Ron Crabb: Creative InspirationsIntroduction| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:07 | Ron Crabb: It's just a great way to do art,
because your goal in art is just to create and
| | 00:12 | at least it is for me.
| | 00:14 | It's like how?
| | 00:15 | I have got an idea, I want
to get it in front of people.
| | 00:17 | I am going to use whatever tools I
can find, that I can do that with.
| | 00:22 | It's almost for me, like I was cheating.
| | 00:23 | You know I was like, okay,
they can't illustrate, I can.
| | 00:25 | Well, I am just going to use that.
| | 00:27 | I am not going to try to be like them.
| | 00:28 | At a very, very early age I was just
sucking this stuff up and memorizing it
| | 00:36 | and how does that feel, and what's
that look, and the light coming through
| | 00:40 | frozen ice on a creek and that it has
to look real and that's -- there's this
| | 00:46 | little fine line between having it
look painted and then just bumping it over
| | 00:51 | to where it looks real.
| | 00:52 | They didn't want any one specific look,
but they wanted to have that exotic kind
| | 00:58 | of Middle Eastern feel, that's not
really defined to much what that is.
| | 01:01 | And actually this was another -- just
kind of as I was going thing I decided to
| | 01:05 | add some facial tattoo things to her,
because the whole idea of this category of
| | 01:10 | my art was to create illustrations
from a story that is implied that I don't
| | 01:15 | really talk about.
I leave that up to the viewers.
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| Workspace| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:30 | Ron Crabb: Well, obviously I
don't live in L.A., as you can see.
| | 00:34 | I got married in 1996 and ever since
that time we were coming up here visiting
| | 00:39 | friends on the island.
| | 00:41 | My wife absolutely loved the place.
| | 00:43 | One of the things she told me after we
got married is one of the reasons
| | 00:47 | she married me was because I like the Northwest as well.
| | 00:50 | So we would come up here once a year
at least and just fell in love with the island,
| | 00:55 | loved the whole place.
| | 00:57 | But I was kind of tied to
Hollywood and I was doing motion graphics.
| | 01:01 | I started doing visual effects
work and that kind of thing for
| | 01:03 | television commercials.
| | 01:05 | But it just didn't look like it was
going to be possible to ever live here.
| | 01:10 | It just was like well, we'll visit a lot.
| | 01:12 | We've got friends up here,
we'll just come up a lot.
| | 01:15 | But every time we came up, we'd
come up in the summer, we'd come up in
| | 01:18 | the winter.
| | 01:19 | It's a good thing to do if you ever
consider moving here, come in the winter,
| | 01:22 | and make sure you can handle it.
| | 01:23 | But we just kind of more and
more fell in love with the place.
| | 01:27 | So I actively started thinking of ways
that I can work at home more, because
| | 01:32 | motion graphics kind of required me
being there to direct or edit or whatever.
| | 01:37 | Whereas, focusing more on the matte
painting work for films and television,
| | 01:42 | that was a more isolated kind of
thing where I could work from home.
| | 01:45 | I was already doing that quite
a bit from home as a freelancer.
| | 01:48 | So I would use the FTP sites, that
kind of thing, and upload things.
| | 01:51 | So I really never went into Hollywood
except of to meet with somebody or to view
| | 01:56 | things, viewing rooms or whatever.
| | 01:59 | So it was starting to shift, where I
could see I'm spending more and more time
| | 02:03 | at home, this is
becoming more and more possible.
| | 02:06 | Once I really focused on that and
really marketed myself as a matte painter for films,
| | 02:10 | it shifted rapidly
to where I could do that.
| | 02:13 | I had a discussion with the current
clients that I had at time, and said,
| | 02:16 | here's my plan, I'd like to move up to the
Northwest, do you see a problem with that?
| | 02:21 | The answer was predominantly, no.
| | 02:23 | I mean, as it was I was working a
lot of freelance out of my home in Los Angeles.
| | 02:28 | So I was already using that
remote kind of business model.
| | 02:33 | So moving it up here really makes no difference.
| | 02:35 | It's whether your doing a DSL upload
from up here, or you're doing it from LA,
| | 02:40 | it's the exact same thing.
| | 02:42 | It's really been that advance in
technology with the Internet kind of thing that
| | 02:47 | has made all of this possible.
| | 02:49 | I guess that's the beauty of it. You
can live in a place like this and still be
| | 02:53 | tied to Hollywood and function
perfectly normally as if you were there.
| | 02:58 | It always surprises people when I
meet them up here, they'll ask me, well,
| | 03:01 | what do you do?
| | 03:02 | I am like, most of what I do
right now is visual effects for films
| | 03:05 | and television.
| | 03:06 | And that will stop them for a
second, because they are like,
| | 03:09 | this is Bainbridge Island.
| | 03:12 | I am like, yeah, it's just
Internet. Anybody can do it.
| | 03:14 | But then you start finding out there
are other people on that island that
| | 03:16 | do similar things.
| | 03:17 | There are writers, there are
directors, those kind of thing.
| | 03:20 | So, it's not a big secret, but the
local people aren't clued into yet.
| | 03:24 | It's like, oh! you can actually do that?
| | 03:26 | I am like, yeah, yeah!
| | 03:27 | If you have an Internet connection,
so it all works the same, same thing.
| | 03:31 | It doesn't really where I work.
| | 03:33 | So, now it's even getting larger,
because now there was that whole West Coast
| | 03:38 | corridor thing, which is
primarily where most of my work comes from.
| | 03:41 | But I've done work for East Coast
companies and now I'm currently doing
| | 03:44 | the one for London.
| | 03:46 | So it's like what's the limit?
| | 03:49 | There is none.
| | 03:50 | You know what I mean?
| | 03:52 | I don't know what's next, Bollywood.
| | 03:53 | I don't know, but the
options that are limitless.
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| Career start| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | Ron Crabb: Well, one of the things
that's been really cool about my career is
| | 00:11 | the diversity of it.
| | 00:13 | I started out intending to be an
illustrator or fine art, and I actually signed
| | 00:17 | up to do fine art at the University of Illinois.
| | 00:20 | I needed two years of foreign
languages to get into the program.
| | 00:23 | So I started going to junior college,
got incredibly bored with it, because
| | 00:27 | it wasn't anything to do with art.
| | 00:28 | It was foreign language and
speech and those kinds of things.
| | 00:30 | So I did the irresponsible thing, blew
it off, sold my motorcycle, and moved
| | 00:33 | to California.
| | 00:34 | But what that ended up doing
is creating a chain of events.
| | 00:38 | So what's a guy who has no
training going to do for art?
| | 00:42 | Well, I started working at a ski shop,
mounting bindings on skis and doing
| | 00:45 | those kinds of things.
| | 00:46 | But there was a guy who was bringing t-
shirts in to be done, because that's part
| | 00:50 | of what we were doing.
| | 00:51 | It was a sports store.
| | 00:53 | They had an opening for
an artist to do t-shirts.
| | 00:55 | So that was my first real commercial
art job, was doing hand lettered t-shirts
| | 00:59 | and a lot of sports kind of things,
basketball teams, softball teams,
| | 01:05 | but it evolved into logo design more or less.
| | 01:07 | And it was all hand done kind of stuff.
| | 01:10 | So that benefited me, because
eventually through a friend of a friend kind of thing,
| | 01:16 | I got an interview at KABC in Los
Angeles and having a portfolio that had
| | 01:21 | kind of fine art oriented paintings and
illustration, but also logo design and
| | 01:25 | hand-lettered work, worked really
well for them, because it was all about
| | 01:30 | illustration, but type oriented stuff.
| | 01:32 | So it was perfect for news
graphics and that kind of thing.
| | 01:35 | And it just kind of evolved from there,
that was before the days of computer.
| | 01:39 | So we were actually doing rub-down type
and airbrushing and this kind of thing,
| | 01:44 | all the hand done stuff, 25 artists,
you had to have a big staff, because they
| | 01:48 | needed anywhere from 5-10 graphics for news.
| | 01:53 | But, then the Quantel Paintbox showed up
in 85 and after some infighting between
| | 01:58 | the unions, we finally got
allowed to work on these computers.
| | 02:02 | Well, that changed everything.
| | 02:03 | They decided that you don't need a
staff of 25 people to do that many
| | 02:08 | news graphics anymore.
| | 02:09 | So they can pare this down considerably.
| | 02:11 | They kind of snuck me in the back
way, because I wasn't seniority-wise
| | 02:16 | allowed to stay.
| | 02:17 | But they kept me on as a freelancer at nights.
| | 02:20 | The beauty of that for me was I had this
Quantel Paintbox all by myself and most
| | 02:25 | of the news graphics had
already been done during the day.
| | 02:27 | So I had to do maybe one or two.
| | 02:30 | So I was allowed to play on
the system all night long.
| | 02:33 | That's where I started
getting into motion graphics.
| | 02:35 | I knew nothing about it at that time.
| | 02:36 | I was really just a news graphics guy.
| | 02:39 | But it's like we need a guy to
do main title, you work at night.
| | 02:42 | It's slow at night, boom!
| | 02:43 | I was the guy for the job.
| | 02:45 | The benefit for me was I could do
things with illustration and motion graphics
| | 02:49 | that were more illustrative in style
and someone who came from a design school
| | 02:54 | background maybe wouldn't go that route.
| | 02:57 | So for me, it kind of set me apart at
least in that sense of if you needed
| | 03:01 | something very realistically
illustrated, I was your guy.
| | 03:05 | I'd love to say that I was a genius in
my career planning, that okay, I am going
| | 03:09 | to do this, this, and this, and
it's just going to work out great.
| | 03:12 | But it wasn't.
| | 03:13 | It was kind of day-to-day,
oh, yeah, "work for me."
| | 03:16 | Okay, I will try that.
| | 03:18 | So that's where I went with it.
| | 03:19 | As I started piling these skills on,
they added to kind of -- in other words,
| | 03:26 | if you define my art skills or
whatever as being illustrative, well,
| | 03:29 | it just kept stacking up.
| | 03:31 | For me, I guess variety is the spice of
life and it's been the beautiful thing
| | 03:36 | about my career is being able to
experience all these different ways of
| | 03:41 | expressing creativity and even better
drawing from them and learning from them.
| | 03:47 | Because as an illustrator who loves
doing realistic work, there is a lot
| | 03:50 | you learn from trying to do a logo
animation about movement and composition and
| | 03:55 | lighting, because in motion graphics,
you want a composition that looks good at
| | 04:00 | any point during that animation.
| | 04:02 | It can't look bad.
| | 04:04 | So you are actually doing 30
frames a second of good compositions.
| | 04:07 | That's the whole idea is to have it
all work together and choreograph well.
| | 04:12 | But that informed a lot of what I do
visually even with a still frame,
| | 04:16 | is to think about that composition and to
borrow from that and in your head kind of
| | 04:22 | step around that composition a little
bit to see what it would look like and how
| | 04:26 | you can improve that.
| | 04:29 | So yeah, I look back at that
span and where it's going from here,
| | 04:32 | it's like well, the matte
painting work I hope continues.
| | 04:35 | As I look back, I'd go, you know,
I've lived a good life so far creatively.
| | 04:38 | Not many people get to do all
the different things I have done.
| | 04:42 | For that I am very grateful and just
kind of hopefully I will take care of or
| | 04:47 | take advantage of opportunities as they come.
| | 04:50 | But I think at this point in my career,
I am looking to maybe take the next step
| | 04:54 | and be maybe proactive and actually
define my career a little more than I have.
| | 04:59 | It's been haphazard and kind of taking
opportunity when it comes, but now that
| | 05:03 | I have reached this point and gleaned
all of this stuff from my past experience,
| | 05:07 | now I am starting to ask the question,
where do I go from here and how can I
| | 05:11 | really nurture that and make that
become a reality of something that really
| | 05:16 | expresses who I am?
