Meet the Artist: Steven Stahlberg

#134

Vegan, my mesh doesn’t look like my wife, I never used her as reference. She doesn’t care.
I’ve used video reference three times, two of those were shot in the sound studio as we recorded the voice talent.

#135

“Would you like to collaborate with me/make me a logo for my site/chat with us on ICQ? Why not?
No, I’m sorry, I’d really love to be able to do everything, but I just don’t have time to do anything right now except 1. work, 2. spend time with my family, and 3. work.”

First off, Thank you very much for taking the time for this.

Secondly, I thought I’d mention where I had seen you work prior to cgtalk.
Bikergirl and walking gun were the first few digital images I had seen when I first started to find out about 3d. At the time I was studying mechanical engineering and just recently changed my major to something art related. Anyhow Since Im learning on my own, I wanted to ask you these questions.

Would you mind sharing a few techniques on your workflow process? (modeling and your skin shader.)
I remember a while back reading something in regard to optidigit doing some sort of online training of the sort-cant remember the exact details-what happened?
What advice would you give to someone on their first cg related job?
Cant access the cript on your home page.
and the last one, can you make me a logo?:smiley: j/k

Thanks.

#136

Hi Mr. Stahlberg, it’s awesome you found some time to answer so many questions :thumbsup:

I’ve got few questions myself; hopefully they haven’t been asked yet. If they have, just ignore them :slight_smile: (although I’ve read the whole thread and haven’t noticed any similar ones). Anyway:

  1. are there any particular maya scripts/plugins you couldn’t live without?
  2. what is the most annoying maya issue/bug/problem that keeps you bugging all the time and makes you swear at maya? or do you find maya to be a perfect app?
  3. why did you start using maya? was it because there was not much of a choice back then or maybe you simply liked it most…
  4. do you enjoy playing video games? or is it a total waste of time for you?
  5. what inspires you most: music, books, movies? or maybe nothing in particular, you find your inspiration when meeting with other people, looking through the window or just walking the dog (if you have one)

thanks a lot for your time! :slight_smile:

#137

I’m taking the train to Singapore in a few minutes, I’ll try to get online tomorrow to reply here. :slight_smile:

#138

Hi there steven,

I’ve been watching your work for some time now. I really like the illustration you made. It really inspires me in many ways. I’ve got some question for you regarding the 3d industry in malaysia. I’m a fresh graduate and was wondering how the industry was like. How do they pay and the types of jobs available and also the opportunity compare to singapore and also the other countries like canada and US. I’m a 3d animator by the way. Thank you so much for your time. Have a great time in singapore.

Jengkins

#139

Hie Mr. Stalhberg,

Thanks for the links on Craig Mullins and introduce me to Thomas Kinkaid.

What happened to Craig is unfortunate. Nothing wrong with the art it seems, only the people surrounded it during the exhibition. It is very sad tho.
Like one guy said on that thread that this is just a beginning. People tumbles first before they can stand up and climb.

And Thomas Kinkaid…well…no comments.

One more questio if i may,

I think color is important. (duh!) Can you tell us about your approach to color or the process to get the color. A tutorial, if you can to give us mere mortal a lesson in live.

What are you doing in Spore? (thats two questions and the second one is reeally none of my business …heheh?)

cheers!

#140

Okay just a quickie now because I’m at a 5 star hotel and they’re charging 50 Singapore cents per minute. The reason I’m here is to hear Rob Coleman talk.

FUG1T1VE, 1. Hm, workflow on modeling… I usually either start with a sketch, one for shape and one for topology, or if I don’t I usually have to do that halfway into the modeling anyway. I use polygonal box modeling most of the time, with a lot of deleting and adding of edges, to finetune topology. Skinshading, well there’s my tutorial, and there’s a better one coming out soon, in the “D’Artiste 2” book.

2.The training center we were planning wasn’t online, it was going to be physical, here. I mentioned elsewhere in this thread that these plans are shelved for an undetermined period.

