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A frequent showcase
artist, Adam Benton (better known on Renderosity as kromekat) has
been a vital part of the Renderosity community since 2000. From the
beginning, his artworks have won several site contests, including
an image donning the cover of the premier issue of
Renderosity’s printed magazine.Not only is Adam a freelance
computer graphic artist, he also finds time to share his artistic
expertise with the Renderosity community as moderator of both
the
Cinema 4D
and the
Macintosh
forums.
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In a word, Adam’s works of art are memorable;
which is largely due to his master of light, color, and
composition. As a professional illustrator and designer his art has
appeared on; commercial advertisements, magazines, CDs, posters, as
well as producing web and CD interactive content. Working as a
member of the artistic team on an award winning film is his latest
crowning achievement.
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I was excited to sit down with Adam and explore how an artist
from the UK became such a vital member of Renderosity.
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 Adam, your artistic fingerprints can be found throughout the Renderosity site ... how did you first discover Renderosity?  I think I first discovered Renderosity around the end of 1999,
after resigning from my job as a designer/illustrator at a greeting
card company in order to pursue a freelance career. I’d been
introduced to Bryce and Poser during my employment, and I became
quite addicted to the new possibilities it opened up for my
artwork. In that time, I must have been doing some web searches for
other work done using these tools, and stumbled upon
Renderosity.
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The Last Ark
© Adam Benton
(kromekat)
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With such a busy schedule (family,
commercial artwork, film projects), how do you divide your time and
talent … and still find time to volunteer your artistic
expertise to the Renderosity community?
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Yeah, it has been pretty hectic over the last few years
actually! I have had two children during that time, and my
freelance work has been steadily increasing year by year, which has
lessened my free time for browsing and chatting to others on the
forums. The film projects with Panicstruck Productions have also
been a real time eater. Juggling between those and the paying work
has been a real challenge at times. As for the division of time
— paying work takes precedence of course (have to pay the
bills!), and whenever there was a gap, I just threw myself into the
film work — it meant some very late nights at
times!
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I have email notifications set for the Macintosh and Cinema 4D
forums of course, and do try to read every single post that is made
(I am a self-confessed email addict, and spend way too much time
looking at forum posts when I should be working). Wherever I can, I
provide an answer, because I know how frustrating it can be when
you are stuck at a certain point, unable to proceed without some
little insight from elsewhere. I think that is what has kept me
dedicated to Renderosity. It has been the prime site I have
exhibited my work at, and been the most helpful, and friendly in
all my own queries and questions over the years. We really have a
great little community of talented artists in the C4D forum, and
through the continual postings, discussions and queries, you create
a bond and familiarity that doesn’t always happen
elsewhere.
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I am usually very adept at
discovering the origin of usernames, but your username baffles me.
Where did you come up with your nom de plume,
kromekat?
Â
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Years later, when I first accessed the Internet, I needed a
‘handle’ or online identity for a chat program, and
glanced around the room at some of my prints on the wall, and my
chrome robot cat just stood out! As for the spelling — it was
quite fashionable (at the time) to use alternate phonetic letters,
so I went for Krome Kat, which soon became joined into the one
name; kromekat.
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Your images have that
stick in your memory quality. I have to ask ... what
drives you as an artist … what inspires your works …
what feeds your creativity?
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The sheer joy of creating something from nothing I think—
it’s a kind of addiction! In my personal work, I have always
been inspired by film, the work of other artists, the visualization
of moods and certain cinematic visions. More often, a certain kind
of light, or color relationship can inspire the creation of an
image — just to utilize those lighting effects and
demonstrate the contrasts that are pleasing to the
eye.
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The commercial work is ‘driven’ by deadlines of
course. I have been very lucky with some of the tutorial work I
have done for magazines over the last couple of years. Particularly
with Imagine FX, as they have always given me an open brief, as
long as it fulfilled certain software or subject criteria. This has
allowed me to explore lots of old, previously unrealized ideas,
using the digital tools available today.
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As Evening
Falls©Adam Benton (kromekat)
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Without question, you are a Cinema 4D
expert. What are some of the other software programs you use to
create your commercial and personal art?
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3D wise, Cinema 4D is the nerve centre of almost everything I
do creatively. Additionally I still use Bryce and Poser, although
most of my figures are now imported and posed within Cinema itself
using interPoser Pro, which saves a lot of time and hassle for me.
I bought ZBrush 2 a while back, and although I haven’t had a
great deal of time to create a lot with it, I have taken to
it’s slightly unusual workflow concept, and I am eager to
explore it further, as it really does open up lots of great
possibilities for organic modeling.
