*DivineError recently agreed to have me,~g-magnetic, hold an interview with him, which I was delighted to know. I've been looking at this guy's work for a few months, at first I was just commenting on a photograph. After I had a peek into his gallery, I realized the man has some great talent at 3-Dimensional artwork. This was just a while after he signed up, so I wasn't sure what he was capable of. Now he's quite popular, with hundreds of watchers, and many favourited pieces under his belt. Below is the interview transcript, enjoy.

WORK EXAMPLES

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Hello there! Umm....who are you exactly?

My name is Erik, I am 18 years old, and I live in San Diego, California. I have been a 3d artist since about 1999. I first discovered my love of Mental Ray in Maya 4 I believe it was. Ever since then I've been completely fascinated with rendering technology in general, and try to keep up with the new and exciting things going on in that field.

I have experience in all of the following programs: Maya, XSI, 3dsmax, Mental Ray, prman (renderman), ZBrush, Photoshop, Combustion, Digital Fusion, Dreamweaver, and many more.

My prefered software to make my art are Maya and Mental Ray.

How's life today?

Haha, same as always I guess. I live a very uneventful and boring life, so usually not much is happening. Sometimes I wish someone would come in and change that for me, but then I realize I like being boring, so I sit back and do nothing for hours

Tell us some interesting facts about yourself.

Well, let's see here... I almost never get mad, even in the worst of worst situations. I have a cup of hot cocoa every day. I am so skinny most girls could kick my ass. I like root beer and orange soda. I can solve a Rubik's cube in 2 minutes and counting. I can type 50 wpm with my left hand alone, even though I'm right handed. I like to write, but I HATE to read. I can make objects in 3D easier than I can draw them. I am a self proclaimed Mental Ray guru, with experience in practiclaly every graphics program ever made, 2d or 3d. I have more free time than anyone who reads this does.

Whoa, that's pretty intriguing stuff actually! So, you're a member of DeviantART, what made you choose to be a part of this community?

Thats a pretty good question. Some people I know were intrigued with my work and one of them mentioned to me the site. So I browsed around it a bit and was thinking that this would be a nice place to spend my boredom time. I can't think of a better place to be than a nice community of artists who can contribute to it and/or appreciate other work. So I signed up, and ever since I've been having a good time surrounding myself with great art and people I love to talk to and help.

A genuine Deviant then...Before the drooling fanboys on DA, what types of people admired your work?

(Laughter) I don't know, I think ever since the beginning everyones been that way (more laughter). Although, back before I had like 50 watchers, I found it easier to be more personal with the people, because I wasn't getting so many messages all the time it was easier to keep track of it all. Sometimes I feel like I might have betrayed the early guys. So if any of you know who you are, I appologize. And my love goes out to you.

Sounds like a lot of people are interested in your submissions, then. How has the overall response been to your gallery?

98% of people seem to like my submissions and my rediculous goofy attitude towards them. This is because usually if people don't like your work, they simply don't comment.... or they offer constructive criticism. Problem is with my work, I know every single reason why I make my images the way I do, so criticism isn't needed. Although I have had some derranged lunatics who seem to wanna hate me for some reason. Those are the most entertaining of them all, however!

Yeah, I've seen a couple of negative comments, you seem to handle all that very well, which can be tough for most people. Congrats on your Daily Top Favourites by the way (you have a couple of them)! Was this expected at all? A couple of your renders are surprisingly popular!

There was no way in hell I ever thought I would get a daily top favorite. Most of my work I don't think is that great compared to other peoples work, and some of mine I actually think really suck! My first DTF was "The Truth" I think. I can remember coming home after 15 minutes and having like 70 new messages to read.... my jaw just dropped! There's nothing like the experience of getting 70+ messages in 15 minutes!

It's odd though, it seems like the less work I put into an image, the more likely it is to get a DTF. "Technical Perfection", for example, took 4 minutes to set up, and is my most favorited piece. It was just supposed to be a test of a new improved shader I had a friend of mine write, yet it turned into this ultimately famous peice of mine. Whereas "The Great Escape" took almost 3 days to make and it doesn't have relatively any favorites compared to my other work.

Hah, you told me about how you needed to fix up that shader, I guess everyone else agreed that it's a really good one. The Great Escape is one of my favourite pieces though, it's ashame it didnt get quite the same response. Anywho, you use Red, Green and Blue a lot. Are these your favourite colours?