  1. What advice would you give to someone on their first cg related job? Hard to answer, really… I suppose just go ahead and work hard, and do what the boss is expecting, without letting him suck up all your sparetime. Try to find a balance.

dirty, 1. I use the MJ_PolyTools a lot when modeling. There’s a really great SmoothFlood plugin that helps a lot if you want to avoid weight painting (which I do). But otherwise, plugins can be trouble, for instance when a new version maya comes out, or you have to work on a different machine.
2. I would really like the Hair to render with MR without outside plugins… there’s a few other minor things too I can’t remember right now. Oh, the way joint rotations are calculated, I think they call it quaternions…
3. I ended up with Alias only because it shipped bundled with my first computer.
4. I mostly only enjoy Halo and Max Payne, though I’m going to try Doom3 on the Xbox too.
5. what inspires you most: music, books, movies? Books… then movies. and traveling.
Ok, that’s it for now, more later.

#141

Rob Coleman??
The Star Wars guy??
So he’s done with the Episode III??
Heres there in Spore??

Sorry to many question :scream:

#142

This has been a great thread to follow. It is wonderful too see an artist of your stature take the time to inspire and inform in such a candid way.
There have been a great many illustrators in the past and I would like to encourage the artist’s here in this forum to go and investigate these great artists. Norman Rockwell, N.C.Wyeth, Howard Pyle, Maxfield Parrish, J.C. Leyendecker, Charles Dana Gibson. The list goes on and on. They are a great source for styles, story telling and paintng techniques that could provide insight into the possibilities of 3D.

I couldn’t agree more about your comments on Greg’s show and what’s more “The Painter of Light”. This is only a true testiment to a great agent that guy has to fool so many people.

I do have one question for you Steven. You mentioned that you get all you work online. Which would seem to me you are dealing with clients from all over the world . My question is what is your step by step process that insures you get the work to them and how do you insure you get paid?
Are you getting a deposit and the balance upon completion of the job etc etc?

Ok, so that is three questions.

Thanks again for your help in the past!

#143

jengkins, the opportunities in Malaysia and Singapore seem roughly the same, I talked with a couple other guys about this here yesterday, and they seem to agree. Compared to USA, Canada etc… well there’s not much of a comparison, is there. I mean, look at how active Siggraph is in USA, compared to Kuala Lumpur… just one indicator…

Maranello 55, my approach to color is mostly intuitive, but I’ve learned from experience that I have to try to keep saturation to a minimum, in most of my images, and save the really hot saturation for a few very small areas. Tutorials are really hard to write when it comes to color, all you can basically say in the end is, I used this color here, and not that one, because I kind of… felt… it looked better. That’s what I do anyway. There’s a link to some more theoretical info on color in our Art Theory and Tutorials links. Also, if you check Linda’s “Meet the Artist” thread, I’m not sure but I think she talked some about colors too.

Yes, it’s the Star Wars Rob Coleman, and yes they’re done with Ep3! His talk was great, and he’s such a nice guy himself. He’s been so long in the industry, he joined ILM during JP 1. I just can’t believe he said “I know this guy!” to me when I met him. And listen to this: he said he checks CGTalk out from time to time! So play nice, boys and girls, we never know who’s reading our posts here.

El Quistador, the process is usually, they email me, we discuss, they send a contract by email, I sign and fax back, they send another copy back signed by them in normal mail or Fedex, meanwhile I’ve started the job. I keep in regular contact with the art director, and send them updates and get feedback. Then I send the finished item, and then they pay. guess I should take more care in ensuring I’m paid, but so far it’s only gone wrong once, and that was years ago when the company I was working for got caught in the IT bubble burst. I wasn’t even finished with the work I was supposed to deliver anyway.

#144

Hi all,

Here’s your last chance to ask Steven Stahlberg questions or have work critiqued. Will close this Q&A session at the end of Monday 25 April 2005 (worldwide).

Best,

Leonard

#145

One last question Mr. Stalhberg!

Whats your goal in your CG venture?

Thanks for being patience answering all our question and my mortal stupid questions…You’re an excellent artist and a nice person…

See you around!

#146

Ok, I’m doing the one thing I had said before that I wouldn’t ask you to do… I’m asking you to critique my work. :argh: Not that I’m thrilled to be doing this (who ever wants to ask for someone to critique there work?), but I’ve realized that in order to become better, I need to ask the opinions of those who are better than me. :slight_smile:

Specifically, I’m asking your opinion on one of my character concept paintings for the current Challenge; it’s located here, at the bottom of the page (the girl).

