Jonathan Reilly, Creative Director of Inner-Freak.ltd: Social

This week’s lecturer was Jonathan Reilly, Creative Director of Inner-Freak.ltd. Moving on from technical illustration in college, Jonathan got a job at Bizarre Creations as a Junior Artist. After working on a few titles, ZBrush came out, changing the 3D art scene completely. Once Bizarre Creations closed its doors, he moved in to VFX.

Jonathan talked about working in VFX, explaining the benefits of how fun it was and telling a few stories of how a history in games art allowed him to create models faster and more accurate to how they would be if real (such as streamline on cars and ships). However, Jonathan didn’t stay in VFX for long; similar to games, VFX has long work hours, which didn’t go well with family. He had a child that he rarely got to see. This brings up the topic of balancing social life with work.

As most game development cycles go, there is a crunch time towards the end of creation where you can be working morning to night with a little number of breaks; only a few hours to sleep before going back to work again. Jeff Parrott, a Freelance Environment Artist, wrote on Gamasutra about balancing work and social life:

“Achieving that balance is the hardest part of this whole thing. I recommend for those of you that like schedules make one and stick to it. It sounds lame. But 8-10 hours of crunching polygons, textures, and animations gets you 2 hours of video game, movie, or significant other time.”

Articles such as this, though aimed mainly at artists, do scare me a little about the times ahead. I would like to think that I am prepared for such times, but I’ve yet to experience anything like what has been described by tutors, lecturers and blog writers alike.

To counter these issues of not seeing family enough, Jonathan set up Inner-Freak which is run by him and his wife with some artists and an accountant. Inner-Freak is currently successful through Jonathan’s reputation across two industries of 3D art. One last little tip he gave us was to make small things for free in your spare time, because it’ll lead to greater things in the future;

“Grunt work gets the hero work.”

References:

Parrott, J. (2013). An argument against being a 'game art monk'. Available: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JeffParrott/20130221/187119/An_argument_against_being_a_game_art_monk.php. Last accessed 10th May 2015.

PIXOLOGIC (2002). ZBrush. PC and Mac. California: Pixologic