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| Creative philosophy| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | Ron Crabb: I often get asked
kind of where it started and in other words,
| | 00:13 | when did you become an artist and what are
the roots of that and where does that come from.
| | 00:18 | And as an artist you think about that a lot.
| | 00:20 | Why do I love doing what I am doing,
why I am driven to do this,
| | 00:25 | and not something else?
| | 00:27 | For me that, that path
started really, really young.
| | 00:30 | I mean, kindergarten got special
projects to keep me from being bored.
| | 00:34 | That turned me into an artist by
third grade and everyone in the classroom
| | 00:38 | wanted me to do their arts projects
for them, or add maps to their reports,
| | 00:42 | because I always got good grades.
| | 00:43 | I didn't have to write well, but I did
one killer map or a drawing or something,
| | 00:47 | and the teacher was, oh! I just love this.
| | 00:48 | Great work, Ronny.
| | 00:50 | So early on, it was just, it was natural
for me to seek out ways to be creative.
| | 00:57 | I often think back where, even where
did that come, why did that come from
| | 01:00 | before that, why was that a natural
bent at five years old to really be
| | 01:04 | attracted to that?
| | 01:06 | And you know the best I can come up
with is early, early memories of being in
| | 01:11 | the forest and this kind of thing and
climbing trees and seeing tree saps stuck
| | 01:16 | on the side of a tree and how the sun
reflected through that kind of golden
| | 01:19 | amber color, and the texture of
the bark at a very, very early age.
| | 01:24 | I was just sucking the
stuff up and memorizing it.
| | 01:29 | How does that feel and what's that look and
the light coming through frozen ice on a creek?
| | 01:36 | Those are vivid memories for me.
| | 01:37 | I was a two-year-old when that was happening.
| | 01:38 | A three-year-old.
| | 01:39 | So, I think there is something about
how I was made and I am a man of faith,
| | 01:45 | I believe in a creator and the reason
I want to create is because there was an
| | 01:50 | artist who made me and made all of
us and so for me, it really makes that
| | 01:56 | process and that desire come alive,
because it's like this special gift that
| | 02:01 | another artist gave to me,
another master artist shall we say.
| | 02:07 | Where I am getting to participate in
that same kind of thing and that's where it
| | 02:11 | starts to transcend just being a job or
just here is what I do. One guy does
| | 02:17 | shop work or whatever and I'm doing
art and that's just what we do for living.
| | 02:21 | And it's just not me just doing a
picture, but it's me tapping into something
| | 02:25 | that is in everybody.
| | 02:26 | We all have that kind of image,
we all have that creative urge and I think
| | 02:30 | that's what people respond to and
that's why all sorts of creative endeavors
| | 02:34 | work so well in bringing people
together, because in it you recognize,
| | 02:39 | I know that.
| | 02:40 | I know that emotion, I know that feeling,
I know that expression, I know what he
| | 02:44 | is going for, and those two people
connect, and I see it when someone
| | 02:49 | appreciates my fine art or compliments
me on my work and we start talking about it,
| | 02:53 | that's what they are doing.
| | 02:55 | They are seeing in me and in my work,
something that really resonates with them,
| | 02:59 | being able to do what I love doing,
what I feel I am gifted to do, makes
| | 03:04 | for a pretty good life.
| | 03:06 | I mean it really is the kind of
thing where you go to work each morning.
| | 03:11 | Not really every time. Every now
and then it is tedious. The work can be
| | 03:16 | repetitive at times.
| | 03:18 | But that's a rarity. More often I can
sit down at that table and fire up the
| | 03:23 | computer and think you know,
I am pretty lucky to be here.
| | 03:27 | It's very fortunate that I can sit
in this room and I actually get paid
| | 03:32 | to create.
| | 03:33 | I get paid to use this gift and it
provides food for my family and clothing and
| | 03:39 | roof over their heads and I am
enjoying the exploration of it.
| | 03:44 | That's a special gift to be
given something like that.
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| Matte painting| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:09 | Ron Crabb: Matte paintings have kind of
become my bread and butter currently in my
| | 00:13 | professional career, commercial art
career anyway, but for those of who don't know,
| | 00:18 | a little brief thing on what matte
painting actually is. But anytime there
| | 00:23 | is a background or a set piece or
something that either can't be built or
| | 00:27 | doesn't exist or would be impractical
to build, they will have someone like me
| | 00:30 | come in and actually paint the background.
| | 00:32 | So it's often combined with live
action footage and in the background some of
| | 00:37 | the best examples from when
I was a kid was Star Wars.
| | 00:39 | Obviously, these planets don't exist.
| | 00:41 | Back then they had some guy actually
oil on glass. It was actually a painting.
| | 00:46 | That's why they call it matte
painting, and in the camera, they would
| | 00:49 | actually do a matting process when
they combine these things with the live
| | 00:53 | action elements.
| | 00:54 | So that name has kind of stuck.
| | 00:56 | It's actually transitioning to kind of
digital environments now. It's kind of
| | 00:59 | what they are calling them more often than not.
| | 01:01 | But that has kind of become my main stay.
| | 01:03 | I was fortunate enough to come
into it after it had already transitioned
| | 01:07 | into digital work.
| | 01:08 | It would take forever to do an oil
on glass kind of matte painting thing
| | 01:12 | nowadays and nobody really does.
It's all digitally done, primarily in Photoshop,
| | 01:17 | and often times it's a little bit of 3D work.
| | 01:20 | But my first film matte painting work
was done on X-Men 2 and even though I was
| | 01:25 | on that project primarily as a concept
artist, they still had me to all
| | 01:30 | the dam sequence matte paintings.
| | 01:32 | So in the end of the movie you see the
whole dam shatter and it fills in the lake
| | 01:37 | and it's kind of the
big climatic end to that film.
| | 01:41 | So I had to paint the dam kind of
after it had crumbled and fallen away.
| | 01:45 | So that was my first official film
matte painting work in that one and since
| | 01:51 | then I've been privileged to do a lot
of fun films. Right after that was
| | 01:55 | Last Samurai, that kind of thing.
| | 01:58 | So that one in that case we were
working on Tokyo, the way it would have
| | 02:03 | looked in 1865 or so.
| | 02:06 | Again obviously, Tokyo doesn't exist the way
it looked then, so they had a number of
| | 02:11 | different shots of the Imperial Palace there.
| | 02:15 | The fun part of that one is if you
look at that shot, it's a big massive
| | 02:20 | palace up on a hill.
| | 02:21 | The real palace in Tokyo is more of
a garden with a whole bunch of little
| | 02:25 | pagodas in it, so they took a lot of
artistic license that I am sure
| | 02:29 | the historical people may not
have been real thrilled with.
| | 02:32 | But they wanted it
dramatic and that kind of thing.
| | 02:34 | So that was one that we did. We also
did Tokyo, just a wide shot of the old
| | 02:38 | city the way it was.
| | 02:39 | But that's what matte painting is,
is creating those environments that are
| | 02:43 | either long gone or in the case of sci-
fi movies just don't exist and that's
| | 02:49 | the part that can be fun.
| | 02:50 | I like doing both, but I probably
especially love the historical ones, because
| | 02:55 | that's just my bent.
| | 02:56 | I am a history lover.
| | 02:58 | So recreating something the way it
used to look is something I really enjoy doing.
| | 03:02 | So often times matte painting work
may not be just big full frame matte
| | 03:06 | paintings, but you are
just adding set extensions.
| | 03:09 | Sometimes you will see a building in
a movie that's five stories tall and
| | 03:13 | in real life it was one story tall
and some matte painter tacked on the
| | 03:16 | other elements to that.
| | 03:19 | So sometimes there are big grandiose
matte paintings; other times they are
| | 03:22 | just small little sections, little add-ons,
little things that they didn't want
| | 03:25 | to have to build.
| | 03:26 | I think they are relying more and more
on that which is good for guys like me.
| | 03:29 | You know, it's like why build if you can
get someone to paint it in a way that
| | 03:33 | works perfectly well.
| | 03:35 | So even places in movies that
you don't expect there to be matte paintings
| | 03:39 | or you assume isn't a matte
painting, often times it is, for those
| | 03:42 | very practical reasons of not
wanting to travel there when you can get
| | 03:45 | somebody just paint it in.
| | 03:47 | So it's a good career to do. It's
challenging in that it has to look real and
| | 03:52 | there is this little fine line
between having it look painted and then
| | 03:58 | just bumping it over to where it looks
real and that's actually a very hard fine line
| | 04:04 | to jump over because coming from
an illustration background and everything else,
| | 04:08 | you are used to painting realistically.
| | 04:11 | But having it really blend with live
footage and work well and integrate well,
| | 04:16 | to where people don't even
know it's a matte painting,
| | 04:19 | that's not an easy task. That's why
I chose it. It's challenging for one.
| | 04:24 | But two, it's such a specialized skill
that hopefully the guys who do it well
| | 04:29 | are kind of a small number and the
competition is small but not that I am
| | 04:33 | discouraging you to from doing it.
| | 04:34 | But there is challenge level to it
that is sometimes hard to achieve.
| | 04:38 | So I can go to movies and see matte
paintings and usually just because of
| | 04:42 | the way the shot is setup, you kind of know
if it's matte painting or not and some
| | 04:47 | succeed better than others including mine.
| | 04:49 | I can go to movies and kind of from what
I saw on my monitor kind of go ugh! To me,
| | 04:54 | it ugh! A tip off, it kind of
looks like a matte painting.
| | 04:57 | But hopefully that's what you get
better and better at as you along and kind of
| | 05:02 | learn from other matte painters.
| | 05:04 | But that has even transitioned a little
bit to what I notice people asking for
| | 05:09 | is different than original matte
paintings, where they used to paint them even
| | 05:12 | somewhat loose. The whole idea was to
just focus the attention on the action or
| | 05:17 | the actor's live actions' actions.
| | 05:19 | But now it almost seems like they want
something photographic, just start to
| | 05:23 | finish, front and back and they'll
adjust that focal point by either blurring or
| | 05:28 | lighting, sliding changes, a lot
happens in composition afterwards.
| | 05:33 | So often time, what I am asked for is
just a full frame very realistic, photo
| | 05:38 | realistic background.
| | 05:40 | But that just ups the
scale on how challenging it is.
| | 05:43 | So it's got to look real and there are
times when you really struggle back and forth
| | 05:47 | with that on, have I accomplished that,
is it for enough? And it's kind of
| | 05:51 | where is with me at least career-wise.
Career path right now is predominantly
| | 05:56 | dominated by the matte painting
work both for film and television.
