe as our render queue manager, and we enjoy a very close relationship with Softimage.
What features do you find helpful?
Modeling-wise, the polygon modeling tools are fantastic. Certainly the subdivision surfaces are really nice. We as a company use the Animation Mixer quite a bit, both for character animation as well as camera animation. There have been many times where clients say “I like the first half of that camera move and the second half of that one.” That request used to involve hours of work and finessing. Now, with the Mixer, you can combine two compound cameras fairly rapidly. I am becoming an even bigger fan of the Render Tree. Shader-wise, I have to say the most significant development for us over the course of last year was finding the Dirtmap shader on your Website. For all the users out there, definitely get a copy of that. And to the that shader's writer Daniel Rind, I say “Thanks for an invaluable development. It's great!” Right now our company is just beginning to really use the real-time shaders. These are great for pushing the look of Previs. I have to also say that I have met many artists who are really using scripting a lot in their work to automate repetitive tasks. Pakorn Bupphavesa at Psyop and Jabbar Raisani at Stan Winston Digital are two guys that really know how to make use of them.
What areas would you like to see improved?
I would like to see some improved stability. It gets better with every version, but is still not quite where I would like to see it. The reference models also need some improvement before I would be willing to really put it through our production pipeline. XSI and mental ray also need a better motion blur solution. The full 3D blur is still too costly. The rapid blur is good in specific instance, but I think that the FX Tree could make use of motion vector files similar to the post mb (developed by BUF) of the old SOFTIMAGE|3D days. BatchServe needs to be ported to Linux. Despite its great polygon modeling tools, XSI has yet to deal effectively with Nurbs trims. This is becoming increasingly more of an issue since we get a lot of assets from Rhino and Maya. I know that Softimage is aware of our requests, and they are trying to address them.
What are the differences between the cg industries in New York and Los Angeles?
The deadlines on commercials are in general tighter where as film projects are longer. As a result, CG in New York is usually about short intense periods of time (two to five weeks) where as in Los Angeles you can be on a project for a year or longer. New York seems to have a smaller tighter knit community. Once you have been working in New York for a while, you have a feel for all the facilities and your fellow artists. PLF would often have frank and open dialogues regarding artist's schedules with our competitors. We would even share technical information as to techniques and methodology. In Los Angeles, it is very difficult to get any sense of community. This could be due to geography or the film industry versus the advertising industry. Unfortunately, facilities are not as open and forthcoming with information about artists or their work. I think it's a real shame. The talent is out there, but you have to really do your own research to find it. In addition, there seems to be more politics on a feature than on a commercial, probably due to the amount of money being spent.
What's your advice to a young student who wants to break into the cg industry?
It's a long hard road. Many people want to be a part of the cg industry. Remember that you will be working as part of a team. At the end of the day, when we are hiring someone, the chemistry of the team ultimately makes or breaks the project. As a team manager, I am constantly asking myself, will this person gel with the others on the team? The following advice is geared more for those artists who want to work at a smaller company. So many people that call looking for a job seem one dimensional. There is no cookie cutter fit for a small company. You need good generalists. You might have a particular strength, but don't concentrate solely on that. It's like participating in triathlons: train your weakness (ie swimming or biking) and race your strength (running), or in the case of CG, train your weak areas and sell me and your reel on your strengths. In addition, pay attention to your camera work, even if you are not interested in doing previs. Good cameras show off your work better. In addition, start using cinematic terms in describing shots (ie. pan, tilt, dolly, roll, boom). The sooner you develop this vocabulary, the sooner your work will reflect this knowledge base.
Is there anything you would like to tell the rest of the cg community?
At the end of the day, the thing that has meant the most to me has been all the great people with whom I have had the privilege of working. I put a premium on those relationships and they have been incredibly rewarding. At the end of the day, CG and Previs are more about the journey rather than the destination.
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