Andy: I have to credit my parents for letting the artist in me develop. While I was growing up I watched my father paint and draw and picked up his interest in computers and electronic gizmos. When I graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1987, I went right into working at a recording studio so I could record the band I was in. The band broke up right away so I ended up recording a bunch of albums for local bands and doing movie soundtrack work. The recording studio environment was filled with all kinds of gizmos and computers and was open 24 hours a day. I started using a Mac and an Atari for digital audio and Midi recording and eventually experimented with some of the first desktop 3D programs.

Andy: I left the San Francisco Art Institute skilled in oil painting and a lot of art history knowledge. That and a buck fifty will get you a cup of coffee. I was on my own as far as computer graphics were concerned. So, on the outside of school, it was all about finding access to the tools of production. Then once getting access, spending time learning as much as I could.

Andy: In 1991, I bought an Atari ST and got hold of Tom Hudsons CAD-3D which is an ancestor of 3ds Max. I had 1MB of ram, which would allow a bit of experimenting as long as the computer was on. While working at a sound design studio called Earwax Productions, I started using a Mac for digital audio editing. Things improved. I worked with Swivel 3D, Macro-Mind 3D and Electric Image -- and actually started getting a few jobs making animations. My first animation job was a logo that took me three weeks to complete. I earned $400.00, which I spent on rent, bus fare and burritos.

Andy: The first real good paying work I landed in the CG industry was working on the Daedalus Encounter video game for Mondo Media/Mechadeus. That project was all made in 3D Studio DOS. I first heard about 3ds Max in an Autodesk focus group that I was invited to back in 1995 or 96. 3ds Max came along a few years later. The best part of 3ds Max was the new feature called Undo -- 3D Studio Dos had no undo.

Andy: While I was in art school in the late 80s -- not much was available in the 3D realm.

Andy: At the recording studio where I worked, Id stay up all night learning all the 3D software I could get my hands on. There was a real big need for 3D artists at the time, so people who owned the software were more than happy to give you access if you could learn it and in turn, do work for them. And yes, computers and 3D software were stupidly expensive at the time. An SGI with any sort of professional software would rival the cost of a small home. Now a computer with a copy of Maya or 3ds Max costs about the same as a high quality gas stove.

Andy: At Mondo Media, the work was mostly game cinematics. That work teaches you how to make several minutes of animation really fast. You dont have the budget to spend a lot of time on each shoot, so you learn a great deal of tricks to get the work done and still look good. At PDI, I did some movie work. It was just the opposite from game work, I was spending a great deal of time working on 13 frames here and 30 frames there. When the movie comes out, dont blink or youll miss all your hard work. I actually preferred the game work. I liked having more impact on the final result and having more creative input.

Andy: LOR is really best left up to the viewers own interpretation. It is not like the usual animated movie. I think of LOR as a creation myth, but that is just a backdrop for the events that we see. The story is constantly evolving in my head and its not until I actually sit down and start animating shots that I decide where its going. To me, its like a game of chess that I play in my mind; each move makes the whole thing more complex and I feel as though I am discovering the story during the process.

Andy: The title is actually LOR, but that is both short for Lots of Robots and its also the name of one of the characters in the story. The reason all the creatures are robots is part of the story, which Ill explain someday in the animation itself. The biggest reason is that I really like making robots. I cant compete with Mother Nature in the beauty department, but I can make a neat robot. The fact that they are all made of metal and rubber, makes you wonder how and why they are there, and thats part of the story.

Andy: I try and keep the character designs as simple as possible, after all, Im all alone on this project. When I design a new character, I think of an animal, and turn one of its traits into a purely mechanical manifestation. If I were to make a giraffe, Id make all its long limbs and neck out of some sort of telescoping pipe array. The kids love the robots too.

Andy: Its all in my head until I sit down and start animating. Ill have a rough idea of whats going to happen in a sequence, then Ill build any extra characters that I need and a rough environment. Then Ill start moving a set of low poly character proxies around and make lots of preview animatics. I take these quick animatics and start building an edit. Then I start thinking about the music and sound design, and perhaps Ill make a rough music track. At that point Ill start to figure out if that sequence is going to be music driven or action driven. If its music driven, Ill continue on with the music and get that into a more finished state, then start to animate to the rhythms. If its action driven, Ill hold off on the music until I have a good edit of the animation to compose the score.

Andy: I always do a lot of 3D pre-visualization unless I can knock out the shots quickly. There is nothing better then having some fresh colorful renders to inspire me to go on.

Andy: Its all one little tiny detail at a time. You just keep knocking out the little bits and eventually it all adds up to a finished animation. If you sit around worrying about all the things that need to be done, it would be too much to chew on all at once. I just do one sequence at a time, just like any other contract animation job. LOR is14 minutes so far, and all of that done in my spare time between animation gigs.