Actually, my favorite color (or lack thereof) is black! I think after black, possibly orange. I'm still not quite sure why I always do red green and blue... but I think the reason has something to do with the fact they are the primary colors that make up the entirety of all images on a computer. Every pixel you've ever seen was a mix of RGB, and my images take that to a larger scale, I guess. You could think of the red green and blue renders as a way of seeing my philosophy... down to the basics, the origin of everything.

I second black \m/. Yep I thought it had something to do with the RGB colour system. Another feature of your gallery worth mention is the Stikfa team and their antics. What can you tell us about these photos?

Haha, I'll never get tired of those guys! They express the goofy nature that I have in every day life, especially the green one. The black one expresses the annoyance most serious people would feel in the presence of someone like me. A prime example of this odd couple would be in the photo "no fun for you", the black one tries to have fun, but because of his prolonged exposure to the no-fun attitude, he can't. It's ok though, most of the time they get along. It makes for an interesting couple. You'll notice the green ones is always the one having fun, whereas the black one always wants them to get back to work. They are sort of a metaphore to the way I view things... the goofy yet not stupid guy who just wants to have fun, and the serious, calculating, methodical get the job done guy, always competing. Oh, and if you want to buy some, check out kidrobot.com, that's where I got mine!

(Lolling). Everybody likes the green one, he's a badass without trying to be. On an unrelated note, which artists and creations inspire you?

That's a good question! I would say my art is inspired by the universe itself, by technology. My art is a direct result of my technical knowledge in the software I use combined with my persuit of godly perfection in rendering. There is also a few photographers that take the kind of photos that I wish I would have rendered. *Davenit and ~tfprince are two good examples. In fact, I often try to imitate their work, such as in my "Shaken Not Stirred". There is just so many artists though that I love, I couldn't possibly list them all. Check out my friends list to see some of my other inspirations and friends.

Those two are fairly interesting photographers, you've done a great job on recreating some photographs, too! Lemonation, particularly, was a really smart, abstract piece which I enjoyed a lot. On the subject of inspiration, what are your picks on the greatest special effect scenes in major films?

Oooh, thats gonna be tough, let me think about this one for a sec. (few minutes pass)...

A lot of people will disagree with my opinions, but, my favorite cg scenes are:

The "Burly Brawl" scene in The Matrix Reloaded, which was entirely rendered in Mental Ray, even the background. I believe it is the single most realistic rendering ever done on a computer for film. Also the technology involved in the process was just incredible, with the universal capturing system they devised, and the reflectance measuring stuff... all awsome. It's not just that scene though... the whole trilogy, particularly the last two, the graphics are just plain FLAWLESS.

Star Wars Episode 2. There is a few characters in that movie that border on the photoreal, such as some of the clone troopers. Also, the particle effects in the asteroid chase were really nice.

Lord of the Rings. There is some shots in that movie that are just plain incredible, such as the rendering on the tree guys, and the great battle at Helms Deep.

I could go on and on and on....OH! and in panic room! The graphics are so good you don't even realize they are there!

I know, I saw some wireframe shots for Panic Room and I didn't really understand how they could look that good. Same with Fight Club actually, that's one of my favourites for realism. You're obviously a big movie-goer, is film in fact your favourite form of entertainment?

Most definately! I have been an avid movie-goer for as long as I can remember. I go to the theaters almost twice a week now, and rent a couple more. Even if I know the movie isn't going to be that great, I just enjoy the experience; the smell of the popcorn, the taste of the soda, the sticky uncleaned floor under the broken seats! I love it!

Well it's good to know they take good care of their theatres in your 'hood. Theatres definately bring about new experiences every time. About aspirations, do you have any thoughts on a possible career... what are you going to do after school?

Haha, if I knew that, I would have finished school by now! Chances are that I'll end up in some graphics job being a render supervisor of some kind, or video editor, or something like that. But, if it were my choice, I want to be a writer, a movie writer. I've seen soo many movies so often, I know what makes a movie great, and I believe I would be able to contribute some creativity to a more and more cliche and boring industry.

In fact I kinda started on one already. I hope it turns out, because I need money, and a direction in life. It would be odd, though, to see my name in movie credits. I would feel like the world revolved around me, or I was in a matrix, or something.

That's an interesting thought, I notice that many films are becoming basic... If a movie made by Erik came along, it would be an epic blockbuster no doubt! You have a few projects in the works.... the High Noon movie, originfx.com, a tutorial series. What's the scoop with this stuff?