Thank you. :slight_smile:

#147

Hello Mr. Stalhberg,
Most of my questions are being answered here, but i’m here to tell u that you have been my inspiration to really dig into the CG world. I found out ur work about 2-3 years ago when i was 16/17years old. Back then i thought things that you do are not possible and u know some kind of magic ( i still think that though). Now i started to know those things can be done. I wanna thank you for inspireing me and giving me hope that i’mpossible can be achived.

Thank You again

#148

THank u very much, Mr Stahlberg… :stuck_out_tongue:

#149

Would you mind criticising this for me?

I know the nose is rather too wide & low down. Also, please ignore the logo on her forehead, it was for a DSG. But apart from that, feel free to crit away :slight_smile:

#150

stephen,

Would you please explain your thinking re. contour rendering as opposed to the ultra realism of your direction until now. I recently read some of the articles relative to the “Uncanny Valley” principle and in part agree with them.

For me, the artists job is to interpret reality, not to become a camera, however, the concept of being able to create believable charactors for a script I have written, cast them in a movie based upon my vision and have it be perceived as “real” is, I must admit, a very enticing proposition.

Contour rendered charactors, would instead be a stylized version of that and I am curious what your thoughts are relative to each approach.

Thank you for the excellent insights you have offered into your approach to the creative process.
Robert

#151

Verkligen kul att se at en av dom större här på CG-talk är svensk :thumbsup: Kan bara säga att du totalknäcker med dina bilder, sen fann jag mycket intressant i din skinshader tråd. Tack ska du ha Ståhlberg!

//Erik

#152

maranello55, several people have asked me that recently, and I don’t have a really clear answer. Like most others, I want to work on something really cool, to me that means like feature film or short film, or an unusually cool TV series… not games so much, I’ve done that.

ArtisticVisions, The nose and the lips are good, just the skintone seems a bit too pale and yellowish. The eyes and eyebrows need a bit of touch-up, check out Linda’s eye painting tutorial in the Art Discussion forum, that should give some hints. The eyebrows: they seem light grey now (not sure if the character is supposed to have silver eyebrows?), maybe colorpick the color from the darkest shadow on the nose and use that to paint the brows… don’t paint every hair, squint at your reference and try to paint the blurry version you see. The eye on our left: it’s too almond shaped, needs to narrow on the outside. Both eyes have lower lashes that seem too thick and black. Also, the dark ring around the iris seems too black… but a good start, overall proportions seem ok. This 45 degree angle is very difficult.

overcontrast and RanZ Cross, thanks.

paperclip, the red of the shadows doesn’t seem to go with the greenish lighting… the black lines outside the nostrils should probably be softened. The chin seems an odd shape, no dip under the lower lip… the eye on our right seems bigger than the other. Ears seem a bit too flat against the head. Basic shape of the head is good.

roberte, “Would you please explain your thinking re. contour rendering as opposed to the ultra realism of your direction until now. I recently read some of the articles relative to the “Uncanny Valley” principle and in part agree with them.”
Yes the ‘Uncanny Valley’ effect is part of it.
http://www.arclight.net/~pdb/nonfiction/uncanny-valley.html

“For me, the artists job is to interpret reality, not to become a camera”
Yes I agree completely.

“being able to create believable charactors for a script I have written, cast them in a movie based upon my vision and have it be perceived as real”
The first part, yes, but that last part about ‘real’ - it would be just as cool, or maybe even cooler, if the movie is just one notch more stylized than reality, I think. ‘Sky Captain’ was a good example of this (though the soft-lens effect may have been a litte strong for some).
I’m trying to find a good compromise. I believe I can find one, where the lines are actually making the imagery more beautiful, yet still keeping the overall feeling very close to reality.

warcross, thanks, glad to help! :slight_smile:

I think this will be my last reply here, so let me just say it’s been a pleasure, thank you everybody, and most of all Leonard for inviting me.

#153

heh thanks no problem though ill keep looking.
Im accualy from California Just liveing here.

11 Years is a long time ill keep that in mind when im angry at myself for not haveing anything to draw or cant get something right :smiley:
:applause:
thanks