Pencils, Pigment & Pixels – Dan Gies Interview Part 2

Pencils, Pigment & Pixels – Dan Gies Interview Part 2

on Jan 29th 2012 with 14 comments

In Part 2 of this interview, Dan Gies shares with Nancy from Mettle about his methodology and the importance of spontaneity to the creative process.

Interview – Part 2

 
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Nancy is a motion graphics professional with over 20 years experience in the business. A graduate of both McGill University (Montreal) and Pratt Institute (New York),. She started off her career as a graphic designer, but has continually enjoyed learning new software applications. She began using After Effects when it was still called CoSa After Effects, and is an enthusiastic user. A partner at Mettle, she has been involved in the development of the Next Gen Software Plug-ins: FreeForm V2, ShapeShifter AE, and FreeForm Pro.  

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  • http://www.creativedojo.net VinhSon Nguyen

    Amazing interview. It’s astounding how simple he makes it sound, but when I saw his composition…

    • http://www.mettle.com/Products/ShapeShifter-AE.php Nancy
      Author

      @Vinhson

      Thanks for the kind words.

      Nancy :-)

    • Strut

      @Vinhson just saw the clip you did using Shapeshifter AE on your site. Looks great, tutorial please :-)

      Strut

      • http://www.creativedojo.net VinhSon Nguyen

        Hey Strut, thanks for the kind words! The tutorial is under development right now, should be coming soon, possibly on AETuts+ ;)

  • http://www.fremox.com fremox

    The whole tutorial serie on how we can rig and animate such a complex 3D like character indide AfterEffect was incredibly helpful !
    It’s very well explained and the whole process is really clever ; i had’nt seen such a smart way to do this directly in AE, and i think all these tutorials are the best ones on the web to achieve amazing character animations without 3D programs…

    @Dan :

    You should right a complete book around this technic, i would buy it for sure if you would !
    Congrats again and keep the good stuff !

    • http://www.mettle.com/Products/ShapeShifter-AE.php Chris

      @fremox

      I completely agree, an iBook or eBook would be amazing. I already spoke to Dan about this. Let’s see what we can do.

      Thanks for watching.

      Cheers,
      Chris

  • http://ae.tutsplus.com/articles/interview/pencils-pigment-pixels-dan-gies-interview-part-2/ A Friend on the internet…

    @Nancy, i love you :D, thanks for pushing through my feedback from the 1st part.

    @Chris, thank you aswell.

    Exceptional Part 2, +1 on doing an iBook or eBook.

    Best of luck for the future Mr Gies :)

  • knalle

    very inspiring

  • originz

    incredible stuff with creating the puppet, truly inspiring stuff.

    by the way, is it just me or does Dan kinda sound/ talk like Ben Stiller? haha

  • Strut

    Awesome interview(s) Nancy. I love that Dan combines, conventional art with digital. Dan you artwork is exquisite :-) The music is very tasty too. Nancy, did Dan compose and perform these as well? Can we get Dan to talk about his music background?

    Keep up the great work :-)

    Strut

    • http://www.mettle.com Nancy
      Author

      @strut, Dan composes and plays all the music in his pieces. btw, Dan actually toured for a while with a well known Canadian band, as a guitarist! But that’s another story… :)

  • xandercorp

    This guy’s a true trooper! What kind of computer is he using what configuration to run all those scenes well and set up the character with expressions like that? Would you need a really powerful one?

    Nancy, I think you should also focus on the tools used as well the techniques, time of work, how many weeks/days per project, stuff like this might be interesting to find out.

    Anyway, great interview Nance, the only problem as far as I’ve seen were the shots with you seemed a bit rehearsed, other then that, great job!

    • http://www.mettle.com Nancy
      Author

      @xandercorp, take a look at the end of Part 2; we list all Dan’s hardware and software, for animation and sound. Dan has done some of his earlier work on low-end systems, and doesn’t think it’s necessary to have an expensive set-up to do great work. Most of Dan’s projects takes months to do. He works directly with his clients, does everything from script-writing, storyboards, animatics, illustration, animation, and composes and creates all the music and sound. Whew!

  • xandercorp

    Heh… Just saw it, I didn’t stick around for the credits, force of habit. Thank you, Those computers look pretty high end to me, but yes, I know he was talking about making motion graphics on his old computer in the first part, however to build such scenes and for acceptable render times, one would probably need a computer like his.

    I remember seeing his stuff on vimeo a while back and thinking it’s fantastic work, he had an animation with a man turning into a wolf which you mentioned in the first part, he’s my new idol, lol. :-) Very impressive stuff.

    Anyway, thanks for pointing it out.