11/19/2013 5:33:51 PM by
Community Manager
(Edited: 1/9/2025 6:51:41 PM)
Views: 3245
Renderotica Artist Spotlight: Man Of Steel
Artist Name: ManOfSteel
Gallery Link: http://www.renderotica.com/artists/ManOfSteel/Gallery.aspx
1) what brought you into 3D Toons?
My inability to draw. I shouldn’t say that. I am fine with architectural scenes and landscapes, but the human figure eluded me. In the hopes that it would aid me, I started clipping pictures from magazines and books as references. Then one day I got a software catalog in the mail. One of the programs was called Poser and seemed to be just what I needed. I was very excited and wrote a check and began to leave the house to mail it. And by coincidence, there was another software catalog that had been delivered announcing the debut of Poser 2. So my check got me one of the earliest copies of Poser 2.
2) How did you choose your nickname?
It was kind of chosen for me. I took care of my mother during a long illness and after she died I was jobless, and more importantly, aimless. A friend suggested I try for a strength trainer’s job in the YMCA that she worked in.. You see, I’d always worked in an office, so this was something new for me. In some ways I felt right at home though because I’d been working out since I was 18 and I always thought of myself as a skinny novice even though I wasn’t skinny anymore. One day a coworker told me with a smile that a few of the teenage boys wanted to ask me for advice but they were too intimidated to approach me. My coworker assured them that I was quite mild-mannered, like Clark Kent. In fact the boys used to call me “Clark” for a while after that, but since all the strength trainers had nicknames, the association with Superman and my pumping iron led my coworkers to give me the nickname “Man Of Steel”.
3) How long have you been creating your artwork?
That’s an interesting question. I’ve been trying to draw David since the mid 1970s. In fact I found some old drawings a while back and was amazed how his profile hasn’t changed since then. But if you’re referring to the 3D renderings then those would date from June of 2002. Though I had bought Poser 2.0 years earlier, I didn’t do anything with it because I was disappointed with the figures that it came with. But while Poser was gathering dust on my hard drive, Michael 2 was released and he was much more realistic than the mannequin-like figures in prior versions of Poser. And that sparked my return to Poser, which by then was in version 4.
4) Where do you draw your inspirations from?
Well, remember those magazine clippings I mentioned? Well at one point I bought a big scrapbook and started to paste them in it. I wondered if I’d ever fill it. After all, how many pictures of handsome, muscular men will there ever be?
The answer: thousands. Years later, I had whole file cabinet drawers stuffed with clippings from muscle magazines and men’s fashion magazines. I have to admit I was obsessed. It just killed me to let a picture of a good looking guy get away.
And then the internet came.
The very first night I gained access to the internet I stayed up until 4 am scouting for pictures and learning to download and save them. And now, twenty years later, in addition to the thousands of magazine clippings and other pictures, I have more than 45,000 images saved to my hard drives. They are the ultimate source of reference and inspiration.
But they weren’t the first. I’d have to say that all the Hercules and Tarzan movies I watched as a kid stuck in my mind. Muscular superheroes in tight costumes helped too.
5) what are the specs of your render machine?
I have a four year old 64-bit Alienware Aurora with an i7 processor,16 gigs of RAM, 3.5 terabytes in on board hard drives, and another 3.5 terabytes in external drives, run by Windows 7 Professional.
6) what is your favorite work you’ve created?
Oh god….that’s a hard one. I have favorites, but to pick just one? Years ago I would have said David 63 because, formidable as he may look, in that image he’s smiling and seems very friendly. But there have been hundreds of images since then so I think my favorite now is David 442. I think he looks sublimely beautiful in that one.
7) Out of all the various art mediums why 3D?
It’s new, relatively. It’s still developing. It’s accessible to anyone who can afford a good computer. Technically, it can be very precise in its calculations of light reflection, transmission, etc. And yet it provides the artist a way to break away completely from real world physics and optics. With the right software and hardware you can make images that look photographic, severely blurring the line between fantasy and reality. I love that. It’s like photography, sculpture, painting, and designing…all in one.
8) What are your plans for the future?
