Studio: New Eyes Media
Website:
For the last few years, Josh Burton was the proprietor of New Eyes Media, a small freelancing firm of talented artists. His work with the firm helped pay his way as a student at Savannah College of Art and Design, from which he graduated in March 2005. Josh and the team he recruited for the project recently put the finishing touches on The Potter, an amazing animated short. We pulled Josh away from his busy schedule to find out more about this talented artist, his project, and his plans for the future.
For the last few years, Josh Burton was the proprietor of New Eyes Media, a small freelancing firm of talented artists. His work with the firm helped pay his way as a student at Savannah College of Art and Design, from which he graduated in March 2005. Josh and the team he recruited for the project recently put the finishing touches on The Potter, an amazing animated short. We pulled Josh away from his busy schedule to find out more about this talented artist, his project, and his plans for the future.
You're coming to the tail end of schooling at SCAD; what was your journey like to get there?
Life can be a wild ride. After I graduated from High School and spent a semester at a university in Oklahoma, it was apparent that school wasn’t the place for me and some adventure was in order. So I took a trip to sunny San Diego for a few relaxing months of boot camp with the Marine Corps. I spent four great years on special assignment traveling the globe (I can confirm that New Zealand is indeed every bit as beautiful as the Lord of the Rings makes it out to be) and hanging out in Washington D.C. After that, it was time to get back at it and, having met my beautiful wife to be, to take things down a notch. So, I headed back to my childhood passion of animation and looked for the best school I could find at the time, and SCAD won out.
I've followed your work since I first saw your character from Much Ado About Breakfast; was that your first animated short?
Indeed, it was my first short unless you count the wacky films my cousin, brother and I made growing up with our little cousin’s toys, dental floss guide wires, my uncle’s video camera, and my brother’s amazing flash paper (sadly his career path as a magician didn’t stick). Much Ado was my first real attempt at story telling and I created it in my first 3D Character Animation Class at SCAD. Frustratingly, it’s still most people’s favorite piece, which I hope changes once they see The Potter. Being my first piece, I see so many issues with it that it makes me cringe a bit. However, that being said, you have to crawl before you can walk. I hope to use Tiko (the little orange ferret as some people call him) again sometime, now that I’m at least past crawling.
How did you discover LightWave?
When I got out of the Marine Corps, I needed a way to make ends meet and freelancing seemed to be the ticket. I had started doing it a little while I was still enlisted and just continued once I got out. It’s been my policy that anything I use to make money on I have to own. I needed a 3D application that gave me the most bang for the buck and that I could also afford. At that time, it was a huge investment (which has paid for itself over and over again), but I bit the bullet and made use of a deal that allowed me to get a full license by taking a little trip to a reseller and seeing a demo for about a $500 discount at the time. That was back around Christmas 2001 and LightWave has been a part of every 3d project I’ve done since, regardless of pipeline (unless it was a school project that required otherwise).
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What area of 3D are you most interested in?
This is a tough question. Freelancing and doing a lot of one man jobs have required me to wear a lot of hats - some of them are tighter than others, but they’re all relatively comfortable. Let me add to this that I am not a programmer and am continually amazed by those that can do the technical as well as the creative. Animation is by far where most of my passion is at, but leading The Potter team and seeing the team shine in their various places makes me think I may like to move towards directing in the future.
What do you like most about LightWave?
Modeling, the community and the renderer are my favorite parts of LightWave. Having used it for so long and knowing quick keys, my fingers just seem to know what tool I want next and it’s there ready as soon as my mind catches up. I’ve modeled in a few other apps and just can’t get the same speed in them that I do in LightWave. I’ve wondered about that, in regards to quick keys. To me, it might be one of the strengths that the apps are separate in that you only have so many keys and key combinations to use for shortcuts. If you’re splitting those combinations between animating, modeling, texturing, dynamics and whatever else, you’re going to run out very quickly. I love the LightWave community’s willingness to share and create new tools. I’ve never had a question I couldn’t get answered in a day and it’s usually minutes when I post in one of the online communities. Lastly, I like the renderer in that I know what it’s capable of and I can get great consistent results relatively fast. FPrime has greatly increased that productivity as well; if you don’t have it, GET IT!
Where did the idea for The Potter come from? (Isn't your wife a potter?)
