What does digital sculpting have to do with battling with bits of rubber?
Speaking in one of the VFX classrooms, a huge space with rows of monitors and Wacom Cintiqs, we gathered as a group to discuss training to work in film and TV. Looking particularly at the pipeline and workflow of VFX and how that has changed over the years with regards to practical work and why confidence matters and how it can be generated.
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One aspect of confidence is to know how and when to exercise what is your responsibility when you may feel like it is someone else’s job. What can you do practically to accumulate confidence and where does that come from? What are the stepping stones?
Many makeup schools do not know how or teach how practical effects may work with VFX. There isn’t an extensive history yet of that combination, so fewer resources and gurus to call upon. If you want to make a nose or a wig, there already exists a long history of practitioners and techniques one can call upon to get that information. Some places are teaching this such as Bolton & University of Wolverhampton (https://www.instagram.com/digital_prosthetics/?hl=en).
Now if you want to take a head scan, clean it up and correct it, make cores so you can print out sections to be remoulded or sculpted on, there are ways it can be done but it is new enough that there isn’t a standardised method easily accessed by everyone. It’s a new thing so there isn’t an extensive range of ways to do it or a plethora of experienced practitioners willing to share what may be for them hard-won knowledge or a new process they may have pioneered themselves recently.
VFX and practical were once very separate disciplines but the increased use of digital processes in the practical world (photography, scanning, machining, 3D printing and sculpting in ZBrush) are very much part of the VFX world and crossover is more common. A shared language will assist in departments blending their expertise rather than dividing them.
The VFX may be less willing to share their processes compared with practical, but this may be in part because pipelines and workflows are so unique that one may not align with another even though they are both under the umbrella term of VFX. Larger commercial pipelines are often customised, so they will approach a process in a specific way that may not be the same way as another company doing the same kind of work. These make incredible efficiencies within that unit of work, and changing pipelines isn’t always compatible.
The new standard for shops now is to have both practical and digital in-house. MastersFX (Todd Masters), Bill Corso (Digital Makeup Group), ADI and Rick Baker has become quite proficient in the digital world. We remember an article in Fangoria that looked at the FX company Optic Nerve (they did Babylon 5!) who used of digital designs for Zombies back in the ’90s.
Something unique to VFX is software and processes are always being updated and this march onward is adopted slowly across the industry as a whole, it isn’t like everyone suddenly drops what they have and adopts wholesale a new technique or software just because it has become available.
The guilty benefits of using digital tools such as symmetry and being able to iterate quickly and repurpose existing digital assets made by you are someone else. As things improve and advances are made, all things become simpler and more accessible by a user.
Consider the fact that once, to cook a meal one would need to find firewood, construct an apparatus to suspend meat over a sufficient flame, hunt and prepare an animal. The work to start from scratch was immense, and doing so would limit the culinary expertise in the final dish. A chef now has a kitchen with stoves, ovens, grill, pans, heat control, no natural predators and no need to mine, smelt and smith a saucepan from the ground up…one simply buys these items and apply the knowledge of cooking to them. In effect, these are all benefits resulting from progress, and not considered ‘cheats’.
To long term practical sculptors, there is a degree of guilt these benefits provide, and maybe more keenly felt the later the adoption as the software goes through ever-increasing tool sophistication. What then results, as with cooking, is the available capacity no longer given to the best tasks can now be employed in refining and improving the end product. With industry, Time Is Money so its employment and benefits are inevitable.
Programmers and designers of software are more aware of the artist’s requirements and build these methods into the way software is used. ZBrush is used at Bolton in both the VFX courses and Makeup Effects and Prosthetics courses. There is an inevitable barrier to break through with ZBrush but it is something you can break through, starting with the free ZBrush Core Mini or ZBrush Core, Nomad or Forger. It isn’t for everyone, but we think anyone who enjoys creating should try it. Physical objects and ideas can be captured and used digitally in a way that was not practical in the past.
The lower cost of scanners will mean increased availability of information and tutorials. They will become commonplace and so being able to work with them will become important. Cross-pollination and sharing between disciplines are helpful. ZBrush users often work alone, so working as a group to learn can be useful as all users can see the other problems people have. That way you have a support structure that can dissipate the confusion.
We imagine that in no time ZBrush will be even more ingrained in the educational workflow of fx programs teaching both practical and digital fx. It will be the standard, no longer any differentiation as two disciplines; it will all be part of fx training and execution.
Many thanks, as always, for your time checking the stuff out. You can email us directly at stuartandtodd@gmail.com or leave us a voice message on our site.
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–Stuart & Todd
To listen to the podcast, you can stream or download from here, or simply subscribe through your favourite podcast app – we are on many, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, IHeartRADIO , STITCHER , Luminary and Google Podcasts.