My goals for the future are to resist the habit of I have of taking something fun and making it into a chore, a job under the pretense that that’s what you must do if you find something that you enjoy. I want to keep this fun. I want to keep doing images that I would want to see and share them with my fans rather than succumb to doing only what makes money or is popular. I also would like to try to keep up with the unending flood of software that keeps coming down the line. Again, I have to tell myself that I don’t have to know Poser and DAZ Studio and Bryce and Vue and Mudbox and Z Brush and Lightwave and Cinema 4D and Sketchup and Maya and Carrara and absolutely every single thing Photoshop can do. It’s in my nature to try and be the expert, but it would suck the joy out of the very thing I’m trying to do. So my plans are to stay the course and keep having fun.
9) who are your favorite artists other than yourself?
Current or former Renderotica artists? There are many but I would name Nemain, Hellboy, Damselactionbabe, Nimrod555, SC1969, Choppski, Venca, and thyebbr at or near the top of the list. As far as more mainstream artists go I’d have to say Norman Rockwell, Frank Frazetta, Syd Mead,, Maxfield Parrish, Chesley Bonestell, comic book artists Neal Adams and John Bryne, and gay artists Tom of Finland, Cavelo, and Gengoroh Tagame.
10) If someone reading this wants to start creating their own artwork what words of advice would you give them?
Download the free DAZStudio software After a while, download a free trial of Poser to see which you like better. Sometimes a different interface or software workflow pattern makes all the difference in the world. But with the free DAZ Studio software at least you can begin to practice right away.
Don’t buy a lot of props, clothing, or sets right away. Your goal is to learn what the software can do, and most importantly I think, become familiar with human anatomy, human movement, and posing. One advantage I had was my years of bodybuilding. When you look at a Poser figure, they’re broken down into different muscles complete with their Latin names. I knew what every muscle was, what it did, and more importantly, how they were supposed to look when fully developed.
Start off simple. Do simple figure studies with different lighting. Don’t try to do massive orgy scenes right off the bat. That’s a recipe for frustration.
Establish an ID at Renderosity, Renderotica, SmithMicro, and DAZ 3D and read the forums as much as you can. Don’t be afraid to ask questions there if you can’t find the answer by yourself first.
In addition to the sites mentioned above, look to YouTube for additional tutorials and inspiration.
Ask for constructive criticism from someone who can do it tactfully. At the same time, and I know this sounds like the opposite of what I just suggested, don’t become a robot and make every single “correction” people suggest. As with many things, learn the rules, and then break them wisely.
11) When developing your pose & animation sets, what's been your most influential source for ideas?
All those thousands of magazine clippings and all those images downloaded from the internet. I have the downloaded pictures categorized into folders and some of them are purely for reference. For instance, amid all those folders of hunky men, I have a folder just for back shots so I can reference the complex muscles of the back. And I have one for shirts and other clothes that I can reference to see how cloth fits a very muscular man. I also have a folder specifically for faces and one for closeups of hair.
12) Any hints on what your next project is going to include?
I don’t really know what my next project will be. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that I don’t know which one it will be from the long list of things I’d like to do. Unfortunately, I’m good at starting things but I tend to burn myself out. One fan has made music videos using my images and it got me to thinking that I might do a sequence of images and send them, and the song I have in mind, to him for processing.
13) Do you have a job outside of 3D or do you consider this your full time occupation?
This is not my full time occupation and I’m not sure I’d want it to be unless it made me fabulously wealthy. Even then, I would be afraid my creativity would die and all the fun would be taken out of it. Luckily, the company I work for has a wide interest in art and literature and they help when I have hardware problems or legal questions.
14) With all the recent advancements in 3D technology what excites you the most? What do you dread the most?
What excites me the most is the pace of technology in the 3D world. Every year we have more control over the meshes, the lights, the rendering capabilities, and tools for post processing. We always know something new is coming.
By the same token, the very fact that something new is coming is, in its own way, dreadful. It seems I just start to feel a sense of mastery with the current version of software when the new version comes along, and you have to struggle with the decision of how to allot your time and money. You can’t buy everything and there’s not enough time to learn everything. I think that’s one thing you have to cultivate when you work with 3D. You’ve got to learn to temper your passions a little. You’ve got to be technically proficient while not letting your artistic zeal get trampled. You have to budget for new things but be disciplined enough to pass some of them up. You have to push yourself to learn more without becoming neurotic. You have to be inspired by the other artists but also be confident in your own style.
It can make you crazy!
