A Plumiferos Interview With Pablo Vazquez

BlenderNation had the chance to sit down and have an interview with the latest addition to the Plumiferos film project. You all know and love Pablo Vazuez as VenomGFX. With this incredible and talent and down to earth personality he's been one of the most popular Blender graphic artists! This interview is an inside glimpse into the life of one artist at Plumiferos:

So you joined up with Plumiferos, did they interview you for the position (and what position would that be) or how did that all come about?

Well, I knew Malefico (Claudio Andaur) since 2003, when we used to be part of the great nicodigital.com community (closed since October 2004), after NicoDigital closed, we've keep chatting sometimes and meeting at other communitys or IRC, so I guess that's why they didn't interview me because malefico and others knew me since a long time ago. About the position, since they started thinking of the idea for me to come to Buenos Aires, they told me that I could work in many areas, also in animation (I suck!) when needed, good for practice! :D

You are one of the most popular Blender artists. That is partly because of your amazing talent and for the generosity in which you lend your skills. Has all of the free work finally paid off?

Thanks, I didn't learn all by myself, thanks to NicoDigital I learned lots of theory, like the raytracing, and things that were asociate with this, I learned them too. I wouldn't call it free work, with every thing you do, you're always learning, even if Blender crashed or your computer die (it happened to me...twice!) and you have to do it all again, I think that you're learning in every click. So nothing is for free, all that you learned is priceless.

You've just recently arrive in Buenos Aires and started with Plumiferos. What has been your first impression of the studio and the project?

Well, I lived all my life in Rio Gallegos (my little town at the very south of Argentina.. and the world indeed xD ), so I haven't been with another Blender user in person, so the fact of being here with all this people using Blender in such perfect harmony was awesome, the texture guys working together drawing and mapping textures, the animators on the other table with malefico jumping from one side o another acting like a bird (we have to film that!) , the art people drawing and drawing all day!!, it is incredible how fast you learn things when someone besides you are watching and helping you, sounds like a nice place to work? sure it is! :)

The studio is nice too, books to read, coffee.. and some new powerful stuff that will appear in the blog soon. :)

You have an unique ability for artistic / cartoony characters - will any of your previous works show through in the design of any of the characters?

Thanks!, It would be very nice to me, but I guess that it won't happen, otherwise, there is a lot of secondary characters along the movie so I guess I'll have to model some, but they are already drawn so I think that the main shape of them will stay like the drawings, I hope they let me play free a bit with some shapes key of non-main characters or things like that (Ton is trying to help me convince Malefico, please!), anyway, the director is Daniel so.. I'm already asking for a place in the next Manos Digitales' movie! :)

Did they put you right to work or are they letting you play around with the scenes to get a feel for the sets?

Luckily they are letting me be free with the various kind of works to do, actually I made some ShapesKey, facial animation tests, fur/hair tests, ilumination tests, inorganic modeling, played with some lipsync, made some walkcycles (just for practice) and so on. And there is still tons of work to do!

Blender 2.42 is currently in development and many new features will be added. From your experience what new tool will benefit Plumiferos (and animated movies in general) the most?

All of them!, but both material and composition nodes the most, i think. These features let you play in many ways as you can imagine, the composite nodes settings are updated in real time, the material nodes let you mix everything with everything, it's an stunning upgrade in Blender, and it will become even better with render passes! An example? watch Elephants Dream frame by frame, a masterpiece!

There's been talk of an HD trailer being released soon. Is there any set date for the release and who will be the first to know?

The HD trailer will be released within June, and the first to know (after Ton Roosendaal :P ) will be, of course, BlenderNation! ;)

Plumiferos is going to be another major milestone for Blender and Blender made movies. Is there anything in the works for the studio beyond Plumiferos and what about you?

Actually, Plumíferos is our main project, working full-time on it, after that.. the idea is to continue working on more projects like this, but..who knows!. For me, when i get a home (so hard to find one in Buenos Aires!), I want to land all that I'm learning here into my personal projects (like the latest CGtalk contest' scene and characters), and my works as a freelance.

It's been good talking with you. Is there anything that you would like to share with the BlenderNation subscribers?

Just be nice, wait more news about Plumíferos, keep yourself up to date with BlenderNation, eat your vegetables, learn, practice, visit my gallery/blog often (kidding.. i'm actually updating like once a month.. so sad :( , and..well.. that's all folks! =)