Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1475973
Maya and basically learn everything from scratch again." Are you in the studio working, or are you working from home? "The bigger studios, before pandemic, they require you to work in a very strict security environment, so you have to at- tend the studio and work...Then the pan- demic came and everything goes back to 'work from home.' Almost every compa- ny that I worked with recently, they work remotely, so most of my colleagues still work from home. Even though you can go to offices right now, everybody pre- fers — and it's more efficient — to work from home." What is your setup? Can you talk about your workstation? "Frankly, for previsualization, you don't need very heavy-loaded computers. It's basically more about efficiency and how effective you can be, how fast you can be, how you can reduce the amount of polygons and make your workflow, in general, efficient. It's relatively an average workstation with a couple of displays, and that's it. The crucial component of the workflow is a stable and very thick broadband cable. I changed to the busi- ness internet and that was the biggest investment I made." Do you have a preference as far as workstation set-up or brand? "Not at all. Ten years ago, it was more important — the bottleneck was the hard drives, so I was an early adopter of SSD drives. It tremendously sped up the work on editing and working with sequences. But nowadays, almost every computer is so fast that it allows you to work on almost every project. I don't use really strong video cards, like Nvidia RTX or something, because we just don't need it. "It's the artist's decision to make a scene heavy or efficient or light — a low poly scene. I'm not overcomplicating my projects, therefore I don't invest that much money in hardware because it's more about the way you work — your workflow." Let's hear about some of the work you've done? "The longest project I worked on was Jumanji, the second film. It was a real- ly-interesting project. That was my first introduction to working with Hollywood directors, and we worked almost six months on post visualization. I liked it a lot because I learned a lot — how you can handle every shot by yourself, track it, animated the characters, and then comp it together into something that works for director. "Jumanji was definitely one of the most interesting projects for me. Then was Terminator: Dark Fate, a film by Tim Miller. I worked on the last stage, then they decided to change the ending of the film and they re-shot a good portion of the third act. They brought it to us and asked us to make something that will work in several weeks. It was a su- per-challenging task for us. "I worked on another film with Dwayne Johnson — Jungle Cruise. There were a lot of sequences with water. There was a lot of roto work, and since I'm a comp artist, and I'm really good at rotoscop- ing and assembling everything in After Effects. I felt super confident working on the sequences, where millions of markers had to be removed from the background, and some reflections or splashes from the water (needed to be) eliminated from the shot. "I'm not entitled to speak a lot about Stranger Things, but I should say that every new project that comes to us still, even after 15 years working in previsual- ization, it provides some new challenges and new tasks that I am not always ready for. For Stranger Things, we need to work (on) some kind of fire simulations. It was new for me because it was Maya, and ev- ery tool was new for me. We did a great job and the directors — the Duffer Bros. — were happy with the results. "A recent project that just came out was (Chip N' Dale:) Rescue Rangers. We did almost 1,500 post-vis shots for that film. The director, Akiva Schaffer, shot empty backgrounds and several actors, who interact with the puppets, and then we replace the puppets and make Chip and Dale, and other char- acters work in these shots. We have rough animation. We have a rough ren- der. But we basically design eye lines and all the sequence, how they match together, how they cut together. "It was challenging. 1,500 shots is a lot for a small team. We had one or two teams at MPC Technicolor, and every- body there was ultra-professional anima- tors. I really appreciated the supervisor who helped us, who got us together and gave everybody the exact task that each person could handle." Can you give any advice to someone pursuing a career in previs or VFX? "First thing that comes to mind is the effectiveness of the workflow. I still open projects and see chaos in the organization of the layers and groups. It really slows down the work. If you are a perfectionist who will put everything in a proper place and name it properly, it helped 10 or 15 years ago, and it will work today as well. Spend some time on organization! "Character animation is the thing I'd really like to learn more (about). It's easy to learn compositing and tracking, but for character animation, I would suggest everyone to spend more time dealing with rigs and poses and arcs, and learning in general how to build a story. It helps every artist to understand the visual narration. "Probably the last one is editing. Not (many) artists feel comfortable editing their sequences. If you do, it helps a lot. All media nowadays, even (if it) goes to TikTok or some virtual reality, it's all about the stories. It's all about narration. If you can build a dynamic edit of what- ever story you are showing or narrating, it'll help you later to work on the same level with a director or be a team leader or supervisor. "Basically, effectiveness, organization, character animation and editing — these are skills that everybody, in my opinion, should focus on." CAREERS www.postmagazine.com 31 POST JULY/AUG 2022 Sokolov recommends new artists learn character animation.