Ah, the questions everyone who's devwatched me wants to know. High Noon is still being made.... I'm just waiting for my mom to go to the store to get the giant bag of gummi bears I need to recreate the scene. Once I get those darn gummi bears, I plan to finish it. I've actually already finished 60% of it, but I don't want people to see the last half... perhaps I could put together a trailer or something.

Originfx.com is still being decided what I'm actually gonna be doing with it. Originally the plan was to have me and my programmer friend work on Mental Ray shaders and Maya/XSI plugins and have them there, but this never ended up happening (we are both lazy bastards!). When we decide to actually do anything with it, I'll let everyone know.

The tutorial series also had some changes of plans. Originally I was gonna have a tutorial explaining the basics of Maya, and a Mental Ray one. Reasons for this was someone paid me some money for me to teach them the program. Problem is, as we talked more, the tutorials got more and more custom towards what HE needed, not what other people might need. So they weren't really prepared for the general public. However, I still plan on making a Mental Ray tutorial in the near future.

Phew, what a hassle it must be to organize (or disorganize) all of that stuff! A trailer for High Noon would be great! And as everyone always asks....how do you make your glass renders?

Hehe, I could never give away my techniques completely, but I would gladly start you on your way to making renders like mine. First question, and most important, "Where did you get that glass shader?" Mental Ray actually comes with it! It is called a 'Dielectric' material. In Maya 6 you can apply a dielectric material directly, but in Maya 5 it gets a bit trickier. Refer to my Maya tutorial in my gallery for how to do it in Maya 5. In 3dsmax 6, its the physics glass shader. In XSI, you have to download a speacial thing called xphysics i believe.

Second question I always get is how do I make my renders look so real. This answer is a little simpler. Mental Ray comes with a shader system called the physics library, which are all completely physically accurate to real life... meaning light will behave the exact way as it would in reality. I ONLY use these shaders, thus renders will always look realistic. A thing to note, however, is the dielectric material has numorous bugs. I had that programmer friend of mine fix me up a new version of the shader with some more controls for those bugs. I am not supposed to give out that shader, unfortunately. But I may anyways in the near future.

But it's not always about the material, it's about placement of what would be equivelant to a reflection card in photography. All my glass renders are reflecting something, something bright and above white. If the glass has nothign to reflect or refract, it looks dull and fake. The real technique comes in the placement and arrangement of those bright objects. You may also choose to use an HDR environment, which has the same effect. I just prefer to use bright objects instead because it's more customizable.

This can be done in Maya by applying a Surface shader to a large, stretched cube that has a color value of, oh, about 12 times that of white (12 in the V of the color).

Another thing worth mentioning is that almost all of my renders don't actually have any lights in them. They are ussually lit entirely with those bright cubes by way of Final Gathering. Final Gathering is more convenient for me than using lights, because with lights you need to set up caustics and all that. With Final Gathering, it's all unified. Also, another thing is that caustics use up a lot of memory, and often crash when going over like 5 million photons. With Final Gathering I can have 10 billion kajillion points and it won't crash. Final Gathering has its drawbacks, however. It can only bounce once on diffuse surfaces. So for scenes which have more than one non glass object, the result won't be physically accurate. An example of this would be the overly dark bottoms of the sticks in my "lollipop" render.

Wow, that was quite insightful, however practical. Too bad about the enhanced dielectric shader....Another thing, what do you try to emphasize or perfect when you set up and render your scenes? Is there ever post-production?

I try to avoid editing the final image as much as possible. 99% of my renders are not edited in any way at all, and the ones that are edited are ussually simple things like spot removal or slight color correction.

The thing I try to perfect? Hmm... I think the most important thing for me to perfect is the mix of realism and style. I try to make things look real, yet make reality look strange or cool. In a way this makes me feel like god... I am rendering reality.

But, on the technical side, the absolutely worst no-no you can make is to allow spots, specks, dots, aliasing, and grain to be in the image. When I render, no matter how high I have to crank up the quality, I WILL NOT EVER allow grain or aliasing. Often times this means making final gathering (lighting) so accurate theres over 10,000,000,000 points when it's done, or sampling 16,000 rays per pixel. This is what would immediately turn me off of any render or 2d art or any kind of art... aliasing and spots.

So you're very nitpicky about getting it right the first time, huh? That's another good thing about your renders, they're always so clean. I see a lot of great looking scenes, but they're rendered with speckles and grain all over them.... Listen to this dude Erik, he knows what he's talking about!
Perfection spawns another question. What would you say to someone who wants to get into 3D art, where would they begin?

