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Zapped!
Håkan "Zap" Andersson blows the circuits
At a Glance:
Occupation: Software Engineer (currently "between jobs")
Age: 35
REVELATIONS title: Visual F/X graphics person thingy guy or such :)
Preferred software: Besides the tools I write myself.... 3DS Max and After Effects
Website: http://www.master-zap.com
Recently featured in: Sju Dagar, an on-line magazine
The story behind the name: The "å" letter should come out as an "a" with a little circle above it, not an a with two dots above it (i.e. an "ä" is wrong, and "å" is correct). If you can't get it right, write "Hakan" instead, that's still mangled but less mangled than "Häkan" is, ouch!). Guess why I'm called Zap? Because of that damned "å" :-)
RTOF: What's your background? How did you get involved with computer graphics?
ZAP: In 1989 I wrote my first rendering software, "RayTracker", which was commercial for a brief moment (grand total of two copies sold ever). But I was out-competed by "3D studio" which was released around the same time.... What could I, one guy in a garage, do to compete with a whole corporation?
RTOF: How does working on REVELATIONS differ from your past work?
ZAP: There's more people involved... more wills.... Before, it was me, myself and I, and I was more free to do my own take on things. I do that now too, but sometimes the director has a different vision than I do. So it's more of an interactive process, with changes and updates as they are requested, instead of a more linear process when I worked with my own stuff.
Another difference is that my stuff was more "seat of the pants" flying, where I tried some experiment and then mangled it to fit the whole... for example, "Intermezzo Dualis: Reloaded" never had a script, storyboard, or anything -- it was just an idea, take a camera, and hit "record". A lot of preplanning IN MY HEAD was done, yes, but the whole execution was winging it on the fly.
RTOF: Who or what has been your greatest influence in pursuing the effects field?
ZAP: Movies, movies and movies! And the fact that I've been involved (and still am) in the programming side of things. I love to write algorithms that create something cool, realistic, or both. It's a passion.
RTOF: How did you hear about REVELATIONS?
ZAP: Shane (the director) told me ;) But seriously, I had seen the trailer before that time, but I can't recall where I stumbled on it first. Quite possibly from some link on the TFN message boards.
RTOF: What is it about REVELATIONS that appeals to you?
ZAP: It's an opportunity to do something for a larger project... wetting my feet in a large-scale project.
RTOF: What's been your biggest challenge on this project?
ZAP: There is a particular scene I'm working on which involves adding the view out a couple of windows. In theory, this would be easy since the windows are greenscreens, but the problems are twofold: First, the camera is moving all over the place, and second, the lighting is so dark so most of the green is actually more like black. So there is a lot of hand-masking and motion tracking involved. Ouch.
RTOF: What have you learned as part of the REVELATIONS team?
ZAP: That people's opinions are different, and generally you have as many various opinions as you have viewers... this gets tricky if you show an effect-in-progress to your peers and everyone adds their own, sometimes conflicting, "constructive criticism" to it.
I think I found people are more diverse than I thought... things I considered "obvious qualities" are by some not seen as such, and vice versa. It's a learning process.
RTOF: How much of your time does REVELATIONS take?
ZAP: That varies, but basically "all the time I have left over after other things I must do get done" which varies tremendously day-by-day.
RTOF: Where do you get your inspiration?
ZAP: Crazy ideas nobody ever dared to try. So I am a bit reluctant to do "standard" stuff and I prefer the "crazy challenging" stuff. I think I was among the first in the Star Wars fan film community to extensively utilize motion tracking, and finally unleash the virility of a moving camera as opposed to many an amateur filmmaker's standard "static, locked down camera bluescreen shot with a fake flat background". I had stuff that moved -- fluid, three-dimensional and with depth and a sense of realism.
RTOF: What advice can you offer someone looking to do this type of work?
ZAP: Oh, give up immediately! That will leave more work for me! *giggle*
No, seriously, try to concentrate on what you do well, and ignore what you don't do well. If you are a great modeler but a crappy texture painter, then just model and add NO textures. If you are a great texturer, try to put them on simple geometric shapes to demo them on their own. Or on well-made models, not on so-so models. And so on.
Concentrate on your strength. The business (in the big projects) is pipeline-oriented, so if you can't model, someone else on your team can, etc.
RTOF: What do you hope to take away from the project?
ZAP: Oh, the fame, the glory, the satisfaction. *grin*
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