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| Matte painting portfolio| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | Ron Crabb: So, I can actually show you some
of the stuff I have been doing lately and kind
| | 00:12 | of what matte painting is and how it
works because talking about it is one thing,
| | 00:15 | seeing it is a lot better.
| | 00:16 | Welcome to visual arts!
| | 00:18 | But this is one of the ones from
Bucket List and obviously they didn't
| | 00:23 | want to travel the whole world.
| | 00:24 | So they had us paint a number
of these environments for them.
| | 00:28 | One of them was in Taj Mahal and it had
to be multi-layered because the camera shot
| | 00:32 | for that is just a long tracking
shot following Jack Nicholson, Morgan
| | 00:37 | Freeman around the shot.
| | 00:39 | They filmed it at the LA Arboretum.
| | 00:41 | So everything back from the
reflecting pool had to be created by us.
| | 00:46 | So, that's what I did here and this is
the Taj Mahal and it looks-- I mean what it is,
| | 00:53 | I started with a photograph, but had to
over paint and recolor and retexturize.
| | 00:58 | But what isn't obvious at first is
that every one of these things is on
| | 01:01 | a different layer.
| | 01:03 | So, what do I've got is a whole tree layer.
| | 01:06 | So, you can see as I click on it,
this foreground thing disappears.
| | 01:11 | But each one of those, as you can see
them slowly disappear, is a separate layer
| | 01:16 | because what happens oftentimes,
always, in a camera move is that you get
| | 01:21 | parallax shifts or shifts in perspective.
| | 01:23 | So, it's my job to make this thing
come alive by giving them just a gazillion
| | 01:29 | layers to work with.
| | 01:31 | So, while it might be nice to start
with photograph, which we did, that's only
| | 01:34 | the beginning of the problem to solve.
| | 01:37 | I have to take all of those elements
out initially, repaint them and then
| | 01:41 | recomposite that all back
together into one working unit.
| | 01:44 | So that when they go into their
compositing programs, they have got all those
| | 01:48 | layers like I was
talking about to kind of shift.
| | 01:51 | So, as you can see, we can just
go right-down through the layers.
| | 01:54 | Each one of these trees was created
separately and not from the photo from the
| | 01:59 | Taj Mahal because we have actually
kind of monkeyed with the environment.
| | 02:02 | The reflecting pool, if you go to the
Taj Mahal, is much narrower. We widened it
| | 02:07 | because it looks pretty to have the
whole Taj Mahal reflected in there.
| | 02:10 | So cheats like that in film are
very common. Aesthetic trumps reality
| | 02:15 | every time.
| | 02:16 | So we came in here, but I created all
these separate layers for them, and
| | 02:20 | this can take weeks and you
can see how long this really is.
| | 02:25 | So even these tiny little ones in the
back. Because it was such a long camera move,
| | 02:30 | and moved quite a lot, it would look
unnatural if you didn't have that.
| | 02:36 | Even if it's just moving just microscopically,
your eye would pick it up. Even someone
| | 02:40 | untrained just knows when
something looks unnatural.
| | 02:43 | So, that's the challenging part is you
get a file and someone says, we need a
| | 02:47 | matte painting of Taj Mahal.
| | 02:48 | At first you say, that's easy, there
are lots of great photographs of the Taj Mahal.
| | 02:52 | This should be no sweat.
| | 02:54 | But we need to add a camera move to it.
| | 02:55 | Oh, well, okay it just got complex.
| | 02:58 | So I had to go dig up, really great
references of trees because this also has to
| | 03:03 | be very high resolution.
| | 03:05 | Film resolution typically is 2048
pixels wide. They shorten it to just call
| | 03:09 | it 2k, but when you are working on a
matte painting, usually you just start
| | 03:14 | with twice that size.
| | 03:16 | So most the files I work on, right
from the word go, are 4. Sometimes they go
| | 03:20 | larger depending on application.
| | 03:22 | Some of these can be fairly wide
because this was actually a shot that even had
| | 03:25 | a little camera rotation on it.
| | 03:28 | This one is even larger, I mean
2k is probably right about here.
| | 03:31 | So they needed the camera to
have plenty of room on both sides.
| | 03:34 | So I am adding tons of
stuff on both edges as well.
| | 03:38 | So, the whole goal is to have
somebody look at this in the final form and
| | 03:43 | because everything is subtly moving and
shifting, they don't realize that this
| | 03:47 | was painted by somebody.
They actually think it's there.
| | 03:50 | The very first matte paintings I did
were just ones for myself because I knew
| | 03:55 | I couldn't walk into a film studio and say,
"Here is my Toyota commercial matte painting."
| | 03:59 | They really want to see
stuff that's really appropriate.
| | 04:03 | So when I knew that was going to be
kind of my career path that I wanted to shift,
| | 04:07 | I just dug up images of my own
and found some great photo references.
| | 04:13 | You can see when I turn this off,
this is actually what I start with.
| | 04:16 | So it's pretty full, but it's typical
for what you are asked to do in a film.
| | 04:20 | They will often come at you with an
image that's almost there but they need to
| | 04:24 | add like Star Wars, they might have
done something very much like this,
| | 04:29 | where here is our full frame shot, but
we want this kind of alien looking building on
| | 04:33 | the side, that's very common.
| | 04:35 | So, that's what I decided to do was do a
whole set of matte painting that showed a range of
| | 04:39 | the kind of things they
might be asking you to do.
| | 04:41 | So you can see the difference
here as I click it on and off.
| | 04:45 | I added all the buildings, we added
little bit of water down here, there is a
| | 04:48 | little village, stars, moon,
a little few extra mountains I thought would
| | 04:53 | look nice, just a little bit different effect.
| | 04:55 | This was another one of my self,
what I call the self-promotional matte
| | 04:58 | paintings, right in the title there.
| | 05:01 | But again took just a shot of the
Grand Canyon and just thought okay, here is
| | 05:05 | another way I can add to this environment
and create something that they might like.
| | 05:09 | So these were the really the attempt
to transition into film from TV and
| | 05:15 | do something that would catch their
attention, and it took a while. I mean it took
| | 05:19 | a few months to do these.
| | 05:20 | But I ended up basically making nice
prints of these and sending them off to a
| | 05:24 | bunch of different studios and that's
really kind of what caught their attention
| | 05:28 | was a nice set of full frame matte
paintings that kind of demonstrated that
| | 05:33 | I could do what they wanted me to do at
the resolution that they needed it done.
| | 05:37 | I will show you a couple of the latest
ones. Speed Racer was relatively soon but
| | 05:45 | this was done for the whole Casa Cristo
sequence they called it, the beginning of
| | 05:49 | the big race near the end of that film
and the process on this one was
| | 05:54 | they went to Santorini, I guess one of
the Greek islands, and did a whole bunch of
| | 05:58 | photography there, real high-
definition photography and they sent that to us.
| | 06:03 | It was all day-lit shot stuff.
| | 06:05 | But the film is real saturated.
| | 06:08 | If you have seen it, it's just
over the top saturation levels.
| | 06:12 | So that's bizarre marching orders,
was take what is kind of lot of grays,
| | 06:17 | but turn it into this just
lush rich environment for them.
| | 06:21 | So that was what we had to do, but it
also had to have kind of a Moorish feel to it,
| | 06:26 | so we took what was strictly kind of
Greek and put in some minarets and some
| | 06:31 | towers and those kind of things.
They didn't want any one specific look, but
| | 06:36 | they wanted to have that exotic kind
of Middle Eastern feel. Let's not really
| | 06:40 | define too much where that is.
| | 06:42 | So, we had to go in here and make
domes and a lot of that is all hand
| | 06:47 | painted, some of it is 3D and
actually made just a few rough 3D models and
| | 06:52 | put those in here.
| | 06:54 | But again, you can kind of see the
layers and then moving, this wasn't a
| | 06:59 | really big massive move.
| | 07:01 | But still, see you can see you go
all the way down to the sky, so just a
| | 07:05 | clear sky background and then on top of that,
you start adding all these little elements.
| | 07:10 | You will often do light layers, so
you will see little changes in detail in
| | 07:14 | light layers that kind of thing.
| | 07:17 | So that's often the marching orders is
you want to give them lots of options.
| | 07:21 | So, you are giving them multi-layers
and each one of the layers can often have
| | 07:25 | lights on, lights off, this kind of
thing because they are going to get in there
| | 07:29 | and want to animate all of
that stuff to make it come alive.
| | 07:31 | They want to make lights twinkle, they
want things going on and off, they want
| | 07:35 | to do that little parallax shift.
| | 07:37 | So every matte painting I do nowadays
is going to be this kind of multi-layered
| | 07:41 | complex kind of thing.
| | 07:43 | Here is another one that was done for
Speed Racer and this final file was well
| | 07:48 | over 12,000 pixels wide because what
they were doing in this one was a 360 view,
| | 07:54 | so they had their environment and
they wanted to be able to just turn that
| | 07:57 | camera on all the characters
and have something on the outside.
| | 08:00 | So we took the same kind of Greek
Islands and really just kluged these together.
| | 08:05 | It was a good 15 photographs I worked
from of different angles and kind of
| | 08:12 | popping them in there, but I had
to change the color on everything.
| | 08:15 | But this is a good example of where
you see lots of original photo reference.
| | 08:20 | So you can tell these were photos, but
then this kind of thing was stoned from
| | 08:26 | somewhere else.
| | 08:27 | But the whole bottom half, this
half of this element is hand painted.
| | 08:31 | So you end up doing a lot of
combinations of-- I mean the whole bridge here is
| | 08:35 | hand painted. You can see it's
actually fairly rough because it's such high
| | 08:39 | resolution that you don't need to get
too detailed, because by the time it's in the film,
| | 08:43 | it's back here far enough.
| | 08:45 | But you end up having to do a lot of
that and you can't ever really get away
| | 08:50 | with just grabbing a photo and slapping
it in there. It almost never works.
| | 08:53 | You can't leave it there.
| | 08:54 | So you will start with a photograph but
then it's your job to come in and make it
| | 08:59 | fit in that environment and change it.
| | 09:01 | So, this one, it was just over the top
saturation, like the whole movie had, but
| | 09:06 | I had to come in here and paint all
the little lighting, the little details.
| | 09:10 | So, this one took quite a while and
this was not a really rapid matte painting
| | 09:15 | and we put in a very saturated sky.
| | 09:18 | This is a Bucket List matte painting,
the Great Wall from the reverse angle
| | 09:22 | that they had.
| | 09:23 | So you can kind of see the original
file, so it was basically a plain file.
| | 09:29 | They did have a little bit again of the
set element here just for the section of the wall.
| | 09:34 | Another thing you will notice is here
is how the file comes to me, so there is
| | 09:38 | all sorts of different color spaces you
are working with, which is a one of the
| | 09:41 | technical headaches are working in film.
| | 09:44 | But it's a log space kind of thing,
so there are different compositing
| | 09:48 | systems that just work in different
color spaces that aren't the same as
| | 09:51 | working in Photoshop.
| | 09:53 | So, one of the challenges is
finding ways to work in this.
| | 09:56 | Basically, I have a layer that allows me
to see what it will end up looking like
| | 10:00 | in the final product, but I have
to turn those off while I work.
| | 10:03 | So you are working in those kind of
odd contrast, odd color space often times
| | 10:08 | where you are kind of having to guess.
| | 10:09 | So you're really just working making it
match the plate that you have been given
| | 10:14 | and then turn these on, and kind of say,
okay that works or it's a little too
| | 10:17 | dark or it's a little too light.
| | 10:19 | But welcome to the world of film.
| | 10:21 | It's a little more complex when it
comes to the color adjustments and
| | 10:24 | that kind of thing.
| | 10:25 | Well, here is a case where 3D came into
play nicely, another moving shot along
| | 10:30 | the Great Wall of China.
| | 10:33 | But what they didn't have was
the top-half of this building.
| | 10:36 | You can kind of see it just disappeared on us.
| | 10:39 | So, this is the actual set shot of
what they filmed, but they wanted this to
| | 10:43 | look like all the other little pagoda
type elements that are on top of the Great Wall.
| | 10:48 | But because I knew it was going to have
to move, I decided to build it in Cinema 4D.
| | 10:52 | So that was really a good
starting point because they gave me kind of
| | 10:56 | architectural drawings of what
these things actually look like.
| | 10:59 | So I was able to import those right in
the Cinema 4D and build my 3D model right
| | 11:03 | on top of it and then I had access to
the textures right here that I could then
| | 11:07 | map on to that 3D element and that went
a long way of getting us started because
| | 11:12 | this whole thing, like I was
saying, they loved the camera moves.
| | 11:15 | That's what makes matte paintings not
look like matte paintings any more.
| | 11:18 | It's getting the motion going to them.
| | 11:21 | So, since we had to start so extreme,
this thing had to shift a little bit.
| | 11:25 | So I was able to basically see that in
the different levels and the different
| | 11:30 | layers that it needed to work
in and handed it that to them.
| | 11:33 | So more and more, I am starting
to use that. It's a tool that just
| | 11:38 | increases productivity.
