Interview: Fernando di Gasperi – 3D Artist

This week we caught up with Fernando di Gasperi, a Graphic Designer and 3D Artist from Brasil. Fernando has been working in the industry for years now, and we are really excited for him to join us in this exclusive interview to share some of his thoughts and tips from his experience and works.

His works range across different areas, interiors, exteriors, vehicles, modeling, lighting and texturing.

Enjoy his works and and the tips he shares below in this interview.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

First of all I’d like to thank Skyrill.com for the invite to this interview, it’s a great pleasure.

My name is Fernando di Gasperi, I’m 24 years old, I’m from Brasil, Rio Grande Do Sul.

I’m a Graphic Design student and a lover of all kinds of art, such as 3d graphic, sculpture, photography, drawing, cinema, etc…  Like all the other 3d artists, I’m always looking for news techniques, tutorials, articles to always keep improve my work.

 

What sparked your design career, and was it with 3D?

My career started with graphic design,I used to work with printing design (2d art), after some short time I was involved into this 3d world and I never stopped. My first job as an 3d artist was in a small studio, making some 3d work, and in a short time I got a job into an architecture office where I learned a lot about materials, architecture, and how to think in “shaders”, although I spent just 6 months working at that firm, it was an awesome experience. Shortly after that, I moved on to a real 3d studio Called Neorama, where I’m working at the moment as a 3d artist.

 

How long have you been working with 3D, and did you have any kind of schooling or training?

I’ve been working with 3d programs, and as a 3D artist for 4 years. I learned 3d reading tutorials, searching for videos, courses, tips from other artists. After I was involved with 3d I took some courses and workshops at Melies, a professional school of cinema, 3d and animation here in Brazil.

 

What programs do you use or work with?

I work with several programs, mainly 3D Studio Max, Vray, Photoshop and Zbrush. Right now, I’m studying a lot of after effects and Maxwell Render, both for my professional and personal uses.

 

Where does your design inspiration come from?

I really enjoy looking at a lot of lot of photography, sculpture, drawing, movies, etc… These are things that really inspire me most and get ideas running through my head, about how things work, or things I could come up with, which challenges me to improve my work and style. I think my inspiration mostly comes from the traditional arts, but i’m always looking at other contemporary artists works in both 2d and 3D, and observe how things are done.

 

Tell us more about the nature of your work, and the field you like to focus on most

My job mainly consists of working on the lighting, shader and post production aspects of the projects we do in the studio. But when it comes to my own personal projects, I like to work on almost everything in a project, modeling, texturing, lighting, shaders, post-production, etc… I really enjoy working on interior and exterior visualizations, cars, characters, and many more random things. I don’t know exactly which direction I’ll be focusing on, in the future, but there are some many things that I like to do in this field.  Of course mt plane is to really improve myself in the next few years, and hopefully get to work on things done for the Movies and Animations in movies, and learn more about the marvelous world.

 

What is the toughest project you’ve worked on, and why?

There have been a lot of difficult projects to work on at the studio, we’re always trying new things and new techniques, but I think the hardest job I’ve worked on was to make a whole animation for a client within 1 month, which also included a lot of interior scenes, exterior shoots, and the final quality had to be as real as possible. With a lot of good references, mood boards, and working all day long for the whole month, it was hectic but was great to see that we made it. When the project was over, all the Neorama crew learned had learned a lot and gained so much experience, and what was really great for us was to see the client love the final outcome.

 

Could we learn some techniques and tips from you as what kind of lighting you are using in this scene (how many, directions), and is it mainly lighting techniques or rendering as well?

of course!

I decided to make this scene after my photography class about lighting studio, I’d like to bring the idea of Low key lighting. The lighting itself doesn’t have any secret, the scene has 4 lights which are distributed in this way:

1 at the right to bring details to the back of the car.

1 at the left to bring datails to the front of the car.

2 lights at the top.

The big challenge here was to control the reflection of the light, that’s so important when you are working with reflective materials. To get the atmosphere of “publicity industry”, lots of work was done at post production while looking at different references, while other corrections where made to the lights and colors.

 

Would you advise 3D artists to focus on 1 field in 3D, such as lighting, modeling, animation, etc…? or is it good to get involved in the whole process?

In my case I always wanted to get involved in the whole process, it makes me grow like an artist to know the whole process and how things work, and that could even help better my understanding of which area to focus on more. Once you like and choose 1 route to focus on, you could definitely give it all you have to try and master it. But of course, at a studio and work environment, it’s impossible to make everything, so nowadays I’m focusing on lighting, shaders, post production and photo-realism.

 

What kind of projects can we expect from you in the near future?

I will be focusing mainly on animation, this is my goal for the upcoming future, and be able to bring my photographic point of view into animations.

 

What advice would you give to young artists starting out with 3D?

Study a lot, but not only the software you’re working on, learn about traditional arts, such as photography, painting or composing an image. Look around to see how different materials work and always try to observe different kind of details around you. Get used to working with a lot of references, such as photographs, painting, drawings, etc… everything that inspires you should be
a reference to you, and based on what you have you can start implementing and working on your own style and techniques.

Wish all the new starters a good luck, and thank you for this interview!

 

Here are more of his great works, or check out his portfolio here!

 

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