January 06, 2021
For THE WAY OF SUCCESS column , we meet Fabio Messina Groom TD formerly at MPC, now Creature TD in Double Negative and former student of the 3D Digital Production Course.
Hi Fabio,
it is truly a pleasure that you have agreed to share your experience with all our students. Let's start this interview by saying that you hold a record now for a few years in the academy, you are still the guy with the highest overall average in the 3D Digital Production course, in short you are a super geek! Have you always liked this world? How did you get into computer graphics?
Hi, I am very happy to have a chat with you and still have such a strong relationship with Rainbow Academy. Yes, I knew I held this record, albeit by a small margin!
I have always been interested in the arts and graphic design, even as a child, but my personal path was as a computer engineering student. After graduation I decided that I wanted to make a change to a different career and realized that I needed a school. After a few weeks I already knew I had made the right choice, because this job was just the perfect combination of technical and artistic interest, combined with the passions so many of us have for video games, comics, or anime.
Your career started with full cg animation in Rainbow CGI, how was the transition to VFX?
The move to VFX also necessarily brings with it a change in the scale of one's work, since the projects of the big VFX studios are also the most expensive films in the industry.
This is not a traumatic transition; the things you need to know are not that different from what you were doing before.
Personally, I loved both experiences, but now I miss a little bit that light vein of working on a cartoon.
What do you think are the main differences between the two industries?
In the VFX industry, the work itself is characterized by a lesser degree of freedom and experimentation. Almost always you are creating a perfectly realistic digital asset, when not an exact copy of a specific actor, or animal or object used in the filming. In these cases the direction of your work is clear; you have to get as close to the original look as possible.
The timing is also quite different from most animation productions. You spend up to months on a single asset, which leads you to push the search for detail to the maximum you are capable of.
Another difference is that work in the VFX industry often becomes very sectoral. It is not uncommon to spend a lot of time in a studio, even years, and know very little about the work of other departments.
Many people are not aware of the specialty in Grooming, what specifically does a Groom TD do?
The Groom TD or Groom Artist is responsible for making elements for characters (or even some props) such as hair, hair, feathers. In some studios, this department is also partly in charge of vegetation.
This is work that involves assets, to be juxtaposed therefore with the modeling and lookdev phases. The whole part about the dynamic behavior of these elements in the shots usually falls to a different department.
What do you think is the difficulty most frequently encountered by a department like yours and the differences, if any, with other departments?
Grooming departments probably have the main difference of not having such an established practice compared to their neighboring departments, and of using very different technical solutions from studio to studio. They go from working on Maya with Xgen to doing it with another plugin, or in Houdini or even with a proprietary tool that is completely unknown to the outside world.
While this might seem like just a technical detail it actually ends up affecting the day-to-day of your work quite a bit.
In your opinion, what characteristics should a TD Groom have, artistically and technically?
On an artistic level certainly attention to detail, a sense of rhythm for shapes, as well as the ability to analyze the characteristics of the little chaos that is a reference of hair or hair.
The technical requirements may change depending on the instrument used, but it certainly helps to have some familiarity with the mathematics studied in school to master well all the procedural and random elements that are used in a groom.
Do you have a particular artist you are inspired by in style or technique?
Like all of us, I see numerous fine artists every day to learn from. Perhaps the industry's VFX work is so flawless that it doesn't allow much of a specific style to shine through.
If we want to move onto the galleries of personal work I really love Eugene Fokin's work.
However, I think it's important to always look for new inspiration outside of the industry: painting, old (or new) movies, a comic book, nature outdoors. Whatever strikes us with a sense of newness. You don't want to make the 200th ogre or 500th dragon!
What are the latest projects you've worked on and which of them has left you with the fondest memories or greatest satisfaction as an artist?
In the UK I have been fortunate to take part in very important projects, including The Lion King, which certainly amazed everyone at the cinema (me too!).
Personally I spent many months working on Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, having the satisfaction of creating the feather groom for the main character, Maleficent, and taking care of the overall feather-related workflow on the whole project. It was quite a challenge.
Dolittle also left me with fond memories, although the film had little luck in theaters.
As for animation, I was very happy to have contributed to Angry Birds Blues during my time at Rainbow CGI. It was my first groom job in production.
And then 44 Cats, which I took part in working in the rigging department. After the projects in the UK I could see my name in the credits in the movies, but the feeling of having one's name on TV every day with a new episode was really special.
What are some projects you are working on (if you can name them) or upcoming goals you would like to achieve?
The last project I took part in, but in the somewhat different role of Creature TD, was the upcoming Fast and Furious. For the future, in addition to the goal of continuing to learn and broaden my knowledge to other instruments, there is perhaps the intention to return to cartoons!
If you could send a message to all those young people who would like to approach this profession, what would you recommend and what would you not recommend?
It's never easy to give advice, but I'm afraid I'm getting to the age where others are asking for it.
The first thing I think I can say is that it's helpful to have an initial understanding of what this profession is really like. Outside of insiders the idea of what we do is a little vague sometimes. You try to figure out whether 3D is a better fit for you or maybe pre-production work, concept art or whatever.
Then it's definitely important to be committed, to study and, as with inspiration, to not obsessively gravitate to the world of CGI. I always try to balance the notions that come from the work with something external, an anatomy book for drawing, or a photography class.
A good final tip then I steal from someone else. A while back, during a ZBrush workshop held via streaming, Glauco Longhi (Santa Monica Studios, Naughty Dog) told those who wanted to learn, "Don't necessarily try to be different. Just try to be good, because good is different enough."
Thank you
Thank you. I hope to come back and say hello again soon!
