Erick Miller, Character Setup Supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks, has been a Maya user since its inception at version 1.0 Currently, Erick is finishing the all-CG Sony Pictures Animation feature, Surf's Up. Prior to Surf's Up, while at Imageworks, Erick did facial rigging for the all-CG Feature, Monster House, and also built a muscle and skin system for the visual effects feature Ghost Rider. The muscle and skin system ins currently being used in other upcoming feature films, including the all-CG medieval fantasy/adventure epic, Beowulf, directed by the acclaimed Academy Award-winning director, Robert Zemeckis. Before Sony Pictures Imageworks, Miller worked at Digital Domain where he contributed to several groundbreaking effects projects including a crowd animation and rendering system, and a plug-in pose space deformation system. he created the Maya crowd pipeline for The Day After Tomorrow and muscle based facial rigging for a photo-realistic Michael Jordan Superbowl commercial. He was also the Lead Character TD for a series of Disney 50th anniversary commercials, and with his team, created a full squash and stretch 3D cartoon character rigging pipeline. As a Lead Character TD for the feature film, I, Robot, Erick was responsible for the hero facial rigging of the fully CG, photo-realistic main character, "Sonny," in addition to much of the character based Maya pipeline, including the crowd system, and many scripts, plug-ins, and character based tools.
Jeff Unay is a passionate artist and Maya enthusiast. He most recent accepted a position as Character Modeling Supervisor with Electronic Arts, Vancouver. Most recently, Jeff completed work as a Senior Modeler with Weta Digital working on Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong. Specializing in character./creature creation, his work can be found on film, television, and in video games. For his work in this book, the creation of the beast, he looked to his favorite artists and sculptors as well as nature for his inspiration. "We studied many different animals during the conceptualization stage of the new beast and really wanted to focus on capturing some of the intricate facial motion of the animals, mainly in the areas of the face where the skin reacts to the contracting, stretching and relaxing of the muscles. Those details in mind influenced the new look of the beast," he says. For example, the beast now has specific wrinkles on its muzzle, and we wanted those wrinkles to move in a way that would give the illusion of an underlying muscle, fat and skull structure existing for the wrinkles to travel over. It was a lot of fun playing around with that."
"When I say creating the illusion of realism, what I mean is, when you're doing this stuff don't go for truly real. If you try and hit realism you'll never get it, it just won't happen. Take a couple of steps back, look at what you're doing. It's just like a painting - when you try and paint naturally, it's better to just express yourself in it as well," says Paul Thuriot, Associate CG Supervisor at Electronic Arts (EA). Thuriot should know--he holds a B.A. in drawing and painting and a Master degree in computer animation. His artistic and technical expertise has been brought to bear on several complex projects. Before joining EA, he was the Puppet/Creature Supervisor at Tippett Studio where he contributed to the award-winning blockbuster "Carl & Ray" commercials, Blade 2, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Hellboy.
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