Who is Julian_J? Hello there, Julian_J is Julian
Jeremy Johnson-Mortimer, I'm a 28 year old watercolour artist who
lives a nice quiet life in the small seaside town called Ramsgate
in Kent, England. How long have you have you been
rendering/doing computer graphics? Hmm, I have been doing 3d
now for about 18 months. I fell into doing 3d by accident really, I
have always been interested in computer graphics because I was
quite an avid pc game player years ago. Plus also, like most people
I've always loved watching the special effect in movies and seeing
how they have progressed over the years. And I have always wondered
how it was made. And it was about a year and a half ago I was
making a few simple flash animations for a website and I wanted to
include a moving figure of some kind, And someone said I should try
the program Poser, so I did and I found the program very
interesting. It was the first time I had tried any kind of 3d
software; I went on to make a few flash movies using Poser, a
friend of mine saw these, and he said maybe I should have a go at a
higher end 3d program like Maya. It was a program I had never even
heard of before. Well I found the Maya website and read what the
program was about and I ordered the trial CD, then once I started
learning Maya I never really looked back; I loved the challenge of
learning a high-end 3d program and finding out how effects like you
see in the films were made. Of course before buying the full
program I did first have a look at what else was out there, I also
tried 3dsmax and Lightwave. I really liked Lightwave and it was
also a lot cheaper then Maya at that time, but I just could not
really get on with the menu system of Lightwave and the layout -- I
did try. I know most people would probably find Lightwave easier to
learn then Maya, but I just found Maya so much easier to learn and
I felt at home with the program. So I picked Maya and have not
looked back since, and it is the only 3d app I use, apart from some
frustrations like Maya does tend to crash a lot, but I have really
enjoyed learning 3d. Do you have traditional art experience?
Yes, that's my background and it is still my main job, 3D is mostly
just a hobby for me; you could say I fell into painting by accident
as well, though I did enjoy Art at School I was never very good at
it. However I left school when I was 15 for different personal
reasons (no I was not expelled ;-)). I know it was quite young to
leave school and I had no idea what I was going to do with my life.
I left school before any examinations, I had no qualifications so I
did not really have a bright future I guess on the job front. My
parents would ask me, what I wanted to do? or what I was going to
do? I had no real idea, but one day my younger sister was painting
and I was bored, I guess, so I borrowed some of her paints and
started painting a picture myself. I can still remember the first
picture I painted, I copied it from an old book. It was a rather
gruesome picture, it was a picture of the Pirate Captain Kid after
he had been hanged, and from that day, I started painting every
day. And after a few weeks of painting, I painted 2 pictures of an
old cottage that a friend of my father owned, and I was surprised
when framed how good they were. And they were the first pictures I
ever sold, they were not even painted with proper watercolour
paint, but from then on I started taking painting seriously, and I
would paint almost all day every day. I painted from 9am in the
morning to 10pm at night, almost every day. Maybe it was because I
did not want my parents to think I was lazy, I guess, plus also I
did really enjoy it and it was a challenge. Well I got better and
better, I studied mostly old master paintings, my favourite artists
were Constable, Turner and Leonardo de Vinci, and by the time I was
17 I was making a good living from my paintings. I had a whole
floor of a antique and art shop full of my work in a town called
Deal (near where I live), I also had my first exhibition when I was
about 18 I think. The pictures I mostly sold were actually copies
of old master paintings. I found I could copy any painting or
drawing so most people would not be able to tell the difference,
and these were sold as just copies of old masters. Strangely enough
I have always sold more copies, then my original work, but I don't
mind, it's nice to be able to make a living doing something that
you enjoy. But I would not say that I have very much artistic
talent, I think anyone can learn and become good at art, 2d or 3d,
it's just the amount of effort and time that I put into learning
something. What are you currently working on? Well, I'm not
currently doing any 3d projects, I'm busy doing something else at
the moment, but the last 3d project I did was based on the Gollum
creature from LOTR, but I wanted mine to be more human like, I'm
not sure if it really worked. I liked some bits about it, but I'm
not that happy with it. I think I rushed it a bit, I think I should
have planned the character out more beforehand, for a character I
would normally sketch lots of ideas for the character beforehand,
but for this one I never bothered, I just had the idea in my head,
I think it could have been better. The next 3d project I will do,
when I get the time will probably be an animation of my weird
looking Gollum type creature, but I might wait till I get a new PC
for that. Another project that I my might do soon is I had a idea
for making a character from the third Harry Potter book, called
The Prisoner of Azkaban, which they're going to start the of
filming soon. There are characters in the film called Dementors.