Oog, that's hard. Everyone is different when it come to learning. Some want to start with the hard stuff and learn quick, some want to start with something easy and learn it all. But, personally, I would recommend you start with 3ds max. It is the most popular of the 3D programs, and has the most beginner tutorials on the web. Then, once your experienced enough, you can decide to make the switch to a higher end program, such as Maya or XSI. That is exactly what I did.

One thing I see way too often however is starting TOO easy, with a program such as Bryce. People find bryce easy to use yet makes acceptable results, so they hardly ever advance beyond it. This is bad, because it will not allow you to have as much custom control over your image, thus you become part of the big giant cliche bryce abstract renders out there. This isn't to say that all Bryce renders are bad, in fact I seen some really really good ones. I'm just speaking on the majority. Bryce will limit what you can do, don't lock yourself in a creative trap like that.

True...It's good to go the 3ds max approach at first. I just had to ask this....What's your favourite internet phenomenon (the badger animation, for example)?

Wow, how am I ever to decide that!? There's so many good ones! But currently I am actually watching Magical Trevor (http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/37/) as I type this!

Hehe....http://www.fenslerfilm.com GI JOE's for me! More random nonsense....list some of your favourite products and brands (electronic, edible, wearable...whatever!).

OMG I can't believe I forgot about the G.I. Joe videos! Those are awsome!

Favorite products, hmmmmm.... I guess my favorite non computer related electronic product would have to be my Canon Powershot A80, my computer parts, my huge HDTV, and uh, wow, there's a lot of stuff.

My favorite edibles are: Zebra Cakes, Twinkies, Nestle Hot Chocolate (rich chocolate), a double decker taco with no lettuce, TAQUITO'S!... the list goes on forever.

Other favorite non electrical or food related, would probably be my comfy chair, my entire DVD collection, my good luck dragon I got from this crazed chinese dude at the store, my Stikfas of course, and uhm, wow, there's so many things, I don't think I'll ever stop...

Oh, for wearables, it doesn't really apply. I just wear whatever I find in my closet, most of which came from the thrift store and say random crap on them I don't even bother reading. I've never cared about fashion or looking 'cool' or anything. I'm not enfranchised with the 'hip' crowd.

That's quite an....eclectic list there! I know you love them....what's your favourite cartoon(s)?

I love EVERYTHING on the Sunday lineup of Adult Swim. Harvey Birdman, Sealab 2021, Brak, they are all good! Futurama is also a really good show. For non humor related, I like Trigun and Cowboy Bebop. But I also watch everything else on Cartoon Network, because I leave my TV on all day and that's ussually the channel it's on.

Meh, I don't get the Cartoon Network! Kinda related...name some of your most played video games.

I am not much of a gamer anymore, but my most played video games over the years have been: Doom 95, Unreal Tournament, AvP, Quake 3, UT2K3, and now UT2K4. There have been many other games of course, but those are the main ones. Also, I plan to buy Doom 3 on Augest 3rd!!! I'm a big Doom fan. Doom is what originally got me into computers in the first place 10 years ago. So I say thank you id software, thank you!

Nice list, Doom 3 looks like a freaky-ass game!! What can we expect from you in the near--and more distant future?

In the near future, you'll start to see me practicing my modeling skill a bit more, as it's been lagging behind my rendering skill quite a bit. Also you'll start to see more of my scenes able to be downloaded so you can use them as rendering examples to learn from. In the distant future, look forward to High Noon, the "Fake or Photo" weekly, and a complete Mental Ray tutorial. And of course, I'll try to keep improving the quality and appeal of my renders over time.

Wonderful! There have been some hints of intricate modeling work in your gallery, that's cool that you'll be focusing on that aspect of your work more. Scenes sound good, I tinkered with the Taffy Puller one before and it was quite interesting. Everyone's looking forward to High Noon and a good tutorial. As for Fake or Photo...I thought you started it already, hah! That Iron Chef photo puzzles me! Last question....what kind of music do you listen to?

I don't listen to much music actually, but when I do, I like more orchestra styled music. Such as some movie themes by James Newton Howard and Don Davis. I also like alot of Rob Dougans work. I like the kind of music that I can picture a movie scene to while I listen to it. That, to me, is the best way to know if a song is good or bad.

That kind of minimal selection works well when working I find. Well, that concludes my interrogation...thank you very much for your time, this was quite enjoyable on my part!