Catching A Good Idea

September 15th, 2009

tomin_vladimir_interview
about: TOMIN VLADIMIR VLADIMIROVICH

I was born 09.07.1982 in Khabarovsk, Russia. I’m shorty (172 cm), love my girlfriend, cats, and ice-cream. Started as “guy from the street” on local TV station, after 1 year became lead motion designer here, and 1 year after that leave for advert production studio called “Peppers Studio”. I’m working here at Peppers for 3 years now and I’m pretty happy to be here.

Now I just finished project for MTV Russia, called “Physics Of Unreal”, somehow similar to style of Max Zhestkov and currently recovering to start new project – promo video for online book twenty-twelve.ru

If you have a bachelor degree/education background; what is it?
I finished university as IT Specialist, but it was so difficult to accomplish I basically hated everything I learned past those 5 years so I decided to turn my life in different direction – motion graphics. My very old dream came true!

Where are you located?
I’m located in Khabarovsk, 600 000 population city in very far east of Russia. To help you understand how far it is from civilization, imagine this: to fly from Moscow to Khabarovsk you need 8 hours. You better googlemap for it and zoom out. You will be surprised. We have very cold winters and very hot summers (from -35 to +35 C our usual temperature range).

Tell us about this movie you made, titled “School Project”. What was the idea behind it originally?
“School project” was created for www.slashthree.com as an art piece for “30th century” exhibition. Main idea was to show a whole World as somebody’s school project. What if our world is somebody’s school project too?

Would you explain a bit about the process of creating the movie? What were the challenges and how you went around it?
So in very beginning I already knew that I will start from atom level and zoom out until camera flies out of alien kid’s box with “school project” sign on it. As atom I used slashTHREE’s logo. Hard part was to actually think out and create world inside this box, to keep aesthetical and mechanical logic of this world same on all levels of zoom, and to think out transitions to make one big fly without any cuts. Idea of making whole shot cycled came to me later.

School project from myaka on Vimeo.

To plan whole shot I used storyboard, and it actually helped a lot. After storyboard was created, I made a list of illustrations needed to be created. It was very time/power consuming process, it took 2 days of hard pencil work. After everything was ready I started composing process. Animating parts of the world inside the box was easy and enjoyable, but smooth animation of camera became a real problem. But endless moving of hundreds of keyframes solved the problem. Coloring process wasn’t problem at all but took some time as well.

When first version was rendered, I couldn’t tell was it good or bad, so I just checked for animation errors, couldn’t find any, and gave whole shot to my friend Vitalii to make soundtrack for it. And only after he returned me finished product I realized that it was totally worth it.

Describe how you feel at the starting of a new project?
Beginning of a new project is always a happiest time, you have this cool idea in your head, you know how to make it good, you have time to create it and you’re ready to rock. Hard to eat, hard to sleep, you’re waking up in 3 am to write down new idea, you thinking about project ALL the time, and you don’t really care about world around you. Well, most of time. Later, in middle of project, or close to end, sometimes it is really hard to finish what you started, and it trains your will power very well.

Dinner At A Sunrise from myaka on Vimeo.

How do you see yourself 5 years from now?
I honestly don’t know. I already received some invitations from Moscow studios, New Your studios and so on. But first I would like to travel the world to see if I like those places or not. I personally don’t like Moscow and will never work there. I think I will keep having fun doing what I’m doing and see what’s gonna happened. I don’t want to work for a movie industry, I like watch movies, not create them. But I would love to make music videos for some really big musicians.

Could you share any insight for people just entering the field?
If you don’t love what you’re doing – do something else! Easy as that.

Who is the person you look up to in this industry? Why so?
I love what guys from Royale doing. Don’t know them personally thou. I also love work of Brian Michael Gosset, unbelievable amount of coolness from just a one man. And Max Zhestkov was unexpecting revelation for me. There are a lot of incredible artists out there but those names first flashed in my head.

How do you overcome creative block?
There is a gold rule to overcome creative blocks: don’t push it. To catch a good idea, all you need to do is form a task in your head, mentally create an empty space in your forehead and wait for ideas to fill emptiness you just created. Ideas will come. Soon. Forcing this process will only make it worse.

What’s one thing you wish you knew when beginning this passion?
Only one thing: not waste time on “Vote For God” project. It was my epic fail.

If you have online portfolio (website/awards/credits/client’s showcase), what is the URL?