| | 11:39 | You can try and draw something with a
correct perspective and take the time to
| | 11:44 | do that or you can build a relatively
simple 3D model and just have it spot on
| | 11:49 | and know that if the camera needs to
move, you are going to get everything
| | 11:52 | shaped just the way it needs to
look and so that it looks proper.
| | 11:55 | So, I think more and more that's
something you are seeing matte painters
| | 11:58 | being required to do.
| | 11:59 | It's not just give us a 2D Photoshop
painting but because we want to make this
| | 12:04 | come alive, can you do a little bit
of 3D work and make that work for us.
| | 12:09 | So, I am finding that to be more a skill
that I have to tack on to now.
| | 12:13 | One more software kind of program to learn but
it's a fun one that I enjoy working with.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The evolution of illustration| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | Ron Crabb: Well, when I started out, my
career was all obviously kind of analog art,
| | 00:12 | shall we say, as opposed to digital.
| | 00:14 | We were using oil paints, or acrylic
or whatever it may be, and working with
| | 00:19 | the tactile stuff.
| | 00:21 | That's just how you did it.
| | 00:22 | That transition to digital, which
happened for me in `84 or `85 at KBC.
| | 00:30 | I remember at the time there was a
whole big discussion, philosophically,
| | 00:33 | between the artist there.
| | 00:34 | We had 20 artists and 84 opinions,
but they would -- we would have this
| | 00:38 | discussion of, is this a valid
tool, is it a good thing for art?
| | 00:43 | Because you had kind of the
traditionalists that loved the texture of painting,
| | 00:48 | the feel of it, the things you could do
with all the combination of tools, and
| | 00:52 | they kind of saw the computer thing
as kind of cold and very limiting.
| | 00:57 | There were the other group of us which
I was included in that kind of saw that
| | 01:02 | this was just a new tool, just one
more tool, and kind of a cool one that
| | 01:07 | affords us opportunities that the
traditional methods don't allow.
| | 01:12 | And it kind of turned out that way for me.
| | 01:14 | I mean, I got on that system and
what changed rapidly was the old way,
| | 01:19 | you had to come up with an idea, a concept,
you had a certain amount of time to
| | 01:22 | accomplish that.
| | 01:24 | So you kind of had to just march
through your painting technique or whatever it was.
| | 01:30 | But now, with the digital thing, that
whole process of how long it takes was
| | 01:36 | just compressed radically.
| | 01:38 | To where now, you could start out
with a core idea, or a seed idea, but
| | 01:44 | develop that as you went.
| | 01:46 | Because the clock was ticking, but
you just had this much more rapid tool,
| | 01:50 | things could evolve much quicker.
| | 01:52 | You can get a third of the way in,
and all of a sudden kind of go, you know what?
| | 01:55 | I don't think the color is working for me.
| | 01:57 | Grab a little slider, slide it across -- Boom!
| | 01:59 | Your color is changed, or just do
a few layers of experiment things.
| | 02:03 | You keep everything on layers in Photoshop,
| | 02:06 | the options are endless for how you
can treat that whole creative process and
| | 02:09 | how you handle it through all the phases.
| | 02:13 | I still do oil paintings, but I have
to totally shift my thinking when I do.
| | 02:19 | It's a completely different
mindset on how I handle that.
| | 02:23 | I'll sit there working on an oil painting,
and if I make a mistake, my left hand
| | 02:27 | flinches for the Command+Z, and if you
work on computers, you know what that means,
| | 02:30 | from Apple anyway, that's
your "erase your mistake" thing.
| | 02:34 | But it's funny, because I
will be painting, and Oops!
| | 02:35 | And it just flinches. It's like this
automatic thing I am used to doing.
| | 02:38 | You don't get to do that with the oil painting.
| | 02:40 | You have come back, you have to rub it
out, but with the digital stuff, you can back up,
| | 02:46 | you can fix your mistakes rapidly.
| | 02:49 | I like that. That's why I still enjoy
both, but the digital world has opened up
| | 02:53 | for me just those
opportunities to say, what if?
| | 02:58 | You are right in the middle of a project.
What if I change the mood, what if I
| | 03:01 | add this, what if I change the composition?
| | 03:03 | What if-- it allows I think of an
evolution of an idea and a style that is
| | 03:08 | much quicker.
| | 03:10 | So I think you see that. People
are just kind of pushing boundaries.
| | 03:13 | Some of it's okay, some of it's great.
| | 03:15 | But that's what that's all about.
| | 03:18 | The whole digital realm and the quickness of it.
| | 03:22 | It just allows people to say,
what do I want to do next?
| | 03:25 | And let me try it. Because you are not
wasting materials, you are just putting
| | 03:29 | in some time, and the disadvantages,
supposedly of texture and these kind of things,
| | 03:33 | those are disappearing.
| | 03:34 | You get a Painter program and you can
do fairly realistic oil brush things.
| | 03:39 | So things are happening
technologically wise that are erasing whatever
| | 03:45 | differences and negatives there were
between digital and regular hands-on
| | 03:49 | illustration type work.
| | 03:50 | What you are starting to see more and
more in the illustration world is just an
| | 03:56 | amalgam of all the available
tools and I use it as well.
| | 03:59 | Now, what the digital world allows
you to do is not just think in 2-D terms
| | 04:05 | anymore, but you can utilize 3-D assets as well.
| | 04:08 | And I am doing that more and more.
| | 04:10 | So even in my fine art, it is just
changing how you think as an illustrator.
| | 04:15 | You can bring 3-D elements
and work on those in Photoshop.
| | 04:19 | So I often do that, even for matte
paintings. I will build something originally
| | 04:23 | in 3-D in a kind of a simple model,
but import that into Photoshop and then
| | 04:27 | paint on top of that.
| | 04:29 | But it allows you to visualize things
and get things accurate, and positionally,
| | 04:33 | and shape wise, and prospective wise,
that might take a much longer time to try
| | 04:39 | and do it just by hand.
| | 04:41 | But you import textures, you do all
these kind of things that are little--
| | 04:45 | I guess you call them computer tricks,
but they are really just more tools.
| | 04:49 | You are adding to your Toolbox
of how you are going to do things.
| | 04:52 | It is just a great way to do art,
because your goal in art is just to create,
| | 04:57 | and least it is for me.
| | 04:58 | It's like now I have got an idea.
I want to get it in front of people.
| | 05:02 | I am going to use whatever
tools I can find that I can do with.
| | 05:07 | I notice that when I show people my
Port Blakely work, that they don't
| | 05:11 | really care anymore.
| | 05:12 | They just look at and go, I love
that image, that's a beautiful image.
| | 05:16 | And then I start talking about
the process and they go, really?
| | 05:19 | That's 3-D, there is 3-D in there?
| | 05:21 | It's like, yeah.
| | 05:22 | I built the whole town and the
ships and they are catching on that
| | 05:26 | the tools aren't the enemy, they
actually are an advantage and that all they need
| | 05:32 | to do is really love the art,
regardless of how it's made.
| | 05:35 | So that barrier seems to be
breaking down rapidly. Just got to get
| | 05:39 | the galleries on board.
| | 05:40 | It's like it's okay to do digital art
and call it digital art and not have
| | 05:44 | it be a negative thing.
| | 05:45 | People are still going to
love the work and buy it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Motion design| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | Ron Crabb: In my career I spent
a lot of time in motion graphics.
| | 00:11 | There was a natural progression in my
early career that really transitioned from
| | 00:15 | illustrator to designer, which was an
interesting transition for me, because my
| | 00:20 | mindset had always been kind of
Illustrator, Painter, figurative work.
| | 00:24 | But then I found myself
initially being a Paintbox artist.
| | 00:29 | At that time, back in the late '80s,
early '90s, you were operating the system
| | 00:34 | for other designers.
| | 00:36 | So creative people would come in, kind
of describe what they wanted you to do,
| | 00:40 | and you would do it.
| | 00:41 | So there was a learning curve there
that was really nice, because I was just
| | 00:43 | really kind of doing hands-on
work for some other designer.
| | 00:47 | So I learned from them in that process.
| | 00:49 | Right around '89 -`91, I got hired
by Pittard Sullivan Design and
| | 00:54 | I transitioned from simple Paintbox
artist into designer on my own, and started
| | 01:00 | working with really talented people.
| | 01:01 | It was, again, kind of an
interesting place for an illustrator to be.
| | 01:06 | I almost felt like I was
playing on someone else's playground.
| | 01:09 | It's like, okay, I'm in this kind of
new world for me and having to absorb
| | 01:14 | rapidly kind of the thought process,
and how design was different from my
| | 01:20 | illustration kind of background.
| | 01:22 | I think the blend that worked well
for me was seeing what other people were doing,
| | 01:27 | but then taking my illustration skills
and kind of blending those two together.
| | 01:31 | So I often times saw myself approaching
problems in a different way than maybe
| | 01:36 | one of the other designers would do.
| | 01:38 | So it's almost for me like I was cheating.
| | 01:40 | It was like, okay, they can't illustrate.
I can. Well, I'm just going to use that.
| | 01:44 | I'm not going to try to be them.
| | 01:46 | So the motion graphics, while that was
kind of the main stay, my own will
| | 01:51 | take on it was still very illustrator based.
| | 01:55 | At the same time, I just- there were
time when you just had to jump in and do
| | 01:58 | real just kind of basic design, and
I'm grateful for that experience because
| | 02:04 | it really brings to an
illustrator whole new ways of thinking.
| | 02:06 | You're really thinking about the color,
shape, texture and animation.
| | 02:11 | you're thinking about composition
constantly in choreography.
| | 02:15 | An illustrator who does still
frames, you're not required to do that.
| | 02:19 | But once you go through that whole
process of learning design, you bring some of
| | 02:23 | that back in your illustration work, in
how that works, how you lay things out.
| | 02:28 | So my whole motion graphics and while
I feel like I was kind of jumping on
| | 02:33 | someone else's little bandwagon,
I benefited from it in a great way.
| | 02:37 | As a result, I still do work in that field.
| | 02:40 | But one of the latest pieces was for
Water Horse, the movie Water Horse.
| | 02:47 | We had a client Erik Ladd, who works
for Ignite Creative, that's his company.
| | 02:50 | He calls me anytime he's got
something that more needs an illustrator's touch,
| | 02:54 | that needs to be rendered in
a way that is kind of more realistic.
| | 03:00 | So we did this one for them and
it's a British Isles kind of feel.
| | 03:05 | So, we took some of the kind
of Celtic knot kind of look.
| | 03:09 | So, this was kind of his concept, his
direction of how he wanted it to go.
| | 03:13 | But he hired me, because he's not a painter.
| | 03:15 | So that's actually how my
career has just always worked. It's like,
| | 03:18 | "get the painter guy, because
he can make this look real for us."
| | 03:21 | But it was my job to kind of okay, you
want a Celtic knot, you want a very 3D,
| | 03:25 | but you want it lit beautifully.
| | 03:26 | So I'm taking what I know
about illustration and lighting and shape
| | 03:30 | and form, and moving it
into the motion graphics realm.
| | 03:33 | This was one of my last largest
projects was Antena 3 in Spain and it was a
| | 03:39 | graphics package for I guess what is
the equivalent of one of their NBC, CBS kind
| | 03:43 | of stations over there.
| | 03:45 | But we had to design absolutely
every single element for this station.
| | 03:48 | Unique thing about that particular
project was they had to change things for
| | 03:52 | every region in Spain, because
they pronounce things differently.
| | 03:56 | So normally you shoot one or two promos
and you're good to go, but I had to have
| | 04:00 | the talent on screen pronouncing each
little- I forget what the actual tagline was-
| | 04:06 | but they had to pronounce
differently for each region.