Andy: I have a growing sound effect library and a couple of nice microphones. I use Giga Studio for my sound effects, which is a sample playback tool. I either find the sound elements I need in the library or record new samples from objects in my kitchen. Giga Studio lets me have thousands of sound effect samples online ready for a Midi keyboard note. I also have a large collection of synthesizers and other tools.

Andy: I made a camera editor tool in MaxScript. This lets me throw a bunch of cameras in the scene and the camera editor tool will blend and switch between these cameras as I play the animation in the viewport. This way I can do a rough edit of the action right in the 3D space.

Andy: MaxScript is vital to the production, both in model creation and animation. The character animation is helped a great deal with MaxScript. In fact Ive spent the last nine months creating a new character animation tool called Automatron to help with the next part of LOR. Automatron was developed to help with both single character animation, and crowd animation. It was a huge undertaking, but now I can really have lots of robots instead of just a bunch of robots.

Andy: The clouds are either AfterBurn with particle flow, layered matte paintings or a procedural sky dome. On the LOR DVDs there are some cloud tutorials that will explain these techniques in detail.

Andy: Most of the rendering was done with the default Max scanline renderer. Towards the end of the movie I started using finalRender. I will most likely stick with finalRender for the next batch of scenes. I have 10 seats of mental ray that I won in a film festival with LOR that I would like to learn how to use, but mental ray is not easy to master.

Andy: 25,276 frames to be exact. The next sequence will be rendered in a high resolution, maybe 1280x546, but I havent decided. I have 10 machines that I render on. They are getting old and dusty. I hope to upgrade when some money comes in, but even if I had 100 machines, I would have trouble paying for the electricity. I live in California and kilowatt-hours are very expensive. With all my computers on rendering shots, Im paying $600.00 a month to PG&E.

Andy: I have been using After Effects since its very first early 1990s Cosa version. So as the application evolved, so did my skills. I rarely do any 3D rendering that does not get a good whacking with the compositor.

Andy: Finding the time while also doing contract animation gigs.

Technically--the hardest part is dealing with complex character models. Thats where scripting and custom tools really help. One robot character rig has over 200 parts, so just un-hiding and selecting the right part to animate can really slow down the animation process. My new character animation tool, Automatron, was made in part to expel that frustration from the process.

Also, creating new scenes and adding these complex characters to the new scenes with all the right lighting rigs and materials can be a drag on the schedule, so I have a lot of little custom tools that help with that as well.

The other big frustration is my own asset management disciplines. I try to be as organized as possible, but scene get complicated and multi layered. I need to write up some new tools to help with the organization of multilayered shots and help keep track of what scene files rendered which frame sequences.

Andy: I always have to have some sort of creative project going on, or I will start feeling worthless. LOR is a huge undertaking that is guaranteed to keep me busy for many years. So, its my hobby and passion--though I imagine that when its all done, having a feature animated film that I made all by myself-- and own-- can only be a good thing.

Andy: I have been using 3D Studio since before it was 3ds Max. There are still many parts of the software that I have not truly explored. There is always a better way to do something and I am constantly experimenting with new techniques and practicing.

Andy: I started in December 2000 with the hummingbird shot. The story started with that shot. I made the robot hummingbird and started wondering why it existed and what it was doing. The story just started rippling out from there. I think about what to do with the story all the time. But one thing I discovered is that no matter what I think up and write down, I always seem to find a better path when I am sitting to animate. If I had it all written down and planned out, it would not be as fun to work on.

Andy: As soon as Automatron version 1 is ready, I will begin using it to make the new shots for LOR. I have the first few minutes of the new sequence worked out in my head. There are scenes planned that have hundreds of robot characters in the background, so I need to have all the software and little scripts working just right to avoid disaster. When LOR is all complete I will begin a sequelLOL.

Andy: Visual. In fact, no matter how hard I try; I cant seem to make a good piece of music until I start composing for my own animation. Its really frustrating sometimes. I have a very well stocked recording studio with lots of synthesizers, guitars and whatnot, but nothing good comes of it until I have moving picture that needs music and sound effects.

Andy: Right now, Im living off a few commercial animation jobs I finished a few months ago and DVD sales from LOR. The Automatron Version 1 has taken about 9 months and that is just about to wrap up. Then its all LOR for what most likely will take six to nine months to complete the next release.

Andy: Well I have to say, Im living it right now. With the birth of my daughter in December, and the ability to work on and sell my own creations, you cant ask for a better situation. I have worked in big animation studios and on some big projects, but nothing beats being your own boss. So, I dream of more of the same, but perhaps making a little more money from my efforts. I need to start the kids college fund.

Andy: Music: XTC, Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett (may peace be upon him), Robyn Hitchcock, Flaming Lips, The Shins, Keane, Gorillaz, and Nick Drake.

Favorite Animated Films: The Incredibles, The Jungle Book
Favorite Movies: The Shinning, 2001, Baraka
Favorite Books: Anything by Kurt Vonnegut