Interview with Mariano Steiner

OK! Let’s begin with a traditional question: how did you first come across with the CG and when did you start to work as a professional 3D artist?

I was in Industrial Design college when I met Rafael Grassetti ( who was already a great CG artist ) . He introduced me to this amazing 3D world and I'm addicted to it since then. I've been working as a professional 3D artist since 2008, when I joined Techno Image ( an advertising illustration studio ).

Oh, I see. So you had a great teacher. Looking through your portfolio I found a lot of fabulous charecters, both humans and not. Where do you get your insipration for them and have you tried modelling something different?

Rafael wasn't my teacher, but he absolutely inspired me to be what I´m today, as an 3D artist. Hmm, I get inspiration from a lot of things: movies, travels, cartoons, internet, music, walking on street or hanging out with my girl...there are no specific thing that really inspires me. And I always try to evolve in each model. Do things that I never did before, or do the same thing but with other tools, changing my workflow... I think this makes us grow as artists. Always in search of different things.

Your last work called “Show Time” is a real masterpiece! Could you tell us more about this work in general and specific Zbrush techiques you used.

This model was a tribute to Richard Macdonald. I had pleasure to know his gallery in Las Vegas and I got so so inspired. I bought his art book and decided to try a 3D rendition of it. I used Zbrush for all the sculpting. With a simple generic base mesh I've started to tweak and block the anatomy shape. Then I've transposed it and refined the sculpt the best I could.Then I sent it to 3dsMax and rendered using mental ray.

There are a lot of game charecters in your portfolio, are you personally fond of any particular computer game?

I love video-games. I grew up playing Nintendo's Donkey Kong, Killer Instinct, earthworm Jim, Mario...and now the new generation of games are making me crazy. I was totally addicted to Assassins Creed 2, Gears of War, Call of Duty...

I see, by the way, have you ever done sclupting with your hands and clay before doing it in Zbrush?

Not seriously. But i started to study clay sculpture this year, hope I can get better on this.

I hope too =) Mariano, what was the most enjoable work and the most difficult work for you to do?

You mean professional or personal?

I mean professional, but you can tell us about personal as well if you want to =)

I think personal works are always enjoable, since you do what you really want to do. In Professional works you are not always so lucky. For me the most difficult work was the Rhino in the oven. I think i did it in the wrong time. I feel like I wasn't ready to do such a thing, but I had to. So I waste a lot of time, patience, many many attempts... I think it took almost 3 months to complete it. It was a real pain.

And the most enjoable is very difficult to say, I like them all. But I loved to do the "Olla" campaign, with hundreds of sperms hanging out and doing different things. It was the first big job I did by myself, with rigging, light, shading and modelling. It was really cool and the feedback was great too. I got highlights on a few great advertising forums.

Wow, you're amazingly persistant and now I see that you really love what you do! Can you say anything about your future/current projects?

Yea I´m definitely doing what I love. Right now I´m working on a big movie project with my work mates and always sculpting a lot. Got a few models running at the same time, this way I never get bored.

Nice to hear that, we hope to see more masterpieces of yours! To finish our interview, could you say some words of inspiration to those, who are just making first steps into the realm of CG?

Well, i think the most important thing working with CG is : Love it !! really love it! Because if you don't, you'll get bored and crazy! Nothing in this artistic world comes fast. You always have to study a lot, pratice hard, spend hours and hours sculpting, waiting renders, searching references, drawing.... and if you don't really like what your're doing, you will get crazy.

Yeah, that's so true! Thank you so much, Mariano, for your time and inspiration I can feel in your words. I wish you further success with you professional projects and fresh ideas for personal works!