INTERVIEW WITH - NICOLAS COLLINGS

JEH: Blur has become such an amazing powerhouse in the field of computer generated animation. You must be thrilled to work there?

Nicolas Collings: Blur was one of the studio that inspired me the most back when i was a student. I have always been impressed by the quality those guys were able to pull off so indeed i m thrilled to work there and be part of such a talent team . I want to add also for the students freshly out of school and who apply to big name studio, don't be discouraged if it doesn't work. In fact there is a 99% of chance you're not going to land in one of those places right out of school. I myself been guilty of this and send application in all my favourite studios including Blur Studio. Sure enough i didn't get any replies. After a few years working in the industry starting by small studios to medium size I eventually got a job at Ubisoft Montreal. Coming from Belgium it was really a big achievement for me. And from that point I've been in touch with all the studios i wanted to work for back when i was an student.

The road has been smooth for me , i probably have been lucky with timing and opportunity but what i want to say here is that there is no shortcut. Hard work and dedication pays off at the end.

JEH: Any specific people you are most excited to work with?

Nicolas Collings: It's exciting to work with every single person at blur, everyone is so ridiculously talented from the artists to the VFX supervisors.

JEH: You have worked in some of the industry's most respected studios, including Ubisoft who also has some pretty incredible talents. How does the pipeline compare for you, going from a huge facility to a more medium-sized one?

Nicolas Collings: It's different in that aspect that in big facility like Ubisoft Montreal ( 5 floors and about 2000 people in the building) It's hardly possible to know everyone. You feel more like an ant doing his duty among thousands of other ants . It's just like a big ant-hill. haha . Of course it was fun working in such a big studio and on such a high profile game that is Assassin's Creed. On the other hand working in a mid-sized studio like blur (about 100 people) you get to know almost everyone under the roof. You get to interact and share with a lot of very talented people and it's feel like a big family. There is parties every friday, quake every lunch and the rest of the time everybody work hard towards the same objective. Technically speaking in terms of pipeline it doesn't change much, at least for me being a character artist. The big main difference, but it's not really related to the size of the studio , is that at Ubisoft we were working on a single project for one or two year doing the same style of characters over and over again. After a few month it gets quite comfortable as you reused the same tricks/techniques from one model to another. At Blur , working mainly on Cinematics, a production last approximately 3 months and for a character artist we switch project almost every 1.5 month. going from stylized , cartoony, realistic or sci-fi projects. That's way more challenging as you need to adapt quickly and still produce the same quality all the time.

JEH: What would you consider your biggest creative challenges now (if any)?

Nicolas Collings: Figurative life-drawing is very challenging. but my biggest challenge right now living in california is to learn how to SURF and that is extremely challenging too haha.

JEH: In 2010, you attended a special class at Centre NAD with Scott Eaton, what was the most valuable insight you got from this great master of human anatomy?

Nicolas Collings: Scott Eaton is really amazing , his way of teaching is unique. I would recommend to anyone who wants to improve his anatomy knowledge to follow his online class which is actually about the same that the one we had the chance to take while working at Ubisoft.

He makes you understand so many different things that add credibility to your 3d models. The most valuable insight i got would be the importance to know how each muscles related to each other, their insertion points, how they overlap, the bony landmarks, etc ... so many things.

JEH: What is the key to remain at the top of the game in this industry and keep working on some of the coolest projects?

Nicolas Collings: There is no rule for that, once you are in it naturally keeps going. I would say that the key is to stay passionate, work hard and to keep up a good professional network.

JEH: Blur is one of the few facilities known to bridge the world of film, animation and video game. Does that appeal to you?

Nicolas Collings: It is very appealing and it's one of the reasons i joined Blur studio. I really hope that eventually we will work on an animated feature film. As of for now, like it has been announced Tim Miller is going to direct Deadpool, but I'm sure what I can be say about it so I m not going to expand on that. Just that it's a very exciting moment to work for Blur there are a lot of things happening and I'm sure people will love what's going to come out of the studio in the upcoming months and years.

JEH: Your work is totally amazing, but are there aspects of your work you would like to expand upon? Learn a new skill perhaps?

Nicolas Collings: Thank you, I appreciate it. If i had to expand my skills I would probably try to improve my 2d skills so that maybe at some point i could switch gears and become a concept artist. But to be honest as it is now, i just love doing what i do at Blur. It's sometimes very demanding and we put a lot of effort into what we do so i kind of stop doing any personal work for a year now and instead try to enjoy life as much as i can by doing stuff non-cg ! hehe.

JEH: As a character designer, if with the stroke of the brush, you could change anything about the human body, what would it be?

Nicolas Collings: Instead of changing anything about the human body which is perfect as it is, I usually prefer to design ugly creatures.