They are rather gruesome creatures a little bit similar maybe to
the black riders in LOTR, the interesting part will be their faces
because they don't have any eyes, just a big mouth for sucking the
life out of people, I've got a few ideas so far ;-) What
software do you use and why? Well I answered this one a bit
earlier on, I use Maya probably just because it was the first
high-end 3d app I tried, it's not really any better then any other
high-end 3d app out there, all of the high-end programs are very
good I would say, but all have their good points and bad points. I
would love to try and learn some of the other programs out there
sometime. I would like to really try the modelling tools of
Lightwave, as well as the great renderers that 3DSmax has, also I
would seriously like to learn XSI, it seems to be jumping far ahead
of Maya in some areas. I have the free trial CD, but it still costs
way too much for me to even think about buying it. As for other
software I use Deeppaint 3d for painting some areas of my textures,
and Photoshop which I use for painting my textures, compositing
images and some post work. What do you think your best piece of
work is and why? Hmm, that's a hard one for me to answer
because I'm never really happy with anything that I do, I'm always
trying to improve myself and when I finish something I normally
just focus on the bad points and just try improve upon the areas
which I was not happy with, in whatever I do next. I think some of
the work I've been most happy with was some of my early projects, I
felt less pressure to produce something really good. I think the
work I think I've been most happy with at the time of making was a
Sewer Scene which I made for an animation -- some pics of it can be
viewed in my gallery. Also, it's one of my free scenes now for Maya
users. I would not say it's my best, far from it, but at the time
of making it I was very pleased. Why do you like to work with 3D
software? Well, I think making something in 3d is much more
rewarding then painting a picture, for example, it usually takes a
lot more effort and time, and I think learning 3d is harder to
learn then painting and drawing. There are so many more aspects of
3d to learn, from Modelling to Texturing, Lighting, Shader design,
Rendering, let alone animation. My animation skills are still quite
poor and they need to be improved. What I like about 3d is the
endless possibilities, you can create whole 3d world and make it
come alive. What inspires you? That's kind of a hard
question to answer, I think lots of things in life can inspires
you, just seeing what other artists produce can inspire you, seeing
something in a movie as well or reading something in a book for
example, it could be anything. Sometimes though I just can't think
what to do, whether it's a painting or a 3d work, it has to be
interesting whatever it is. But something usually always comes
along; all of a sudden you get a idea for something. How has
this online community (Renderosity) enhanced your work,
relationships, and learning? Well, I've always found
Renderosity a very interesting site, I posted my first ever 3d work
I did in Maya on Renderosity, which was of a train, and I have
posted almost every piece of work since then. It's nice to come and
browse other people's work and see what other people are up to.
I've seen some really great work on Renderosity. It's nice to see
what people are up to with different applications, which I probably
would not have seen otherwise. And I've met quite a few fellow Maya
users as well. The Maya section is still quite small, but I think
it's slowly getting more users, Maya is becoming a more popular
program which is nice. Parting Comments / Advice to other
Artists? Hmm, I'm not sure what to say here? I guess just
remember that you can accomplish anything if you set your mind to
it, all it takes is time and effort, I don't have any
qualifications, or degrees in art or math, they do certainly help,
but it all comes down to effort. Thank you very much to the people
out there who voted me Artist of the Month, and thanks to everyone
who's commented on my work. Best Wishes Julian_J Click
here to visit Julian_J's gallery!
Click here to learn more about the Artist of the Month and to view our past winners.
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