Well, a lot of people think the idea came from my wife, who happens to be a potter, and I did shoot some reference of her at the potter's wheel doing her own kind of "magic." However, that’s not where the idea came from. It came when I was reading a very old book by a Jewish prophet writing a long, long time ago. In it, he was talking about people being clay in the hands of God. That idea just stuck out to me as I wondered, “What if the clay doesn’t want to cooperate?” Initially the story was a much simpler story about a potter with stubborn living clay. However, as the story developed and I saw the little boy's character start to grow, the story of his experience in learning something very special was much more interesting to me.
What was the size of the team?
This project would never have been possible were it not for the amazing team that got around the project and took a chance on me. There have been a few school projects, which I know of, that didn’t quite get made for a myriad of reasons. The Potter had as many complications and technical issues (not to mention length!) as any of them, to make me have my doubts at times, but we just buckled down and did it day by day.
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The production team was comprised of 9 SCAD students and one friend of mine from Charlotte who helped out with sound FX.
The team started at Starbucks in Savannah last spring where I met with Benjamin Willis, one of the project animators, and pitched him the story and showed him my character designs and boards for the film. He hopped on board and the rest of the team came shortly.
Jon Campbell (the FX guy) took weeks of asking; I think it was because he had no idea whatsoever how he was going to do what I wanted. In the end he agreed and I think he did an outstanding job.
Scott Englert had been doing freelance work for me for some time, so I knew him to be dependable and do a great job on whatever I gave him. He just wanted to be a part of the project and originally was to have a rather minor role in production. As time went on he did more and more - from modeling and texturing, to animation, to fixing rigs when we broke them. He was invaluable. My favorite shot of Scott's is when the little lump of clay comes to life. There's a little moment when Perok is looking up at the Potter smiling that, to me, is just perfect.
Scott Spencer has been a friend of mine since we attended orientation at school together. He's a talented sculptor and wanted to do the displacement and color maps for the old guy. So I let him have a go at them in Zbrush and I think they turned out phenomenally.
William Atkin was the compositor and he did wonders with what I gave him. We spent most of a month, back in December, figuring out what all buffers or passes to use (I think our final count was something like a dozen per shot, per layer). Whatever I wanted to try, Will was all over it. He took pretty good lighting from the raw render and polished each shot till it shined.
David Bokser is a phenomenal artist and I was fortunate enough to work on his film, Le Vieil et Les Poissons, as an animator last year. He was originally going to have a much bigger part in animation, but life got in the way - it was a job to pay the rent or a pro-bono school gig. Not a tough call. He remains, however, a very good friend and I hope to work with him again soon.
Ben did an amazing job animating. My focus was split between directing and animating, but Ben was able to just go full steam ahead giving life to his shots. My personal favorite is the shot where Perok's attempts at making a worthy pot pay off. Keep an eye on this guy; I can't wait to see where he goes.
Matthew Parrot came on during the last minute to do some Houdini shader work for us for the liquid light and they were incredible.
I thank each member of the team for giving each aspect of the project all the time and passion they could spare. I asked a lot, and they delivered more.
Hunter Curra was another guy who came on at the end as well. When we had all the visuals done and a temp sound FX track, Hunter took it the film and went into his magic sound studio and added a level of ambiance that brought the film up another notch.
Visit the The Potter website for more info on them.
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I had the opportunity to watch the film and was simply amazed at the quality of all aspects of it. What was the production schedule like, and how did you maintain the quality and still meet your deadline?
Coffee, prayer, lack of sleep, and my amazing time-stopping capsule where we’ve been slaving away for what would have been two of your normal years. Mwaaaa, haaa, haa! Speaking of coffee, I’d better go get some…
…back to my normal self. I spent a huge amount of time at the outset in planning, testing, setting, naming and saving conventions, and scheduling. We had periods of testing for each technical issue on our list. When we got into production, things of course just went crazy, but we knew where to get things we needed and just plugged along and got her done.
What tools were used in the production of the film?
We had a rather…ambitious…pipeline for this project. Here’s the short of it: LightWave, Maya, D2’s Nuke, Photoshop, Body Paint, Zbrush, Houdini, After Effects and Premiere. We also used a myriad of plug-ins such as Point Oven for translating animation data and FPrime for lighting visualization.