| | 04:08 | But a lot of these are storyboard
frames from Pittard Sullivan days and
| | 04:13 | that's really the process you worked as
a motion graphics designer. You didn't jump,
| | 04:18 | at least in those days, I didn't jump
right into doing any kind of animation.
| | 04:22 | You did the style frames and the
storyboard frames, because you had to do
| | 04:27 | numbers of versions for them, and no
client just wants to see one set of boards.
| | 04:32 | They would like some options to work from.
| | 04:35 | It's kind of fun to go through.
| | 04:36 | I mean, it's a big chunk of who I am
artistic-wise, just because it was the part of
| | 04:42 | my life where I was interacting
so much with other artists,
| | 04:45 | and creative types,
and creative people.
| | 04:47 | So I came away with that,
| | 04:49 | with just a lot of things that
I can apply to what I do now.
| | 04:53 | It's really just broadened the range
of what I do and how I think and how I
| | 04:56 | approach creative projects.
| | 04:58 | Motion graphics is actually where I
cut my teeth on lot of those concepts.
| | 05:03 | So that is something that is extremely
valued to my past. Even though it may not
| | 05:06 | be my mainstay now,
it is a huge part of who I am.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Concept art | 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | Ron Crabb: Concept art is a part of what
I have been doing pretty much my whole life.
| | 00:11 | I mean, if you are doing an illustration,
you are developing a concept first.
| | 00:15 | But I think in a way it's kind of
classically thought of now as, particularly in
| | 00:18 | the film business, is concept art
for the actual visual effects itself.
| | 00:23 | My first exposure to that
was on X-Men 2 at Cinesite.
| | 00:27 | The really fun part of that was, and
what was new for me, was you are just taking
| | 00:33 | something that has
written in a story, in a script.
| | 00:36 | Somebody can walk through walls,
somebody can disappear instantaneously and
| | 00:42 | leave the smoke behind or maybe
not leaving the smoke behind and that's
| | 00:45 | kind of what you are working on.
| | 00:46 | So you are working with the visual
effect supervisor, you are working with the
| | 00:49 | director and the art directors and this
kind of thing and the reality of concept art
| | 00:54 | is just repetition.
| | 00:55 | You do up to zillion different versions
of these things, because they are really
| | 01:00 | exploring every possible way
to do what they want to do.
| | 01:04 | So you sit there and I'd spend a whole day
doing versions of Nightcrawler for instance.
| | 01:09 | He was the one that probably took the longest.
| | 01:12 | I have got kind of a vision of him.
| | 01:14 | And he is the kind of the
scary looking guy in X-Men 2.
| | 01:17 | He is kind of all dark
and a little demonic looking.
| | 01:20 | But the concept as it was explained to
me was this guy is kind of a troubled
| | 01:26 | individual, has this religious
side, but he is kind of this mutant.
| | 01:30 | And when he transfers one place to
another, there is a little poof effect.
| | 01:34 | bamf is what they called it.
| | 01:37 | He was kind of going through a door
into hell and then popping out another
| | 01:40 | side somewhere else.
| | 01:41 | So initially that's what we were trying
to capture and it's like okay, so what's
| | 01:46 | that look like, how does a guy
disappear and I was working with Steven
| | 01:49 | Rosenbaum, who was the visual effect
supervisor for Cinesite on that one and
| | 01:54 | he was describing it. "Well, have him kind
of turn into himself, have it all kind of
| | 01:58 | curl in and then make this
kind of dimensional gap inside."
| | 02:02 | So you are hearing this language and
this verbiage and it's up to me, okay,
| | 02:07 | so what does... I'll paint that.
What does that look like?
| | 02:11 | But that's the fun part.
| | 02:12 | Okay, there are flames in here and then
he kind of pops turns in on himself and
| | 02:16 | then there is a smoke effect.
| | 02:17 | The reality of the Nightcrawler
effect was he does this so rapidly that in
| | 02:22 | experimenting with it, it turned out,
you don't have time to show flames.
| | 02:26 | You don't have time to show much.
| | 02:27 | In the final film where we ended up was, boom!
| | 02:30 | He disappears and there is this little
smoke thing that kind of fades away,
| | 02:33 | as he disappears, and boom!
he pops up somewhere else.
| | 02:36 | But you get there through all the
trial and error of doing the stuff.
| | 02:40 | That's with the concept art, one of
the really fun shots was the Kitty effect,
| | 02:46 | is where she disappears through walls.
| | 02:49 | But this was another case where
they weren't sure where to go with her,
| | 02:52 | how extreme to make it.
| | 02:54 | In other words, she is rapidly
moving and she kind of goes through walls.
| | 02:57 | So we had to go through a whole
discussion of do the walls bend? Is there this
| | 03:01 | dimensional thing where she
kind of blends with the wall?
| | 03:04 | So it was a long series of concept pieces
that showed varying degrees of that to
| | 03:09 | wherever she got near a wall,
she would start stretching towards the wall and
| | 03:12 | the wall would stretch towards her.
| | 03:14 | Again, time constraints, when you are
moving that through, when you are moving
| | 03:18 | through that fast, that changes.
| | 03:20 | But that was another case where the
actual concept art ended up being in the
| | 03:24 | film itself, because we just
rotoscoped those shots, because they were short
| | 03:29 | enough where they just gave me,
there is a plate of the wall where she is going through,
| | 03:33 | there is a plate of Kitty and then
I have to combine them and make her disappear.
| | 03:37 | So you are in Photoshop, you are just
kind of painting out the edges and adding a
| | 03:40 | little dimensional twist
and those kind of thing.
| | 03:41 | I have done other kinds of concept
work as well for television commercials.
| | 03:45 | I often do things that are car
related for television commercials.
| | 03:49 | This was a Max Life commercial and
again you are working through the different
| | 03:56 | parameters of what they need for the commercial.
| | 03:57 | So you drew a long car at first and
it won't fit in the frame that we actually shot.
| | 04:01 | So you shorten it up.
| | 04:03 | So you get those kinds of things.
| | 04:04 | One of the other fun projects,
the same thing for Max Life was working on robot stuff.
| | 04:09 | Again, it's bringing my Illustrator
background into things, which doesn't happen
| | 04:16 | often in this kind of thing.
| | 04:17 | So anytime anyone ask me to
design a car or design a robot, oh!
| | 04:20 | cool, okay because this is different.
| | 04:22 | In the concept stage of things, it's wide open.
| | 04:26 | You are basically listening to what
somebody is asking for but you are free as
| | 04:29 | an artist to kind of say, well, what if,
what if I go this route, what if the
| | 04:34 | guy is a little softer edged than more
kind of happy looking, what if he is a
| | 04:38 | little more mechanical looking?
| | 04:40 | So those are kind of
options you give the client.
| | 04:41 | That's your job as a concept artist is
to give them a range of options, so
| | 04:46 | they can start looking at that
and say no, he looks too scary.
| | 04:49 | No, he looks too cutsie.
| | 04:50 | And somewhere along the line you end
up coming at what they end up having in
| | 04:55 | the commercial.
| | 04:56 | So concept art is a
subcategory of what I do again.
| | 05:00 | Mainstay's matte painting.
| | 05:02 | But concept art is a lot of fun.
| | 05:04 | I mean it's one of those things I
wouldn't mind chasing around a little more and
| | 05:07 | kind of putting out there, because
it is. It's a very creative process.
| | 05:11 | Matte painting is creative on front-
end and then you've got kind of a long
| | 05:14 | process of just executing on the other side.
| | 05:17 | Concept art is all about the idea
and capturing what somebody wants and
| | 05:22 | making that visual.
| | 05:24 | So I will probably chase that around
a little bit and kind of encourage my clients
| | 05:28 | to utilize those aspects
of my skills a little more.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Fine art | 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | Ron Crabb: My fine art
pursuits have gone back a long way.
| | 00:11 | I guess it's almost my
origin was illustrator/fine art.
| | 00:16 | There was always this desire
I think just to work on my own.
| | 00:21 | I think that's where it comes from.
| | 00:22 | In other words, if you are in any
kind of commercial, illustrator, motion
| | 00:26 | graphics, matte paintings, whatever
it is, it's a collaborative effort.
| | 00:30 | You've got a group of people who are
more or less dictating what they are
| | 00:33 | looking for and it's your job to deliver that.
| | 00:36 | Fine art is really more about me
exploring myself, like I think it is for
| | 00:40 | any fine artist.
| | 00:41 | Instead of asking the question, what
does that client want, you are asking the
| | 00:45 | question, what do I want to create?
| | 00:47 | I am asking those questions of myself.
| | 00:49 | So it's really self exploration,
finding out okay, what am I about, why do I
| | 00:53 | like painting what I like?
| | 00:56 | I have been exploring the fine art
thing since high school and
| | 01:00 | trying to figure out
what I wanted to do there.
| | 01:02 | There was a period in the mid 90s
where I really pursued it fairly hard.
| | 01:08 | I would work freelance for 3-4
months and then take a month or two off.
| | 01:12 | It went well but the struggle with
the fine art thing there was my work
| | 01:17 | is very detailed.
| | 01:18 | It takes me a month-and-a-
half to do a piece of work.
| | 01:22 | I have to finance that month-and-a-half
and then on top of that it goes to the
| | 01:26 | gallery, and until you have about ten
years under your belt and have a really
| | 01:30 | good name, your price point is not
high enough to really support that.
| | 01:35 | The struggle was obvious.
| | 01:37 | It started becoming, because of cycle
of saying okay, I need to paint rapidly
| | 01:42 | and I need to paint something that
people want to buy, to create the kind of art
| | 01:46 | that I just feel driven, detailed, rich
lots of image, and as for me, I just can't
| | 01:53 | tear away from something that is
realistic and has detail to it.
| | 01:59 | I have tried and I can kind of do it.
| | 02:00 | But I just keep getting drawn back
to really wanting to see the texture
| | 02:04 | of something.
| | 02:05 | It's not just the shape.
It's the texture, it's how it feels.
| | 02:08 | I want people to look at my work and go,
I know what that smells like, I know
| | 02:12 | what that feels like.
| | 02:13 | You've really brought there,
you have made that real.
| | 02:16 | Now, that's what I enjoy doing.
| | 02:18 | Digitally, that window is now shortened.
| | 02:21 | So, I can do much more elaborate work,
much more detailed work than I could ever
| | 02:25 | do with strictly oils, and as I said,
it allows me to explore that fine art
| | 02:31 | world in a whole new way now.
| | 02:33 | So, I can deliver now in
a reasonable time frame,
| | 02:36 | something that is satisfying for me
to do and then I also think visually
| | 02:41 | interesting for people
who would want to buy that.
| | 02:44 | So, it's become more reasonable.
The fine art world is okay,
| | 02:47 | it's catching up to me.
| | 02:48 | Everything -- my whole history has
kind of giving me the skills I need to
| | 02:52 | explore this again and
let's see what I can do with it.
| | 02:54 | I am asking a lot of fine art
career, but that's okay, why not?
| | 02:58 | You go for it and because every
artist that freelances that I know of has
| | 03:02 | its feast and famine.
| | 03:03 | Often times you can be really,
really busy, and then it quiets down.
| | 03:07 | So, my hope is that fine art wise,
what percentage that is versus commercial?
| | 03:13 | I don't really care.
| | 03:14 | It would just be nice to get it going to
where when I do have those down times,
| | 03:17 | I look forward to them.
I kind of say, oh! good.
| | 03:19 | I get to work on this a little
bit and see what happens with it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Approaching fine art| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | Ron Crabb: During my whole fine art
career the process varied quite a bit.
| | 00:13 | There were occasions where I
would come up with an idea first.
| | 00:16 | There was one called On Route 66.
| | 00:18 | What I was trying to capture there was
the old gas station that we used to drive
| | 00:22 | through when I was a kid.
| | 00:24 | So that came out as a sketch first,
no photography reference, nothing else.
| | 00:28 | Just doing a little rough pencil sketch.
| | 00:31 | But then I went out and got all
the photographic reference for that.
| | 00:33 | So a friend of mine's dad posed
for that. I got another friend's dog.
| | 00:36 | I think it was a very Norman Rockwell
method, because early on I had read his book,
| | 00:43 | How I Paint Pictures, and really
that was my source for my starting point of,
| | 00:47 | okay, this is how Ron Crabb
paints pictures, because I just copied from
| | 00:50 | Norman Rockwell.
