You've always leaned into being a generalist, taking projects from concept to completion. What do you love about working that way?
Really it's just the way my brain is wired. I don't know if it's mostly a personality trait, ADHD or some combination of the two. But the thought of having a job that's limited to a small number of tasks and tools terrifies me.
I can be fine doing all comp work, all 3D, or whatever for a while. But at some point I really need to shift gears into something different as a way to keep things interesting and recharge. But more than anything else I'm sort of paradoxically uncomfortable being too comfortable. What I mean by that is that if there's no challenge or nothing new to learn from what I'm doing then I get bored quickly. So I'm kind of always looking for new tools, or new ways to do things to keep my brain engaged with the work.
At Conan, everything was fast. Daily deadlines, constant pressure. Now you're doing title sequences for films. How did that shift change how you approach the work?
Film industry project timelines are certainly longer than that of a daytime talk show skit. But the amount of work relative to the time in the schedule, combined with a higher bar for quality can still often result in late nights and intense last laps. I frequently wish we had just one more week to really make things perfect.
But as George Lucas once said: "films are never completed, they're only abandoned." Too bad he said that in context to over-working and ruining his own films with unnecessary changes. But maybe there's a lesson to be taken from that.
Most designers seem to agree: AI is bad. Where do you land on it? What's your honest read?
I think to understand my feelings on AI it's important to understand that I have complex feelings about my career and CGI. As a child my first love was practical effects. My unrestrained child imagination wanted to do it all. I wanted to make entire films myself. I wanted to build and destroy model spaceships and cities. I wanted to sculpt creatures out of clay, mold them, cast them in rubber, and puppeteer them. I wanted to be Ray Harryhausen, Phil Tippett, Rob Bottin, John Dykstra all rolled into one massive Devastator-like Transformer of a creative human.
I was obsessed with behind the scenes documentaries and books on filmmaking. And I actually enjoyed them more than I did the films themselves. But then in 1991 I saw Terminator 2 in the theater. I still remember where I was standing in the lobby the first time I heard my dad utter the words "Computer Generated." I was only 7 at the time, but it was pretty clear things were changing. So it's hard not to feel some level of Deja Vu when thinking on the subject of AI.
During the years that followed I watched my favorite TV show "Movie Magic" and my favorite magazine "Cinefex" go from really inspiring images and stories of humans making cool stuff with their hands, to a bunch of guys sitting around in front of computers pointing at wireframes, and I'm going to be honest, that depressed the shit out of me. By the age of 13 I had come to the realization that I was born 30 years too late to be part of the version of Hollywood that I loved.
But back to the weird seven legged alien elephant in the room. On the surface I probably look like a pure AI hater to most. And honestly the more I look at the slop-infested social media circus the more I start to identify as one. But my feelings on the subject are actually pretty complex and nuanced.
I keep seeing passive aggressive tech-bro bot posts on LinkedIn accusing anyone who has concerns about AI of being driven by fear of change, or "irrelevance." But while I do have some major fears surrounding AI they have very little to do with my career and more to do with the ramifications for our future society, and the world our children are going to grow up in.
I try to be positive, but I have very little faith that tech-bro billionaires who have devoted their lives to hoarding wealth, and openly share their disdain for things like empathy and democracy, are going to altruistically gift us an AI driven techno-socialist utopia complete with UBI. It's a lot easier to be a realist and expect things to continue on their current dystopian vector.
But I am not against new tools or using machine learning to eliminate boring, tedious, monotonous, uncreative tasks from my life. I just don't have any interest in handing over any of the fun stuff or creative decision making to an algorithm. I crave deep involvement in a detailed and tactile creative process. And so far none of these AI systems are offering that.
The dream is to continue to build things from the ground up, at an accelerated pace, without getting bogged down in technical quagmires. The ability to do more rather than just having more done for you appeals to me.
So the bottom line is that while I am pretty unimpressed and even disgusted by "AI" in its current forms, I do see potential for evolution. And I like to imagine how the technology could eventually become a positive for artists. But a lot has to change for that to happen. First and foremost I think the people developing these systems need to stop exploiting artists and start listening to them.
You've got an insane toolbox—Blender, C4D, ZBrush, Substance Painter. When you're starting a project, what pulls you toward one tool over another?
There's this common old fashion trope that says it's easier and faster to do things in comp, but I really don't think that's true anymore. Especially when being in the unfortunate situation of having to execute 4K 32-bit color managed workflows in After Effects. I think that if I didn't have to share AE projects with colleagues frequently I would prefer to do all my comp and color work in Resolve and Fusion. But for the time being AE is still the dominant comp platform for Mograph.
Blender has been my primary 3D tool of choice ever since version 2.8 came out when we were working at Conan. It's free and open source, but I really love using it. It's insanely powerful, and if it can't do something by default there's almost always a cheap add-on that can give me the tool I need. If I can stay in Blender rather than jumping to another external tool, then I do. Though sometimes you gotta' do what you gotta' do.
You've worked with a lot of creative directors and producers. How do you navigate feedback? What makes collaboration feel good versus diminishing?
I don't like feeling like I'm being treated as an AI agent that executes prompts for someone that doesn't know the software and/or don't have the time to do the work themselves. I never gravitated towards this kind of work out of a desire to be a technician. And I push back against being pigeon holed as one because not only is that not who I am, but that's also a lot easier to replace than a creative thinker and problem solver. Working with the wrong people can start to feel less like creativity and more like moving furniture.
It's really important to me that I feel invested in the work. I want to be a part of the creative process. And I think I only really do good work when I'm respected as a creative force. So long as I feel I'm being given a chance to present what I have to offer, and so long as the process feels like a collaboration then I'm happy. And I'm glad to say that I've been very fortunate the past few years to work with some great people who I respect quite a bit for giving me the opportunity to see first hand what that's like.
Does being a father change the way you look at your creativity and craft, and if so, how?
Oh absolutely, being a father changes the way I look at just about everything. And creativity is no exception. Mainly it's no longer just about me and what I want to do. Not only do I have to keep going strong to keep everyone fed, but I have to set a good example.
I was lucky enough to have encouraging parents and a father who was an artist. I'm fortunate to be able to look back on how my parents helped to foster my creativity and take inspiration from that. And I'm proud to say that my son has naturally gravitated towards art without any external pressure. It must be epigenetic memory or something, because he exhibits traits that are clearly not only inherited from myself, but also my father.
Now that I'm on the other side, I'm constantly looking for opportunities to encourage and guide him in his own journey. While I'm very much enjoying living in the moment with my little guy, and feel like time is moving faster than I would like it to, I look forward to eventually teaching him everything I can about photography, animation and everything else I have to share with him. Being his father inspires me to learn more about other subjects and better myself, if for no other reason than to have more to share with him as he grows.