Since the readers here are most interested in LightWave, I’ll focus on that. Character modeling and texturing was done in LightWave. Set and prop modeling were done in both LightWave and Maya depending on the modeler’s preference. All rendering except for the particles were done in LightWave. The Potter’s displacement maps were done in Zbrush and applied in LightWave using the alternate displacement plug-in provided by one of the community members. Some of the other LightWave tools we used were an Ambient Occlusion plug-in and the EXR Loader/Saver plug-in. We used EXR as our file format of choice for raw renders and had a total of about 12 buffers we used in compositing. One cool thing we did was to use the special buffer in LightWave to specify our character mattes in post. Using the buffer ID or the object ID didn’t quite work and we had more flexibility setting the buffer exactly how we wanted.
What artists from the 3D community influence your work the most?
That’s a tough one as well, as I am always finding new inspiring work from friends and on the web. As to influence, I’d have to say Keith Lango because he is always sharing with the community and seems to want to help young animators. Also, Kory Hienzen because he’s never been too busy to answer a question or give an opinion and his art is amazing (finish Retro-Active, Kory!).
You're quite active in the online community; where do you like to spend time when online?
CGTalk, CgChar and SpinQuad are daily stops, though I post much less often than I visit. I’ve gotten into blogs lately. I subscribe to a lot of those from guys and gals in the industry, so that has filled a lot of my information appetite. You can take up so much time just browsing, so I’ve tried to curtail that some.
What are your plans after graduation?
Let me first say that the rest of the team is looking for work as well and they are all phenomenal artists who would be an asset to any studio…(hint, hint). As to me, I’m looking for a full time position as a character animator at a studio that tells great stories that have more than a sales pitch behind them. This work is hard enough that we might as well say something while we’re at it if we can help it. I’m also leaning towards a small to medium studio as I would like to be as much a part of the creative process as possible and might enjoy wearing a different hat or two.
What’s the ultimate project in your opinion?
Having a family, and it’s one I hope to start before the too long! ;)
What was your experience at SCAD like?
It was a wonderful experience. Any school is going to have its rough spots and SCAD is no different, but the quality of professors I had, the camaraderie of so many passionate artists, and opportunities to meet and interview with the big name and big game companies was worth every all-nighter it cost.
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What were some of the challenges in making The Potter?
Personally, it was balancing the directing role with the animator, lighter, modeling roles, etc. Project wise, it was definitely the technical, there was so much stuff that we just had no idea how we were going to pull off. We had Zbrush displacements on animated characters, ambient occlusion, breath of life shots, living clay, pixie dust, liquid light shots, render buffer exports, and rendering this bad boy.
The rendering of this project almost did us in. With a little over a week to go till our deadline, and it was obvious that we weren’t going to make it, I contacted ResPower, whom I had used for some freelance gigs, and they were great. Early Ehlinger worked though our tech issues in getting all of the plug-ins we were using installed on their machines and figuring out what was going wrong as we did some test frames. In the end, their raw rendering power pushed us to the finish line on time. I can’t thank them enough.
Who do you think gets more chicks, Harry Potter or The Potter?
Let’s see, Harry is a minor; the Potter is pushing a few thousand years now, so it’s either robbing the cradle or the grave on that one. Someone tries to kill Harry every year and the Potter apparently never leaves his cottage and has no known enemies, so if she’s on a date with the big guy, it’s unlikely that anyone will try to kill them so I put that one in the Potter’s column. They both have it going on in the magical skills department. However, there is one overshadowing observation about the Potter that you just can’t ignore - he looks like a big freakin’ turtle! So, I’m gonna have to go with Harry.
Any tip or trick you'd like to share with the LightWave community?
I found that lighting my set separately from my characters gave me a lot more control. After the set lighting was done, I would just render a plate of the background and put that in my character lighting scene as a background plate and light the characters to match. Doing it this way let me exclude lights by object a lot easier with the 6 or so objects in the character scene then with the 40-50 with the full set in place.
If you could only pick one thing, what was the most important thing you have learned while at school?
Whatever you might be able to do alone, can be done better and faster with the right kind of team. However, the inverse of that is equally true with the wrong kind of team.
I'll be looking for your name in big lights soon, as I'm sure you will go far with your talents! Thanks for taking time out to talk with us!
Names in lights…do they still do that? Now, if I saw my name spelled out in Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, that would be something special. It might not last long, but it’d be fun while it lasted. Thank you for your interest and giving me a product I could get my head around when I was getting started.
Thanks very much for taking the time to talk to us, Josh!
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New Eyes Media
For more information about Josh Burton's The Potter, link to: www.the-potter.com