I read his book, I am done.
| | 00:52 | So I did his method.
| | 00:55 | He would do a rough sketch, go out and
find the people and the models and
| | 00:57 | the props and photograph them.
| | 00:59 | So that's how that came together, was
photographing the gas pumps in one spot,
| | 01:04 | photographing the car out in the
middle of a field, and then meshing it all
| | 01:07 | together, same technique he
used for his illustration stuff.
| | 01:11 | Other times I would just go on these
road trips across the country and meet
| | 01:15 | people and photograph them.
| | 01:17 | Those were almost straightforward;
| | 01:19 | I might change the background or
whatever, but there was no preconceived
| | 01:22 | thought, "here is my grand plan
for what a painting is going to be."
| | 01:26 | That was more, "let's hit the road
and see what I can find."
| | 01:29 | So I have done both methods in the past,
| | 01:32 | of preplanned, pre-laid out sketch
ready to go and go find your stuff.
| | 01:37 | Other times, let's just go see what I find.
| | 01:40 | Even recently I did a painting called
Point No Point and that was a lighthouse,
| | 01:44 | and it's up here in Hansville,
kind of north of here a little ways.
| | 01:48 | But it was kind of one of those up
there with the kids on the beach, and
| | 01:52 | wouldn't this be a cool painting, so get
out the camera and do some photographs,
| | 01:56 | rework it and place it together.
| | 01:59 | Port Blakely, whole different thing,
because that is a heavily researched piece.
| | 02:03 | So that approach to fine art is really
much larger then the single piece itself.
| | 02:08 | That vision is a sequence or body of work.
| | 02:12 | So that came from a totally different place.
| | 02:14 | There wasn't an image in my head when
I started. I just knew I am going to do
| | 02:20 | Port Blakely, and I am going to
recreate this town very much the way it was.
| | 02:25 | So it all started with tons of research;
| | 02:27 | old photographs, vintage photographs,
how you make the ships, photographs of
| | 02:31 | the ships themselves.
| | 02:33 | So I spent months researching that
and then building it in Cinema 4D,
| | 02:37 | a 3D program.
| | 02:38 | Once I had that done, I moved the camera around.
| | 02:41 | So it was kind of throwback to my
little journeys across America, to where the only
| | 02:45 | difference was I created this world
and I am exploring it in the computer,
| | 02:49 | instead of actually hopping in my car and going.
| | 02:51 | So that's been the fun part of that
approach is seeing that develop and actually
| | 02:55 | having a few surprises there.
| | 02:57 | Once you build a town that wasn't
designed to be aesthetically pleasing,
| | 03:00 | it's a lumber mill town, it's not meant
to be art piece, but all of a sudden I am
| | 03:05 | taking what is technically accurate and
precise, but a esthetically adjusting it
| | 03:11 | to make a nice fine art piece.
| | 03:14 | So there is no one way that I do things.
It's really kind of a little bit of this,
| | 03:21 | a little bit of that, and for
me that's what makes it fun.
| | 03:24 | It's unpredictable for me, and
it's like let's just try this,
| | 03:28 | see if it works, and it's great.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| "Keep a Sharp Eye"| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | Ron Crabb: So this image I am working
on is Keep A Sharp Eye, which is from
| | 00:12 | the first of my illustrations
from Untold Story Series.
| | 00:17 | So I am going to demonstrate just a
little bit of how this process works.
| | 00:21 | I have already gone past the stage of
doing concept art and doing the layout
| | 00:25 | and that kind of thing.
| | 00:26 | I have got my reference models,
which were me and my two kids.
| | 00:29 | So now I am kind of at the phase where
I'd actually start the hands-on painting part.
| | 00:35 | You can see on the screen I have got
the actual original photo reference.
| | 00:39 | I did just a little kind of rough color
correcting layer in Photoshop on top of that,
| | 00:45 | to give it the kind of look I
want for my particular environment.
| | 00:50 | It would be tempting, I think, to start
with the image underneath and just kind
| | 00:54 | of paint on top of that.
| | 00:56 | But the painter part in me likes to
kind of scoot this off and really start
| | 01:00 | from scratch underneath.
| | 01:01 | The whole reason being is I am
much more conscious of lighting issues;
| | 01:05 | where are my lights coming from,
where the ambient light is coming from.
| | 01:08 | So I work that a little differently
than I would if I was starting right
| | 01:12 | with photography.
| | 01:13 | So I think that gives me just a little
more input into the creativity and how
| | 01:19 | this thing is going to actually pan out.
| | 01:21 | So I would start with larger brush areas
and just kind of start painting in my shape.
| | 01:29 | The whole time I am doing this, I am
trying to be very conscious of where my
| | 01:32 | light is coming from.
| | 01:33 | I will widen it out for
a second so you can see.
| | 01:36 | The torch isn't in there yet, but
there is going -- okay, here we go.
| | 01:40 | There is the torch.
| | 01:41 | There is the first initial version of the torch.
| | 01:43 | That's really my main bright light source.
| | 01:45 | So I am thinking of that when I start
coming in much tighter here and painting.
| | 01:50 | Don't necessarily need to see it, but
that's what's in my head when I am doing this
| | 01:54 | is where that light source is
and where these are going to hit on the
| | 01:57 | shape of this guy.
| | 01:58 | The great advantage is you want to
switch a color, you just hit Command and
| | 02:04 | then click down and tap it and
you have got a different color.
| | 02:07 | At the same time,
| | 02:08 | let me get my color adjustments,
I am going to kind of work in ambient
| | 02:13 | lighting as well.
| | 02:15 | So there is just a little bit of
moonlight kind of coming down on this guy's face.
| | 02:20 | The same thing, keeping in mind
underlying bone structure, where that
| | 02:26 | lighting is going to hit, it's okay to
kind of overwork it now and then, but
| | 02:30 | you are really kind of laying it in.
You are thinking form and lighting at
| | 02:33 | this point, at least I am.
| | 02:39 | That's a little too strong.
| | 02:41 | But you can kind of see I just do
little circles. The painting technique
| | 02:45 | is fairly loose.
| | 02:48 | Constantly adjusting
the brush size to make it work.
| | 02:50 | You start big and work small.
| | 02:55 | You just work your way down.
| | 02:57 | Then generally, some people will kind
of work roughly over the whole image.
| | 03:02 | I tend to like to work on sections,
it's just the way I work best.
| | 03:07 | I like seeing something kind of come
together and get some progress before
| | 03:09 | I move on.
| | 03:10 | But I am going to start brightening
up this surface of the face, so that it
| | 03:16 | starts picking up that light a
little brighter, and it's just incremental
| | 03:19 | steps the whole way.
| | 03:20 | It will all start coming together,
you will see it start working pretty well,
| | 03:26 | pretty quickly.
| | 03:27 | If you are doing a painting like this,
it's actually a lot like sculpting.
| | 03:30 | You are pushing and pulling surfaces, so
that some recede, some go back, you are
| | 03:35 | thinking in those terms, three-
dimensional terms, so that when you are applying
| | 03:39 | a color, you are doing it being
very conscious of where the light is.
| | 03:42 | So here I have jumped ahead a little bit.
| | 03:45 | You can see where I started and this
is the actual file where I ended up.
| | 03:51 | I am getting to a certain point.
| | 03:55 | But at this point I would start making
this whole upper layer disappear,
| | 03:58 | this original line work layer.
| | 04:02 | At one point I just eventually just
turn it off completely, because now I am
| | 04:06 | where I need to be for detail.
| | 04:08 | So then I am just adding all the
final little detail to this guy.
| | 04:12 | So you can see how this
progresses along the way. It's really
| | 04:15 | straightforward stuff.
| | 04:16 | You just come in here and paint very
much like you would with the real stuff.
| | 04:21 | Again, the tools of Photoshop, at least
the way I use them, aren't a whole lot
| | 04:25 | different than what I have been using
for years with oil paints, but it's just a
| | 04:29 | much quicker process.
| | 04:32 | Whereas if I was doing this in oil paint,
I might have to spend a couple of days
| | 04:37 | on a guy to try and get
all this kind of detail in.
| | 04:40 | But you can see here I did
the same process with the shirt.
| | 04:43 | Again, keeping the lighting with the
same hand painted kind of look to it.
| | 04:48 | There is his oar.
| | 04:50 | At some point eventually I just
turn the reference file off and start
| | 04:56 | working this way.
| | 04:59 | Start adding buttons, anything you need.
| | 05:01 | Let me jump over to one of
the other characters here.
| | 05:10 | So I keep the reference as close at hand,
but again I avoid putting them right
| | 05:14 | underneath and painting them.
| | 05:15 | It's just more fun to
kind of start from scratch.
| | 05:18 | With the young lady, this daughter of
mine was only eight years old when we did this,
| | 05:25 | or nine years old, but
I wanted to age her a little bit.
| | 05:29 | So I actually scaled her up a little
bit, made the head slightly smaller,
| | 05:34 | the arms a little bit longer, just kind of
elongated things a little bit to give her
| | 05:38 | a little more mature look.
| | 05:43 | Again, it's a cheat I might not have
done if I was just strictly painting on top
| | 05:47 | of photographs or something, but
that's where the creative part comes in,
| | 05:53 | is moving away from your reference and
really thinking about what you are doing and
| | 05:56 | making choices that are
based on your ultimate goal.
| | 06:00 | So you can see the texture of her
skin is much smoother, more elegant.
| | 06:07 | I have kind of-- I made her eyes
slightly larger, to get more expressions, so
| | 06:12 | it's kind of old illustrator tricks
I have learned from Norman Rockwell.
| | 06:15 | He actually made men's heads
slightly smaller to make them more noble.
| | 06:18 | If you want someone a little more
expressive, you can just enlarge the eyes.
| | 06:21 | Just slightly. If you do
too much, it's noticeable.
| | 06:23 | But in this kind of thing you just do
it just slightly enough to kind of give
| | 06:28 | it an exaggeration.
| | 06:30 | I often make hands slightly larger than
they actually are and it just helps
| | 06:34 | with the storytelling.
| | 06:38 | Actually, this was another just kind
of as I was going thing, I decided to add some
| | 06:43 | facial tattoo things to her, because the
whole idea of this whole category of my art
[00:06:489.10]
was to create illustrations from
a story that is implied, that I don't
| | 06:54 | really talk about.
I leave that up to the viewers.
| | 06:57 | So I thought adding some kind of cool
little face paint or face tattoo things
| | 07:02 | would imply that there is things that
this girl has gone through, that you
| | 07:07 | should be very curious about.
| | 07:10 | But that gives you a good
idea of at least the process.
| | 07:13 | It's fairly straightforward. You just
continue this all the way through the piece.
| | 07:17 | Here we have the finished product.
| | 07:19 | It might be a little dark on the screen,
but you can see all the little tiny
| | 07:25 | details and highlights and
everything else are all in this stage.
| | 07:30 | One of the fun parts, you can kind of
see the way I started out, kind of with
| | 07:34 | rough flames. Actually I kind of
almost finished this image and put it up
| | 07:41 | on the Internet and got some great
feedback and critiques about it and one of
| | 07:44 | them was that the flame wasn't quite right.
| | 07:46 | I ended up changing that to make the
flames kind of flow more up the shaft, like
| | 07:51 | they naturally would, after digging
into some more kind of reference photos.
| | 07:55 | I think that helped a lot.
| | 07:56 | So it's great to have access to the
artistic community to help you with these things.
| | 08:00 | This is the final of Keep A Sharp Eye.
| | 08:06 | (Music playing.)
