Artist Interview: Paul Tobin

Search

pages - 1 2 3 4

Artist Interview: Paul Tobin

By CGNZ - October 18, 2010

On creativity and the client

Sometimes it can be quite a juggling act to manage the client’s expectations while pushing yourself creatively, and trying out innovative ideas. “It’s quite tough. There is the classic line a director or production designer will inevitably say (it’s not always the same line, but they usually find different ways of saying it) – ‘Yeah, but we want to see something that we’ve never seen before’. That’s the standard client expectation – come up with something that I haven’t seen before, something original and innovative and all the rest of it. Considering how many films are made and how much visual material there is out there, that can be a pretty hard brief.

My take on it is that it’s about free thinking. Not being too restrained. Especially at the early stages the trick is not to become too restrained with your ideas. But making sure your ideas are relevant for the project. That’s something that is really important.

There’s concept art – It’s very self indulgent, it’s just driven by a whim, by the artist. Kind of like doodling illustration the most part. Or you might have a self imposed brief. But there’s no structure, there’s no external client. We are concept designers, so you need to ensure that the ideas you come up with and the design you produce is relevant to the project.

And that sounds like a no brainer, but actually you have to be quite smart about how you approach an idea. If you have an idea that you think is amazing, but really quite out there, like really left centre. How do you sell that idea to the director without freaking them out? And potentially getting a slap on the wrist because you spent two days working it up. You have to develop strategies to present those kinds of ideas. A lot of the time they want something that’s out there. But if it’s something that’s completely inappropriate, that’s not good design, because you’ve just designed something that’s not on brief basically. Its a huge part of the job, managing client expectations.

There will be a time when a client goes ‘I really love this from this other thing. I want my version of that’. We try to veto that kind of stuff within our own group first. So that if something is going to be put in front of the director, we look at it and we go ‘You might not have realized this, but this is very similar to this from this thing’. Then we’ll flag it, ‘I think you’ll need to change it or you need to go away and have a rethink’.

Everyone is influenced, especially when you’re starting out, you’re very influenced by other designers. I know I was. I was very influenced by Alan and John. Often you’ll start out your career being influenced by your favorite designers, until you find your own voice. But there is a big difference being influenced and inspired by, overtly copying and slavishly following someone else’s ideas and design style. Most designers I know may be influenced by other design, but that ends at a certain point. I really dislike people ripping off design. It’s plagiarism basically. It’s one to be inspired by but just to rip it off entirely… and to come up with something very derivative and very obvious, there isn’t a lot of merit in it. Sometimes a client will ask for that so you might not have any choice to be honest. And that happens to all of us”.

The impression that creative people get stifled all the time by clients is not necessarily the whole truth. You have to be able to effectively sell your ideas to the client and prepared to push for them. Paul feels very fortunate at Weta to have the amount of creative freedom that they do, and a lot of the directors sometimes allow too much creative freedom.

“When you get a director that gives you very concise, well thought through feedback it’s really good. It can actually be quite hard working and a bit disheartening just coming up with idea after idea after idea, and not getting a lot of good direction. It’s exhausting, because you are just pouring out these ideas and they are not advancing, they are not getting anywhere. But sometimes you get a director that takes those ideas on board, those are the directors who are very good. They will go ‘This is not appropriate for this particular concept, but it’s a great idea so we will just save it for something else’. Or ‘All of this is not working, but this one thing here.. that is working, let’s work with that’. Rather than just saying ‘NO!’ Five pieces on the wall and you just get no.

So you get the two approaches with clients. A lot of other places are a lot more restricted. The briefs are nowhere near as interesting or the client is very specific about what they want to get out of it and you don’t quite get the same latitude. Obviously with game design, you’re bound by the technology. What’s the point of designing this elaborate piece of design, if the best it can achieve is this at this resolution. But that’s changing though, that’s changing a huge amount.

Pushing further

Paul goes into more detail about developing new fields of interest as a concept designer, and pushing further into areas in which you might be less proficient. “After a while you do get a bit sick of doing the same old same old. It’s always worth to keep pushing yourself. I have always been interested in doing a bit more science fiction. But at the same time, like any new skill, you need to devote some time to it. And obviously when you are under a deadline situation sometimes it is a lot easier to just stick with the areas you are comfortable with and just dabble in something a bit different when you get a chance”.

Time management becomes critical when trying to further yourself as a creative. “Most of us at work at work, when we are learning something new we just end up having to stay late. Or do it in our own time. You definitely get the opportunity on certain jobs to try new stuff to learn on the job. But you’ve got to remember that you will be competing against people that are very good at those things. If I’m going head to head with Greg designing robots, I’ve got my work cut out for me. Because he’s very very good at drawing robots!

I suppose you ultimately want to get something into the film. The reason we are concept designers is that we want to influence the visual look of the film – and the ideas behind the film. You have to be a little bit clever with how you allocate your time. If you want to take a stab out of your depth, ultimately you might miss an opportunity to get something in the film in an area you are more accustomed to.

