The 3D Art Direct Podcast: 3D Digital Art | Artist Interviews | Digital Art Conferences | Sci-fi and Fantasy Genres - 3DAD 013 : How to Create a Science Fiction Series - The Making of Nobility

3DAD 013 : How to Create a Science Fiction Series - The Making of Nobility

04/20/13 • 30 min

The 3D Art Direct Podcast: 3D Digital Art | Artist Interviews | Digital Art Conferences | Sci-fi and Fantasy Genres

This session is a little different from what 3D Art Direct podcast normally presents, since this time we are exploring the making of a science fiction series –which will be a drama/comedy produced with the aid of crowdfunding.

The series is called C.A.S. Nobility – that has the tagline of “These are not the heroes you’re looking for.”. Nobility is the name of the starship in this series with a curious crew of characters on board.

The project is notable because of it’s story, and because of the amount of passion and power behind the project which is generated in gigawats by E.J. De la Pena, the producer AND because he has managed to cast the actress Claudia Christian (from Babylon V) .

This project was brought to my attention through Danny Gordon, who is the new conference and community manager for 3D Art Direct. He is one of the 3D artists on the project and invited me to follow the production of this series. I’ve always had a great interest in the production and what goes on behind the scenes of sci-fi television series and films.

I mentioned that this series was going to be funded by crowdfunding. What is crowdfunding? It’s a financing method that involves funding a project with relatively modest contributions from a large group of individuals, rather than seeking bigger sums of money from a small number of investors. In this case E.J. De la Pena (E.J. for short), the head of production for this series is using Kickstarter.com for the crowdfunding campaign.

Now if you’ve never been to Kickstarter.com, it’s definitely worth a visit, firstly to check out E.J.’s campaign for Nobility and to contribute to his project. Secondly to see some of the other projects going on. Forinstance a few months ago, we noticed that a new version of the classic 3D vector game Elite was going to be remade through Kickstarter.com, so there are some projects definitely related to 3D graphics that are being funded through this clever means.

So I’d urge you to look at E.J.’s project at nobilitytheseries.com, view the fun campaign video he has created for Nobility.

In this first interview with E.J., we find out how the whole project started, how Claudia Christian came onboard. We learn how the story and characters were crafted, we talk about the Nobility ship design and discover some of E.J’s production team.

So I’d urge you to look at E.J.’s project at nobilitytheseries.com, view the fun campaign video he has created for Nobility.

Previous Episode

3DAD 012 : Behind the Scenes of Reality 3 - Photo Realism for Poser. Interview with Paolo Ciccone.

This session’s podcast has a wonderful interview with Paolo Ciccone, author of the reality software for Poser and Daz studio which helps these applications take advantage of the incredible LuxRender engine, allowing photo realism for Poser renders. Version 3 of this popular software is about to be released as I record this session on the 7th April 3013.

Paolo originates from the city of Trieste in Italy and originally worked as a software engineer for Borland before entering into the digital arts world with Reality. He has over 30 years’ experience as a software developer.

Paulo also presented at the Poser Expo : Runtime Live conference, held between the 22nd and 24th of March 2013, which was the first ever conference Poser users, presented through our 3D Art Live webinar service in partnership with Runtime DNA. I give a special thanks to all the presenters that did an incredible service to the Poser communities in the professionalism of their content. Many attendees found the content of the eleven webinars rich and rewarding, especially as they go over the recordings of the conference.

Now if you couldn’t make the conference, we covered such topics as:-

The materials room, two rigging masterclasses, behind the scenes of reality 3, dynamic clothing, realityPaint, the GoZ plugin & preparing models in zBrush for Poser, composition and story telling with Poser, lighting, rendering, a UV mapping masterclass as well as history of Poser the software and it’s communities through the years.

These were all recorded and you can gain copies of these as individual sessions. But it works out at the best value if you purchase the entire set of recordings and as listeners to the 3D Art Direct podcast, you can use this code “reception10” to get $10 off the price.

Just visit www.3DArtLive.com/recordings

Next Episode

3DAD 014 : Vue Educators - Interview with Vladmir and Ami Chopine at Geek at Play Studios

Welcome to session 14. This digital arts interview is a little different, since I’m interviewing the husband and wife team that run the GeekAtPlay studio website which is totally focussed on education for 3D digital artists. What delighted me most about Vladmir and Amy Chopin’s efforts for teaching 3D Digital Art applications is the sheer amount of content they provide. Today is May 2nd 2013, and I’m looking at their YouTube channel – GeekAtplay studio and I can see 7 new videos uploaded one day ago.

Now admittedly, this is probably to do with the fact that Vue 11.5 has been released and Vladmir is showing what’s new for this version, so this is probably a few more than he would normally upload, but during our interview he mentioned he had created around 1500 training videos. In fact GeekAtPLay specialise in Vue, so if you want to start digital art with creating 3D environments with a great sense of realism, you could download a trial or free version of Vue from e-onsoftware.com and start looking at Vladmir’s training videos on YouTube.

Now Amy Chopin is equally busy, she’s the author of 3D Art Essentials, which is a great start for 3D digital artist in getting to know the basics on the history, the terms of 3D art. But it covers modelling, posing, texturing, creating scenery, animation and rendering.

Vladmir is originally from Moscow, Russia and now lives with Amy in Utah, in the United States. I started asking Vladmir about his early experiences with film and classic animation whilst in his teens.

Find out more about our free 3D Digital Arts magazine, Podcasts and Digital Arts Conferences at www.3DArtDirect.com