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Ron on technology | 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | Ron Crabb: Back when I first started
out, it was all kind of hands-on art.
| | 00:12 | The first real digital work I was
doing was on what was called a Quantel Paintbox.
| | 00:18 | I was working at KABC and it was a
real video-only kind of platform.
| | 00:23 | It did have a tablet,
much like I still use today.
| | 00:26 | It was strictly a video resolution and
a really kind of simple machine to use
| | 00:31 | because it was quick.
| | 00:33 | You picked up on things quickly
and you could rapidly execute things.
| | 00:37 | So that was the mainstay for me for
a quite a while from '84 on through
| | 00:42 | '89-'90, but then the Mac showed up,
and the technology changed quite a bit.
| | 00:49 | So even seeing that. When we saw the
Quantel Paintbox, we knew the future was changing.
| | 00:55 | But that was a large system. You had to
have a post facility or somebody who can
| | 00:58 | afford a $250,000 system.
| | 01:01 | Then Macintosh showed up and started
showing up on everybody's individual desks.
| | 01:05 | So now you can actually have
your own dedicated computer.
| | 01:07 | You used to have to share the Quantel
with 50 other designers. Nw you had your own.
| | 01:12 | So you are actually on the
computer much longer times.
| | 01:15 | You didn't have to slot your
time or book your time on a system.
| | 01:20 | You had it right there.
| | 01:21 | But that was Photoshop that was showing up.
| | 01:23 | So it really took the place of
Quantel Paintbox, at least in our workflow.
| | 01:29 | And I would look over the shoulder
these younger guys who were using it and
| | 01:32 | comparing it to how I was using the
Quantel Paintbox and Quantel's beauty was
| | 01:37 | its simplicity. You
could work really fast on it.
| | 01:40 | Initially with Photoshop, it seemed
slower, a little bit longer process,
| | 01:44 | but I knew that was the future.
| | 01:46 | So I was still working on Quantel,
still freelancing and booking the time
| | 01:50 | on those machines.
| | 01:51 | But I knew, it's like okay.
Photoshop is pretty cool.
| | 01:54 | This is working, it's on a smaller system,
it's on the system I could buy myself.
| | 01:58 | So I know that's where it was going
and I don't remember exactly when it was,
| | 02:02 | but I finally saw Photoshop and used
and played with it myself and there was
| | 02:06 | kind of an a-ha moment,
that okay, it's finally arrived.
| | 02:09 | I can do everything that I used to
do on the Quantel and just as rapidly.
| | 02:14 | But now even with broader ranges of
possibilities, more filters, a resolution.
| | 02:20 | I can change what I wanted that to be.
| | 02:23 | So that's when that really switched
over and ever since then Photoshop has been
| | 02:28 | the mainstay that even now for
regardless of what I am doing, if it's motion
| | 02:32 | graphics, if it's visual effects, if
it's concept art, I'd say 95% of my work is
| | 02:37 | done in Photoshop itself.
| | 02:40 | Over the last couple years, I've added
3D to that out of necessity and that
| | 02:45 | actually started with motion
graphics and working with Cinema 4D.
| | 02:49 | I use that almost exclusively as a 3D
program because I find it really easy to use.
| | 02:53 | It's kind of an user friendly software.
| | 02:56 | So my normal workflow would be 95%
Photoshop but occasionally I will jump over
| | 03:01 | to Cinema 4D because there are certain
moments that just work better if I can
| | 03:05 | start with that platform. Architectural
things, buildings, those kind of thing
| | 03:10 | that you wouldn't really want to
draw by hand if you don't have to.
| | 03:13 | You just build it in 3D first, texture
map it or simple models even that I
| | 03:17 | import into Photoshop.
| | 03:19 | So that's the bulk of the work.
There is a not a whole lot I use.
| | 03:22 | Occasionally Painter, if I am doing
something that is that needs really
| | 03:26 | textury feel to it.
| | 03:27 | So anything you need to look really
kind of hand done, Painter is great for that.
| | 03:31 | But still, the bulk of my work is
done with Photoshop and Cinema 4D.
| | 03:35 | The system I am actually using right
now is a Macintosh G5 computer, just
| | 03:40 | tucked under my desk here.
| | 03:42 | The real revelation for me was when I
got this 32 inch monitor, because working
| | 03:46 | in film, you are working at
least a 2K pixel wide kind of thing.
| | 03:50 | So it used to be what the 21 inch big
heavy monitors I had originally, when
| | 03:54 | I started in film.
| | 03:56 | You were having to zoom in
or zoom out all the time.
| | 03:58 | With this monitor, I can actually look
at it full res and still have room for
| | 04:02 | the menus on each side.
| | 04:04 | So, soon as this came out I jumped
right on top of it and bought one of those.
| | 04:08 | But this machine is actually about two
and half years old, but it still does
| | 04:12 | everything I need it to do.
| | 04:13 | I generally wait to upgrade until they
double the processor speeds, so that's kind
| | 04:18 | of my benchmark. It's like, no, not
going to do it yet, not going to do it yet.
| | 04:21 | Because they upgrade so quickly and it
gets outdated within two, three years.
| | 04:27 | So that's what I use.
| | 04:29 | I always use this tablet here.
Like I said with the Quantel Paintbox,
| | 04:34 | that's what they have.
| | 04:35 | That was your main way of
interfacing with the computer.
| | 04:39 | So I still have a mouse, but I think it
sits there very lonely most of the time.
| | 04:43 | I hardly ever touch it.
| | 04:44 | But technology wise it's a simple system.
| | 04:48 | The beauty of that is for a relatively
reasonable cost, you can now do stuff that
| | 04:54 | goes in to feature films and
motion graphics and those kind of thing.
| | 04:56 | Used to cast a fortune, but now,
Apple is a little on the upper end,
| | 05:01 | but it still reasonable for a freelancer.
| | 05:03 | You know it's changed where you had work
for a facility before to use the equipment.
| | 05:09 | Now you can do compositing even and
that kind of thing on a Macintosh that you
| | 05:13 | can have in your home on your own desktop.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sources of inspiration | 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:09 | Ron Crabb: An artist always
get asked about inspiration.
| | 00:12 | If you are going to ask me that,
it could be a long story, because I started,
| | 00:16 | really, really, really young.
| | 00:18 | I mean my dad loved to story of
me being five years old, going off
| | 00:21 | to kindergarten.
| | 00:23 | Being bored to tears to where I
just would not go back to school.
| | 00:27 | So they basically found a way to mollify the
crybaby by giving him little art projects to do,
| | 00:33 | and I think I can remember my
first one was like a Santa that
| | 00:36 | we ended up sticking up
on our door for Christmas.
| | 00:38 | But it stuck, so at five years old,
I was already kind of thinking in terms
| | 00:42 | of this is what I like to do.
By third grade, I was considered the class
| | 00:46 | artist kind of thing.
| | 00:49 | So, my artistic influence is an
inspiration in those early years, largely
| | 00:55 | came from illustrators, Norman Rockwell,
NC Wyeth, the Leyendecker Brothers,
| | 01:00 | those kind of things.
| | 01:01 | Those would carry me through kind
of all my early years, through grade
| | 01:05 | school and through high school,
was targeting kind of what I really was
| | 01:08 | drawn to do with art.
| | 01:11 | So, my foundational stuff is all
illustrator based. That's what I envision
| | 01:15 | myself doing at those young years was
a combination of the illustration work
| | 01:20 | and fine art work and traditional
methods, oil paint, acrylic, whatever it might be.
| | 01:25 | So, that earliest illustration, I mean
I have still got on my shelves books of
| | 01:30 | NC Wyeth, Leyendecker and Maxfield
Parrish and Rockwell and what I loved about
| | 01:36 | those guys and this was something I
don't think I really grasped on to until
| | 01:42 | much later was that they were story based.
| | 01:44 | In other words, if I looked at fine art
or something, I admired it but I was drawn
| | 01:50 | to these illustrators and
it really dawned on me.
| | 01:54 | I think even relatively recently when
I starting taking a writing course,
| | 01:58 | for the very reason that it's like, oh wait a
minute, the whole reason I love what these
| | 02:01 | guys do is because they are telling a story.
| | 02:04 | Same thing with film. What I find
satisfying about working in films is
| | 02:09 | that I am helping to tell the story.
| | 02:10 | I am making it more real by giving me
environment of an edge of reality to it.
| | 02:16 | So, as I've grown and matured as an
artist, that inspiration pool has just
| | 02:20 | gotten huge, because my
career path has been kind of odd.
| | 02:23 | I didn't really go to the illustrator thing.
I never really started out that way.
| | 02:28 | I jumped ship fairly quickly and
kind of by accident into television, but
| | 02:33 | I found myself working with well trained
artists, who'd gone to Art Center,
| | 02:36 | and gone to wherever.
| | 02:39 | So, that pulled me along and it
inspired me because you sit at home alone
| | 02:43 | doing artwork, you are not really sure
where to go with it, but when you have
| | 02:48 | the feedback and the interaction with
other artists, that's when I start feeling inspired.
| | 02:54 | In particular, the shift in
inspiration for my transition to matte painting
| | 02:58 | primarily because that really has
become my focus professional career-wise.
| | 03:04 | Now, I started exploring that world a
little bit. There is Chris Stoski, Dylan Cole,
| | 03:07 | Craig Mullins and kind of the
whole group. If you go to mattepainting.org,
| | 03:11 | you can see a long list of matte
painters on there and a lot of excellent work.
| | 03:17 | So, when I started narrowing what I was
looking for inspiration wise, these guys
| | 03:22 | were kind of setting the bar. In other
words seeing what other professionals who
| | 03:25 | were doing the movies,
that's where I needed to go.
| | 03:30 | So, I studied their work, kind of
looked at what they are doing and took my
| | 03:35 | years of doing the same thing, only
not really ever being aware of this whole
| | 03:40 | community of matte painters, brought
that altogether and it really informed a
| | 03:46 | lot of kind of where I went.
In other words keeping the standard high and
| | 03:49 | setting the standard high, and
I still do that on a regular basis.
| | 03:54 | I think you have to as an artist learn
from other artists and just constantly
| | 04:00 | be on top of what they are doing,
where they are going, what they are trying next,
| | 04:04 | this kind of thing.
| | 04:06 | If I am asked what inspires me, it's a
ton of stuff, but I guess most of it is
| | 04:13 | what is happening right now with that
artistic community, where are we going with it,
| | 04:18 | what is my role in that,
how are we doing that.
| | 04:20 | That's what kind of keeps me kind of
alive in it and interested in it, knowing
| | 04:25 | okay, well that's cool.
| | 04:26 | I wouldn't have thought of doing that
and how can I integrate that idea into
| | 04:31 | what I am doing and make
it my own and change it.
| | 04:35 | But in a broader sense, inspiration,
I find myself creative when I am I guess
| | 04:46 | intrigued or curious and that doesn't
always have to do with art. In other words,
| | 04:51 | listening to music, reading a
good book, playing with my kids, being in a
| | 04:57 | place like this is obviously
inspirational in that sense, but I find when I am
| | 05:01 | just kind of happy, whatever it takes
to make me happy and-- curious keeps
| | 05:09 | coming to my head, because I am
naturally inquisitive. If there is a mystery,
| | 05:14 | I want to know the answer to it.
| | 05:16 | If there is something
unknown, I want to know with it.
| | 05:19 | That's just part of who I am.
| | 05:20 | But when I feel like I am doing that,
and when I am exploring things,
| | 05:24 | that's when I feel inspired to work.
| | 05:26 | It may have nothing to do with art, but
I will take something from that and just
| | 05:31 | that feeling of, okay, I am curious
about how that works, it can translate
| | 05:37 | rapidly into what do I want to do next?