The reality is that probably 80% of what you do is rejected outright and will never be seen by anyone other than your collegues.

That’s what the stakes are. Concept design is a very difficult job – I think it’s a job that’s highly romanticised at the moment, without people knowing the reality of the job. The reality is that probably 80% of what you do is rejected outright and will never be seen by anyone other than your collegues. Unless there is a very fortunate situation where you can do an ‘Art Of’ book – which doesn’t always happen. And a lot of the time, you might spend months or years of your life on a film that ultimately falls over – Halo is a great example of that”.

It is hard to keep your motivation and energy up under those situations where you are trying to make sure you get something into a film while also delivering what the client wants. “But, its also very rewarding. The scopes of the jobs are so wide. It’s architecture, costume design, interior design – just about all of the design arts, all in one job.

You get to play in so many different fields. And it’s the fun stuff. Because I’ve got a lot of friends who are architects and designers, and half their job is administration and client liaison. We just get to do the fun stuff. Come up with the idea, design it to a point where we can hand it over to someone to manufacture it, and art direct it or not. So that’s a pretty amazing position to be in. And after a while, you don’t get quite so hung up on making sure that you definitely get something into a film. You become a bit more relaxed about enjoying the process. Taking it as it comes. I suppose you’re a little bit more cynical because you’ve actually spent the last 5-6 years of your life working on some things that don’t go anywhere. Whereas when you first start out you’re very eager and keen to get as much stuff into a film as possible. To get involved as much as you can”.

Other projects

“I would love to potentially write and illustrate my own stories. Maybe even work towards a film. For me it’s basically a bit of fun using design to explore a world. It’s like an uncharted world and you are using your design skills and what you have learned, in terms of storytelling. In the film industry, you do learn a bit about storytelling. Even as a designer. It’s just slowly starting to fill in the map and seeing how far I can get with it. But it’s slow going because obviously I have been so busy with other stuff. It’s a lot of fun.

I have been working on a couple of ideas actually. The one I am presenting in the book is kind of a re-imagined Atlantis. That’s the world I have been starting to build and have been thinking about for along time. It’s built around the premise that Atlantis survived the Cataclysm, but is sort of shunted slightly out of time and space into their own world. So it’s still around but not readily accessible. It becomes highly isolated. The main breakthrough I had was that the people crossing the Atlantic – all the mysterious disappearances, the Bermuda Triangle effect – the idea that those people actually end up in Atlantis. And they bring with them a degree of technology and new ideas. And so the Atlantis that has survived is undergoing change. It’s not matching our world exactly, but is parallel to a degree but in a weird stagnated kind of way. It’s not a high fantasy world. It’s not a world set back in the old times, but it actually has got quite a weird fusion of modern influences as well. I am setting it maybe around WWI or WWII. The carnage of Europe and the story of WWII start to spill over and into Atlantis.

Once the exhibition is up and running I will probably stop taking on freelance work and start to focus back on the Atlantis work again. I do want to take the Concept Design Workshop on the road. I am keen to go up to Auckland and maybe even further abroad with that. Start focusing on taking the workshops abroad. Maybe start working towards another book. I have another couple of books on the go but they are at different stages of development. I am quite happy to push some of them out as a long term project. Obviously we have had The Hobbit on for the last couple of years now. It’s been consuming a large part of my life. You only get one chance to work on The Hobbit.

Once it’s out of the way and the book is out of the way, I will probably be taking a bit of break. And then slowly start building myself back up. The hope at this stage is to go to Comic Con next year in San Diego and take the book. Just have a bit of a look around the States. I’m quite keen to visit a few of the places like ILM, see what the States has to offer in terms of galleries and film experience. I used to do a lot of traveling, but haven’t done a lot in the last few years. I would definitely like to get traveling again.

Yeah – at the moment it’s just more of the same, but trying to ease back a little bit. It’s pretty much been 10-hour days at Weta, then home and work till midnight most nights. So it’s pretty exhausting. But it has been extremely rewarding and the book has by far been one of the most satisfying things I have ever done creatively, and the teaching is always satisfying. It’s been pretty good.

See White Cloud Worlds at Armageddon Expo Auckland

October 23 – October 25, 2010

Meet some of the artists from White Cloud Worlds! Artist book signings Saturday and Sunday at 11am & 3pm. The White Cloud Worlds team will be hosted at the Weta stand.

Signing Artists
Greg Broadmore – Weta Workshop Concept Designer and creator of Doctor Grordbort’s Rayguns.
Dylan Coburn – Director of Karactaz animation studio and freelance illustrator.
Claire Hackett – Freelance illustrator working at Weta Digital.
Nick Keller – Weta Workshop Concept Designer and fine artist.
Paul Tobin – Editor of White Cloud Worlds, Weta Workshop Concept Designer and freelance illustrator.