Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1474486
j u ly • a u g u s t • s e p t e m b e r 2 0 2 2 c g w 1 9 ML: Can you talk a little bit about your background? You mentioned you've been fŠeelancing for 15 years. What was your background that led you to animation and previs and that type of work? AS: In the university, I started design in general. It was late '90s and early 2000s, and almost immediately, I started to check the first three-dimensional package that appeared at that time in the market back in Russia. Back in Russia, it was 3ds Max, not Maya. Nothing else. For some reason, it was a really popular package and we had a few, not a lot, but a few books translated in Russia, how to work in 3ds Max. I learned it and almost immediately became kind of a star in my local city. It was quite unusual that somebody could do things in 3D back in the 2000s. It was a very rare ability. Almost immediately I came to the game industry and started to work with an indie company that helped me to make character animation, since games are mostly about the character animation, and some sort of tiny, bright visual effects. I learned it there. It helped me later a lot. ML: Were you working in Russia? Was there a business there for 3D? AS: Yes, I worked in Russia for almost 10 years. Again, the market was very young and I jumped from the game industry to broadcast design and motion design, and then to visual effects. The biggest project in Russia that sped up the VFX industry appeared some- where in 2003/2004. I was hired by a company that gained incred- ible success with the first big Russian blockbuster in 2004 — Night Watch. I was hired for the second part of this film, for the sequel, named Day Watch. I [then] jumped to a VFX production house and helped them with visual effects with particles and explosions and all that stuff. It was a pretty tough adventure, and I learned a lot. Eventually, I settled with pre-visualization, because it was the most interesting, and I had a lot of freedom. I worked directly with filmmakers and directors, and I liked it a lot. ML: How did you end up in the United States? AS: That's another part of the story. I was really interested in how [directors] block the scenes. How they do sequences, which I later pre-visualized. So I came to Los Angeles to study filmmaking to speak in the same language as a director. I studied filmmaking here in LA. But the problem was the amount of competition for a young director in Los Angeles. I decided to jump back and work in my main profession, using all this experience that I had before. And with film-