What image is floating around in my head,
| | 05:41 | what do I want to express?
| | 05:43 | What feeling am I trying to communicate?
| | 05:45 | So I will often do that and if I find
myself feeling, like they say, standing
| | 05:50 | in front of a blank canvas and not
knowing what to paint, I will just start
| | 05:54 | reading or start writing.
| | 05:56 | I am really inspired by stories.
| | 06:00 | That's the root of the whole Port
Blakely project is we are sitting in a
| | 06:04 | place that has just a long history
that's now visibly not hear anymore,
| | 06:11 | but I love reading about that.
| | 06:13 | I love learning what these people
are like and what they did and how they
| | 06:16 | did what they did.
| | 06:17 | So, if I want to get inspired,
I will read about that stuff.
| | 06:21 | It's the whole idea of story and
what people are like and what they are
| | 06:24 | experiencing and even something like
it's just a simple matte painting,
| | 06:29 | it may be just a background for movie.
| | 06:33 | But I try and kind of come at it
with that whole idea of knowing what
| | 06:37 | that story is about and how this one
little particular image fits that story
| | 06:42 | and that's where it starts becoming
a little more interesting than just
| | 06:45 | doing commercial artwork.
| | 06:47 | It's like well, I involve myself in
their story and try and make sure that I am
| | 06:53 | pursuing excellence to help tell that story.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Interview with Lynda | 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:09 | Lynda Weinman: Hi, I am Lynda Weinman, co-
founder of Lynda.com and I am here today with Ron Crabb
| | 00:13 | who is a commercial and fine artist.
| | 00:16 | We are so happy that you have joined us.
| | 00:18 | Thank you for agreeing to do this interview.
| | 00:20 | Ron Crabb: Oh! It's my pleasure.
| | 00:21 | Pleasure to be a part of it.
| | 00:22 | I've really kind of enjoyed already
the Creative Inspirations you have up there already.
| | 00:26 | So it's an honor to be a part of it.
| | 00:27 | Lynda Weinman: So, you've made this pretty
major transition from working on very high end
| | 00:32 | expensive equipment in Hollywood to
moving over a thousands miles away and
| | 00:37 | working out of your home.
| | 00:38 | Can you talk a little bit about
what that transition has been like?
| | 00:41 | Ron Crabb: Yeah, it was carefully thought out.
| | 00:45 | We lived in LA for 25 years. Or I did.
| | 00:49 | I got married in '96 or so.
| | 00:51 | I should get that exactly right, April 3rd, 1996.
| | 00:56 | As we started the family thing,
I was still having to work in Hollywood.
| | 01:00 | I was working places where you
had to go there and had to be there.
| | 01:03 | So it was a conscious decision to
really try and shift more freelance.
| | 01:07 | Of course Apple made that possible,
because now you didn't have a $250,000 system.
| | 01:12 | You can get a Macintosh at home
and a Wacom tablet and $5,000 and you were in
| | 01:16 | like Flynn. You could do
anything anyone else is doing.
| | 01:19 | But we really had a desire to kind of,
or I did specifically, to bring it home
| | 01:25 | and to be able to work out of the
house and to really make family first and
| | 01:30 | to develop that kind of quality of life
that we saw as something that we wanted
| | 01:34 | for the future for our family.
| | 01:35 | So we pursued that actively to
try and freelance and work at home.
| | 01:40 | It was only after a little while that
we started thinking we could possibly
| | 01:43 | actually move away from Hollywood, which
was kind of its own challenge and still
| | 01:48 | presents a number of challenges.
| | 01:49 | Lynda Weinman: Well, how do you keep current
with your techniques and keep connected to other
| | 01:54 | matte painters and things like that?
| | 01:56 | Is that a challenge for you?
| | 01:57 | Ron Crabb: Not anymore.
| | 02:00 | It has really developed radically.
| | 02:02 | I think even over a last couple of years
to where these websites have popped up all over the place.
| | 02:07 | So recently I joined cgsociety.com
back in 2005, but I didn't do much with it then.
| | 02:13 | It was kind of busy for me and just
didn't pay much attention to what was going on.
| | 02:18 | But as I'd get windows in
between, I started checking in.
| | 02:20 | And then as I started actually getting
involved and writing things in the blogs
| | 02:25 | and putting up my own portfolios,
this whole network just kind of bubbled up.
| | 02:30 | I am sure it's been there for a while,
but I was kind of slow in tapping into it.
| | 02:33 | But the very cool thing about it is,
there is all these websites now where you
| | 02:38 | can network with artists who are doing
what I am doing just all over the world.
| | 02:42 | It's not just tying into Hollywood,
but there are guys over in Australia or
| | 02:46 | Europe or whatever, where you
kind of interact a little bit.
| | 02:50 | They email me, I email them back.
| | 02:53 | I can kind of keep tabs.
| | 02:54 | Lynda Weinman: That's really incredible.
| | 02:55 | I mean, it's just a total
transformation instead of meeting people around
| | 02:58 | the water cooler.
| | 02:59 | You are at the global
water cooler now, it's pretty--
| | 03:01 | Ron Crabb: Yeah, it's a good way to put it,
because the fun part for me is sensing --
| | 03:08 | it's not exactly the way it was when I
worked in Hollywood when you were face to face
| | 03:12 | and went to lunch with people.
| | 03:14 | I do miss a little of that sometimes.
| | 03:15 | You have to be honest, working at home
in your own offices there, but there is
| | 03:19 | a little sense of that, because
the immediacy of the communication.
| | 03:23 | Someone can email you and you
can email him right back and have a
| | 03:26 | little discussion.
| | 03:27 | I had a kind of an exchange with a
guy who was in Indonesia and we just had
| | 03:32 | a great time talking about the art
process and what it was like for him to work
| | 03:36 | over there and what I was
experiencing in Bainbridge Island.
| | 03:39 | But it's just immediate
and just right off the bat.
| | 03:42 | You are making a friend who is much
further than a thousand miles away.
| | 03:46 | Lynda Weinman: Yeah, that's pretty incredible.
| | 03:49 | How do you market yourself?
| | 03:50 | Do you use the Internet for that as well?
| | 03:52 | Ron Crabb: Yeah, that's the primary method.
| | 03:54 | I mean, you can't really anymore do
anything without your own website or you at
| | 03:59 | least have to be up on CG
Society website or something.
| | 04:01 | That was kind of number one.
I actually set that up long before I left LA.
| | 04:07 | As a freelancer even in LA, I had to have that.
| | 04:10 | So that's been an integral part of that,
because now you can just get a hold of
| | 04:14 | visual effect supervisors or producers
or whatever. Instead of having to send a
| | 04:18 | whole portfolio or a tape, you
can just point them to the website.
| | 04:21 | Some of these networking websites as well,
CG Society, CG Hub, these other ones
| | 04:26 | are coming into play as well, because
they have competitions. Tey have these
| | 04:29 | kinds of things where you can just
submit an image and they will put it up for you
| | 04:33 | in their showcase galleries
or something like that.
| | 04:36 | So that's where you get a lot of
publicity as well, because people are,
| | 04:40 | by much larger numbers than whatever visit
my website directly, they are visiting these sites.
| | 04:45 | So once they tap into that site,
it's just this little link to mine.
| | 04:49 | So when I started exploring those
routes and getting into CG Society,
| | 04:54 | the traffic to my own website just bumped up
quite a bit through that whole process.
| | 04:58 | Lynda Weinman: That's fantastic.
| | 05:00 | Do you have any advice to
aspiring matte painters?
| | 05:04 | Ron Crabb: Yeah, so what would be my
advice to an aspiring matte painters?
| | 05:09 | I don't know.
| | 05:10 | It's a good field to get in, but
where I see some of the young guys who are
| | 05:14 | trying to get in it, the areas they
lack are kind of the ones we have been
| | 05:18 | saying ever since I have been an artist,
is learn the good art skills first.
| | 05:22 | I think the temptation these days is
to jump on to the technology right away,
| | 05:27 | jump on Photoshop, get a 3D
program, start using it, learn the tool.
| | 05:32 | But if you don't have the art
background underneath all of that,
| | 05:34 | you are getting the
horse in front of the cart.
| | 05:38 | Well, that's where he belongs.
| | 05:38 | But I mean the cart in front of the horse.
| | 05:40 | So my advise is just really follow
that standard fine art kind of approach to art.
| | 05:47 | Learn lighting, learn shape, learn
color, all these kinds of things, and
| | 05:50 | every matte painter will tell you that.
| | 05:51 | If you can't paint a landscape and
know what you are doing with lighting and
| | 05:56 | everything else, Photoshop is
not going to get you far enough.
| | 05:59 | Cutting and pasting photos
is not just going to cut it.
| | 06:01 | So you really need to understand
art and even fine art in that sense.
| | 06:05 | Lynda Weinman: In addition to your commercial
career, you also have been dabbling in fine art.
| | 06:10 | Did you get started doing that back
when you were in LA or is that new to when
| | 06:15 | you moved to Washington?
| | 06:17 | Ron Crabb: No, it does go way back.
| | 06:18 | In fact, that was one of my early
impulses was to combine illustration work and
| | 06:23 | fine art at the same time.
| | 06:25 | Back then it was the
hands-on traditional method.
| | 06:28 | I was an oil painter and
would paint oil on panel.
| | 06:31 | So I have been dabbling with that for
the last 30 years in my art career and
| | 06:35 | I did explored it a little bit with some
western art. I went to Scottsdale and got
| | 06:39 | in a gallery there, but quickly
discovered that with my style of detailed realism
| | 06:45 | selling a painting that took me a month
and half and having a gallery take 50% of it
| | 06:50 | was just not viable way
to make a living at the time.
| | 06:52 | So I stayed with the commercial work.
| | 06:54 | But now that it's become digital and
I am exploring idea of doing digital
| | 06:58 | fine art, I can really compress that
time factor down considerably and also
| | 07:04 | I think do things that I would never
even dream of doing with real oil paints
| | 07:08 | and that kind of thing.
| | 07:09 | My Port Blakely paintings for instance
are much larger in scope and more detailed
| | 07:15 | with all the ships and the
details and the water reflections.
| | 07:18 | It would take six months to about a
year to paint something like something like
| | 07:22 | that in oil, but now I am seeing a
real opportunity, because with the digital work
| | 07:25 | and trying to break into fine art
in that area, I can just do stuff that
| | 07:29 | hasn't been seen before in the fine art world.
| | 07:32 | What I am finding is that it's going
to take a little work to get there.
| | 07:37 | My clients so far have been on
Bainbridge Island and I am really starting local.
| | 07:41 | So I am doing the local mill, I am doing
local history and this kind of thing to
| | 07:44 | really kind of test the waters
on this and it's gone really well.
| | 07:47 | It's been just a couple of years since
I started this. I got a lot of fans on
| | 07:50 | the island and I am seeing
potential for real growth.
| | 07:54 | Nobody cares that it's digital.
| | 07:56 | They just look at it and they love the image.
| | 07:58 | So I think the fine art galleries are
maybe just at the area where we can start
| | 08:03 | pursuing selling digital art with a
traditional look as a viable way of
| | 08:09 | communicating in some art form.
| | 08:11 | So that's really what I am
experimenting with now is
| | 08:13 | when I don't have commercial work on
the table, I jump right on the fine art
| | 08:17 | stuff and start exploring. Same
techniques, same look even in many respects, but
| | 08:24 | kind of a whole different
idea of where it's going to go.
| | 08:27 | Lynda Weinman: Thanks so much for being
part of the Creative Inspirations series.
| | 08:29 | It's really an honor to get to know
you and we appreciate you sharing your
| | 08:32 | resources and insights with us.
| | 08:33 | Ron Crabb: Well, it's been a pleasure
and honor to be a part of it. Thank you.
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