Interview with David Arberas

This in an interview with David Arberas, 3d artist from Spain

Please, tell us a few words about yourself.

Hi, I’m David Arberas Recondo. I’ve studied Application Development and Special Effects with Softimage for 4-5 years in my birth town, Donostia – San Sebastián. I’m a very passionate person who loves all kind of artistic expression, specially digital art, and I hope you find useful and interesting enough this interview.

When did you first get into 3D modeling? What was the reason of choosing this occupation? Did you start it as hobby or your aim was to build up a career in this field? Do you remember your first work?

I remember clearly my first contact with 3d: it was 8 years ago more or less, and my package of choice was 3ds Max because was one of the most known 3d packages. It was a whole new world which opens to me when I first tried to model that chess horse piece that came with help tutorials. I got really confused with that bunch of buttons, but finally I managed to get a piece “similar” to a chess horse.

I decided to study 3d since I saw amazed Starcraft and Final Fantasy VII CG movies in my first computer, 11 years ago. My classmates thought I was mad, because they always skip that movies to play the game, but I always liked to see them again and again. I found that beautiful scenes full of art, while people close to me not. Since that moment I decided that I should study something related to computers.

Taking into account that my real first hobby was videogames, I can say that my passion came from there, but while time elapse it evolved into something more serious until I thought it would be a good idea to study and build up a career around that after finishing Application Development degree.

I made my first real work in 3d more or less 4 years ago, and I’m very proud of it, because… although it shows multiple technical weakness I think it has a good color palette and good taste in the compositing/lighting areas. Nowadays I would change a lot of things on that image, but I think it’s better not to retouch the images you’ve done, only learn all you can while you’ve been doing it and not make the same mistakes in future projects.

Let’s talk about your works. Where do you get the ideas and inspiration? Please tell us a few words about your workflow. What do you usually do first when you start creating a work?

All my inspiration come from my hobbies: videogames, comics, films, anime, digital art… and also, the world around me, I really like to observe people and noticing small details. To know more about my tastes: without any doubt my favorite videogame is Mass Effect saga, UP caught my heart irremediably and Ghost in the Shell universe along with Dragon Ball makes me crazy.

Normally I choose between all the ideas I always have in mind and draw little sketches to organize them. I don’t need too much sketches because usually I visualize the images in my mind, and if I need some changes I make them in my mind or while I working in 3d. All the colors and lighting are an evolution of the rough ideas I have thought before, so I do them in the process of creation too.

I think it will be interesting for our readers to learn about your work “Wizard’s home”. What stage was the most difficult for you? How long did you work on it? What software did you use?

The most difficult part of “Wizard’s home” was to recreate all the vegetation, and specially the trees, that was a little tricky part of the process. I used a very good script within blender to create them: since I didn’t want to have a lot of detail in branches, I split trees in two parts, one for the branches, and the other for the trunk. That way I could focus on giving details to the trunk and leave the branches without textures.

This work took me about a month to accomplish. I had to work on it in two parts, first one implied modeling, texturing, lighting, and the other one composition. Between this two parts elapsed a lot of time without working on it.

With this image I tried to use a lot of software to learn more. I used Softimage and Blender for modeling, Blender and ZBrush for texturing, Blender for lighting, Fusion for compositing and Photoshop for the background.

What kind of work are you doing now? What characters, ideas and themes are prevailing? What are plans for future?

The actual image I’m working on is a complex scene (in fact the most complex I’ve worked on), is a street with two characters. I was thinking about making this type of image some time ago, because due to its complexity is going to be a good project to learn a lot about organizing projects.

The style is totally cartoon, quite similar to Pixar style, which I love, something between Up and Ratatouille. The idea is to make a night scene in an old fashioned, dirty street with two friendly characters on it. I don’t want to reveal more details, you’ll see more when I finish!

I have a lot of ideas to do for my personal projects while I’m working. I have some very interesting projects to work on in a few months, like a talk about modeling I’ll be giving in UDLAP University, here in Mexico. Actually I’m looking for some freelance works.

What work do you enjoy more: personal or commercial projects? When you are working on personal projects what type of work do you like to do?

Of course, personal projects are my choice, because I can make all the choices and changes I want till I feel satisfied with the result. In production you are tied to timelines, budgets restrictions and stress.

Usually, sculpture and lighting/compositing are the areas where more comfortably I work. I really like making wrinkles and high details and think how they will see with AO pass, rim lights and all that stuff. I like modeling too, but I found it sometimes a little bit tedious. And with texturing I feel like I need much more experience to enjoy it like it deserves.

Are you a perfectionist? Does it take you long to achieve that final perfect result you are happy with?

One thing, apart from passion, I think is absolutely necessary to work in 3d is to be perfectionist and attentive to details. That said, yes, all close people to me say that I’m a maniac, perfectionist and mad guy…but hey! I’m a good guy!

The time spent in each image depends on what I want to achieve. Sometimes I only want to enjoy a lot in the process and I don’t care about how much time I spent on it, and sometimes I want to improve my skills and “timing”. For example with “Guard” image, I spent only 15 days but “Sandoje” or “Wizard’s home” took me about a month.

Have you any tricks and your own “know-hows” which you gained with experience during your work? What do you think is the most important thing in creation of any work?

One of the most important things I have learn is that to be organized is initially time consuming but then it will save you from more than one headaches. Another thing I learnt is the importance of compositing: in 3d is not all about polygons, edges and points, but also about 2d. I think 2d is an important to take into account when you’re making 3d, so don’t be selfish and think in 2d too. Other things you learn are application specific, like when I correctly learnt to apply normal maps in XSI.

Like I’ve said before, organization is one of the most important things, not only organization at “assets level”, but organization at “ideas level”. It is very important to have your mind clean and organized: do not be afraid of taking a pencil and make some sketches, I’m not very proud of my sketches, but they are very helpful.

How do you manage to combine your personal life and work? Do you have any hobbies? Is it easy for you to find the time for your family, friends?

Well, when I was at Sintesys I studied about an average of 12 hours per day, so I didn’t have too much time to socialize. That days were hard, because I tried to learn as much as I can: there were days when my mom woke up and I was still working on the computer. But nowadays I’ve learn to compensate things more and I spend the most time I can with my people.

As I have said before, my hobbies are knowing people, films (I love Christopher Nolan), anime, comics, reading, speak a lot with people (I have a problem, I can’t stop speaking), having a good dinner while having fun with friends…

I’m living in México City so my family is far from here, but thanks to internet I speak with them almost every day and the people I have known here is very charm, some of them very good friends. Due to the fact I’m working as freelance I have no problems to spend the time I want with friends, so I can’t complain.

What can you say to inspire those newbies who are just starting to work in CG? What do you think is the most important in this field?

If you are really passionate about 3d, don’t hesitate to continue working hard. Sometimes things go bad, but if you are smart enough you will learn a lot of new things from people who has more experience than you.

The most important things to success are to show your work to all the people you can: If they see your work there are more possibilities to make new contacts and get jobs. Internet is the best tool for this purpose. Never think you are the best, that concept doesn’t exists in 3d, there are many people working hard, some of them very talented, but no one is THE BEST. If you are confident but also humble, that’s the best attitude.

Visit David's website