Interview about Valle Paraiso

By Stryker

This is interview about Valle Paraiso short film. Very impressive animation and interesting story by my opinion.

Helloguys! Please give us a little introduction about your team.

Hithere. Well, although it may sound kind of weird, the only two persons reallyinvolved on the project are DanielTejerina, the music composer, and myself. I did all the visual part, from the script to the finalcompositing and Daniel was in charge of the soundtrack.

I have been working in the computer graphics industry for ten years inall kind of projects, from animated tv series or videogames to 3d fx for tvcommercials but from time to time I also like to work in my own projects. ValleParaíso is my second short film, in 1999 I finished the first one called"Smoke City" being screened wordwide and getting also some awards.

How manypeople work with Valle Paraiso film?

As Isaid before I worked alone in all the visual and technical part, from the conceptart, to the modelling, rigging, animation, lighting and rendering. I also wrotethe script with the help of my friend Mario Tarradas. Daniel Tejerina was thecomposer of the music and Pep Aguiló did all the sound effects and the finalmixing at a Spanish postproduction company called Infinia. I have two versionsof the film, the original one in spanish and a dubbed one in english. The voicetalent for the spanish was Pepe Mediavilla and for the english one JamesPhillips.

Whatsoftware do you currently use? What your favorite renders?

CurrentlyI work with Maya and Mental Ray but I´d like to try also other renderers likeRenderman.

Whatmethods did you use to render?

Forthe short film I rendered everything with maya software render. I started workingin the film by the end of 2003 and mental ray was just implemented in Maya. Iwas Arnold (global illumination render) betatester and at the very beggining Ithough in rendering all the project with it but unfortunatelly working with abeta didn´t make me feel confident enough so I finally did my bet for mayarender.

If youhad a chance to own any of the current 3D programs, overall which one would beyour choice and why?

Iactually own some licenses of Maya. I´m partner of a small 3D company in Spainwhere we use Maya for the day job. Anyway, nowadays the software used doesn´t matter at all. All 3Dsoftwares are equally powerful and you can do almost the same with all of them.Ten years ago Softimage or Alias were way beyond the other ones but today allof the are doing pretty much the same.

Do youhave a favourite character?

Probablythe main character. That was the character that took me more time to finish soprobably he would be.

What wasmost difficult in creation of "Valle Paraiso"?

Themost dificcult part working in such a huge project alone is to keep focusedduring all the time. A lot of people do start their own short films but just afew finish them. When you are starting a new project you enjoy a lot, doing thepre-production, planning everyting but one year later it can become veryboring. So basically, the most difficult part of doing a short film is definitely,finishing it!

Do youhave any future shorts you plan on releasing and would like to mention orpromote?

I havea new film in mind, this one much more shorter but I´m not sure if I´m stillready for another one. I´m working in one of the characters right now doingsome research, but I´m not completely sure yet If will start working on thefilm itself.

When andhow did you get the idea for making this movie?

It was3 years ago. It had been 3 years since I finished the previous film and Ithought I had energy enough to start a new project. I have had in mind for awhile doing something creepy with kids as the main characters so that was thestarting point.

Did youuse motion capture?

Ididn´t use motion capture. I don´t havethe resources to have done it but I hadn´t used it anyway. I think motioncapture fits very well with fotoreal characters where you need a lot ofsubtilities but you don´t need at all for cartoon characters.

Whathardware do you use?

Thehardware used was a standard one, nothing fancy. All the project was done andrendered in a Pentium IV 2´6 Ghz with 1 GB of Ram and a Gforce graphic card. Iwas rendering the shots as soon as they were finished and none of them tookmore than 5 minutes per frame, so I never had a bottleneck in that issue.

How longdid you work on it?

Iworked on it for two years but I was working at the same time. During somemonths I could work full time on the film while others I could do nothing.

What isthe project you are currently working on?

Nothingspecial, doing some research on facial expresions and fotoreal renderings to beapplied later on in other projects.

What areyour plans for the future?

Well,I´m a little bit tired of the freelancing. Although It´s kind of comfortablelife that let you enjoy of some free tiem for your own projects I think now istime to move on and try to be part of something bigger, in the film industryfor instance

Thanks alot for your time and great interview. Good luck.

It´smy pleasure, and congratulation for such a nice site ;)