Marco Bauriedel – Digital Art – Interview

Marco Bauriedel is an award winning Digital Artist from Germany.

He loves new challenges, which are continuing to give him various experiences in fields from Digital Painting over CGI to Compositing. Clients he has worked for include Audi, BMW, Mercedes Benz, Mont Blanc, Nike and Volkswagen.

Q1. What inspired your passion for art and who has been there supporting you from the beginning?

I guess the first things that really inspired me, were the worlds in computer games like ‘Riven’,’ The Dig’ and other adventure classics. I was fascinated by the experience of diving into these landscapes, sometimes just letting imagination go on how these worlds would continue beyond the virtual horizon. With the memories from my childhood I found the passion to create worlds and landscapes at the age of 21. Being that late, I didn’t have any special support. Both my grandfather and parents always supported my artistic bent when I was a kid though.

Q2. Have you always aspired to be artist, or did you ever dream of following a different path?

No, but I didn’t dream of a different path. I just didn’t know what my path would be.

Q3. How do you feel about your industry today?

I feel excited about the challenges in the advertising industry as I see CGI is more and more melting with Photoshop work, together making things possible that were previously impossible.

Q4. Where do you see yourself five years from now?

I think, I’m going to be doing more animation and VFX work.

Q5. Is there any work you are currently working on that you would like to tell us about?

As they are all confidential, I’m sorry to say nothing else than that I’ve finished exciting projects recently. I’m planning to find time for a personal concept called “the hangar”, that I’m going to turn into a detailed matte painting.

Q6. Who have you always dreamt of working with/for and why? How would you go about accomplishing this?

I’ve always dreamed of working in a team of highly skilled matte painters and compositors like the team at ILM or Weta and creating fantastic movie backgrounds. For now I’m really happy togain overall experience in many fields to grow as an artist.

Q7. As you are starting out in your career, what steps do you plan on taking to reach your goal?

I switch my focus to different disciplines over time. Concepts – Painting/Illustration – Lighting Shading – Photography – Animation – Technical Direction in Mel and Python – Compositing. My actual job position supports this in a perfect way, as I’m responsible for many things from start to finish of a project. I think it just helps to improve your overall skills by understanding how the gears run each other in the clockwork of postproduction and develop efficiency.

Q8. Have you found that as you are starting out in your career, there are aspects that have taken you completely by surprise?
If so, what are they?

After not being accepted at art-university, two and a half years later with a rather simple media-design degree but hard self-education and a lot of experience in a great company, I surprisingly realized that I was well beyond the position that many art students dream to be when starting out in the industry. This was the best that could have happened to me. Thanks to the people at the company, who saw and supported my talents.

Q9. What is the greatest thing about working in your industry? And what would you change if you had the opportunity?

The greatest things are the new challenges on every project that come in the different disciplines. There may be a parallel of loving to play graphic adventures and puzzle games as a kid and problem solving in production on my side, I’m not sure. In my opinion it’s just fun to have a different challenge somewhere almost every day. But sometimes I wish clients had a better understanding of the work, time and passion that a good result needs. In cases where something has to be created in no time for little money, especially with a great idea/concept, it could end up so much better, if the client was willing to pay a little more. Sadly these days the price sometimes is more important than quality. As an artist I always try to find ways to make our workflows quicker to be able to deliver the absolute best result possible, but there are serious limitations of course when time/costs are quite low on a project and the client believes the image creation is done with the push of one button. I’d like this mentality to be changed.

Q10. If you could aske anyone for advice right now.
Who would you like to ask? What would you like to ask?

I’d like to ask James Cameron for advice on how to get into the position to start your own big budget movie productions.

Q11. From your experience in the arts, what advice could you offer people looking to get to where you are today?

Practice what you love most. Be present in forums to exchange knowledge. Get critique on your work. Always reflect on your work. Use your self-critique as motivator to be more of a perfectionist next time. It’s never wrong to know different disciplines that may give more opportunities, except you want to do the one special thing.

Q12. What courses/classes would you recommend someone take if they want to be a professional in the same industry as yourself?

I strongly recommend FXPHD, Gnomon and Digital Tutors for classes and video tutorials. In the end it depends on your self-discipline to be willing to learn most of the stuff yourself. In this industry you need to be flexible. Your whole career consists of learning and experimenting with new ways of digital creation.

Q13. How many years have you been fighting to get to where you are today? And what was that time in your life like?

In my case the real fighting was in the end of my school-time. At that time I wasn’t sure which direction to go and if I could ever make it. By that time I played around with Photoshop filters not knowing how to express my artistic abilities. After starting a project with 3dsmax and winning a national prize with it, a small fire was lit that soon got bigger when I got hired as trainee. From then on that fire was burning so strong in me, that minor lows didn’t feel like having been in a fight. I’d rather call it a flow of constant development. But of course it has been hard work, too. The real fight took around 2 years back then. Including that time until 2011 it has taken me 9 years.

Q14. From your experience so far, what have you found to be most challenging? And how have you dealt with it?

The most challenging experience was to learn the compositing software Nuke within a really tight timeframe that was the first CGI animation project that we did for the client Mont Blanc. Everything was new for me in this project and additionally I was responsible for shading, lighting and TD. I didn’t use any compositing software before, neither did my colleagues and the client expected images of a quality not seen before. Somehow I was able to convert this huge pressure into energy that let me learn the software and do my task in a way that exceeded everyone’s expectations. Since then 3 years ago I’m still motivated by this, knowing and building upon what’s possible with Render Passes in compositing.

Q15. Share with us your proudest moment in your career so far?

I wouldn’t pick a moment. I’m just proud to have already somehow succeeded in many different fields, not just matte painting as one would assume looking at my website. I can’t wait to someday update my website with all the different stuff I’ve done and am doing. It’s good that I cannot do it yet, as looking forward, I see a lot of challenges that need my continuous self-development. I’m proud to love what I do.

My Links:

http://www.marcobauriedel.com

http://marcobauriedel.cghub.com/

http://vimeo.com/1971632

http://www.albertbauerstudios.com <– Some of my commercial work

My Recommendations:

www.cgsociety.org

www.fxphd.com

www.thegnomonworkshop.com

www.digitaltutors.com

www.wacom.com

www.motionographer.com

Comments