June 25, 2008

June / July: Mattias Forsström, 3D Artist

Last fall 3D artist Mattias Forsström found a hole in his wardrobe.
It led him to Narnia. Well, not literally into the mystical winterland of fauns and talking beavers. But to London and straight to the finishing stages of Walt Disney’s second 200 million dollar film project based on C.S. Lewis novels.
Meet Mattias Forsström, a humble 3D artist who knows exactly how to tangle the hair on a reindeer.

After high school Mattias Forsström studied creative computer programming for three years at the University of Gävle. Creative programming is a wide-ranging education that focuses as much on aesthetics and art as it does on the technical aspects of programming.
On the homepage for the program University of Gävle proudly proclaims that one of their former students has worked on the special effects team for The lord of rings. Now they can ad Narnia as well.
Because this winter Mattias Forsström took some time off from his ordinary job as a 3d Artist at Fido Film in Stockholm and went to London to work on Walt Disney’s 200 million dollar project The chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.

Tell us about your work with the new Narnia film.

- I created the fur for some of the characters in the movie. It’s sort of like combing the fur digitally. You try to make it look as real as possible by for instance setting properties for how the hair tangles or how tufty it is. It’s a long and very technical process. You have to simulate millions of tiny hairs. The difficult part is to come up with an intuitive for the graphic artists to control the hairs. The characters I worked on were a wolf, a reindeer and the gryphons.

Creating digital fur - it’s not exactly the work you apply for at the local job center. How did you get the job? Is fur your specialty?

- Well, it’s not exactly my specialty. Fortunately Sweden is too small for anybody to make a living from making digital furs. I got the job the usual way, through contacts and good timing. Right before the Narnia job, Fido was involved in a few commercials that required digital fur and I was the one who made the fur. Typically I create light and material on digital models, everything from metal to skin.

Approximately how many people are involved in creating the graphics for a movie like Narnia?

- To be honest I’m not really sure. But I would say that it’s about 200 people during approximately one year.

Which is your best memory from the Narnia project?

- The entire experience was great. It was motivating to be a part of such a huge project and I met a lot of fun people. The hours were okay as well. No extreme hours like it is here in Sweden sometimes. We had to work Saturdays sometimes, but almost no late nights.

As a graphic artist, do you collaborate in some way with the real actors?

- Well, there’s some collaboration. There are graphic guys present on the filming locations. Their job is to collect data for the post production. But as a 3D artist I come into the picture when everything has been recorded already. So I am completely separated from that part.

Which is your favorite animated film?

- I get that question a lot, but I can’t really answer. I’m not too fond of animated films. I’m more into ordinary movies with a lot of special effects.

If you had unlimited resources and no restrictions, what would you create? What is the project of your dreams?

- I think it would be some sort of grandiose, dark fantasy adventure. But my opinion is that special effects people should stay away from directing. As a graphical artist, however, it would be incredible to do something like that.

Recipe for men’s man of the month in June /July

Name: Mattias Forsström.

Age: 31.

Family: Girlfriend.

Occupation: 3D Artist.

Place of birth: Falun, Sweden.

Current hometown: Stockholm.

Enjoys on his spare time: Martial art, video games and my girlfriend.

Best animated character ever: Linus på linjen (org. title: La Linea, a carton from 1969, created by Italian Osvaldo Cavandoli).

Most beautiful place on earth: Bojsenburg (a part of the town Falun in Sweden).

The world's most beautiful man: Nikolai Valuev (professional Russian heavy weight boxer standing at 2.13 m and weighing 147 kgs)

Very kind people at Disney - thanks a lot for the pics. We love the movie and we're not trying to connect Narnia with our products in any way.