Â
I have also recently bought Vue 6 Infinite, despite some
hesitation due to my horrendous experiences with Vue 4 some years
back (it never stayed upright for long). I need a proper landscape
generation application and Vue still seems to be miles ahead in
terms of what can be achieved now. I also use a number of Adobe
applications; like After Effects for film compositing and motion
graphics stuff, the Adobe CS2 suite alongside everything else,
which I truly couldn’t be without — Photoshop being the
single most useful application available in my
opinion!
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Your magazine cover images
for 3D World and Renderosity are very impressive,
how long have you worked as a commercial
artist?
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Thanks very much! As long as I have been freelance I guess
— just over seven years now. I started out doing a lot of
web/interface design, and used 3D wherever possible. Whilst
pitching for one of these web jobs in London, I chanced upon some
designers discussing how they could achieve the effect of some
‘chrome winter athletes’ for an advertising campaign
related to the Winter Olympics, I immediately put myself forward,
and my first commissioned 3D illustration was
instigated.
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Various Magazine Covers
©Adam Benton (kromekat)
Original art for covers can be found in
Adams Renderosity Gallery
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The cover commissions and tutorials for 3D World, and a number
of other Future Publications. All started in the summer of 2005,
when Jim Thacker (the editor of 3DWorld) phoned me out of the blue,
remembering the ‘AI Critic’ illustration they had used
(via renderosity!) on the cover of issue 32 ( I think), and asked
if I was up for doing a Poser related tutorial. The subsequent
tutorial character and image I created for that then evolved into a
second image they commissioned for the cover. That in itself opened
up a lot of new work with the likes of Imagine FX, and has kept me
pretty busy, alongside other existing clients ever
since.
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The AIÂ
Critic©Adam Benton (kromekat)
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It is evident with your
amazing eye for detail and composition, as well as your master of
lighting, that you have had formal art training mixed with your
natural talent. Have you in fact taken classes in traditional art,
3D art or computer graphics?
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In terms of the digital art world, I am completely self taught,
but I did have formal training at art colleges after leaving
school. I started with a two year foundation course in Art and
Design, which covered just about everything. Then I took a more
specialist course in Illustration for a further two years. We did
have some of the early Macintoshes at the time, but I only really
ever used them for typing up thesis, and creating mockup typography
for my illustrations. I have however invested in some good DVD
tuition over recent years. You can never know too much, and that
form of learning really works for me over reading manuals
etc.
Â
I find now, as I did whilst a student, that the best teachers,
are the images of other artists themselves. Though, I still
maintain to this day, that I learned far more by really looking at
others work, and almost mentally ‘reverse engineering’
what went into the picture, and I always recommend others to do the
same — don’t just look — see!
[laughter]
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Congratulation on being a part of the
creative team that worked on the film Pitching Lucas
(created for the 2006 Atom Films: Star Wars Fan Films). How
exciting was it to have won not only one, but two of the top awards
(George Lucas Selects and Audience Choice)? Also,
what part of the film was your contribution?
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Thanks! It was a real buzz to get those awards! I was pretty
euphoric for a while after knowing that George Lucas himself had
watched, and enjoyed our work enough to give us his award, along
with being the audience favorite.
Â
In Pitching Lucas, we basically had about four months
to come up with the entire finished product. Since it was made up
of a number of TV parody recreations, we volunteered for which
parts we fancied doing the most. I was immediately struck by the
DIPs concept, which was to be a Star Wars version of the 70s
television classic CHiPs, with Imperial Biker Scouts. I
offered to model digital doubles of the scouts and their speeder
bikes, since it was planned that some less ambitious shots would be
done using suited actors against green screen, whilst the CG
version would need to be animated in all the flying shots. As the
production progressed, it became more evident that I was going to
end up also doing the rigging and animation right through to
finished shots for the entire sequence, which is what I
did.
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It was a hell of a learning curve, since I had not done
modeling of that accuracy previously, nor had I ever fully rigged a
character let alone animated it afterwards, but it all seemed to
work out better than any of us had really expected, with many of
the planned green screened shots being replaced by the pure CG
versions. Personally, if we had had the time, I would have liked to
have replaced the last couple of remaining live shots with CG, but
as it is – it’s still about 95% 3D.
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Pitching Lucas
screen grabs
©Adam Benton (kromekat)
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Are you a fan of the Star Wars films, or
did you just become a member of the team due to your artistic
expertise?
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Oh yeah! I was one of those seven-year-olds that sat in the
cinema when that huge Star Destroyer flew overhead for the first
time! It was a seminal thing for so many of our generation I think.
And from an influential point of view, it fuelled so much of my
play and creative endeavors all through my childhood and
beyond.
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Was this the first time
you worked on a film project?
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I had worked with the same team for nearly three years on
Star Wars Revelations — which broke a lot of ground
in the fan film genre due to the complexity and sophistication of
production we achieved from our own homes across the world. That
was a very challenging project, and consumed an awful lot of my
time, but it was also one of the biggest learning experiences I
could have possibly had, since it forced me to try things I had
never done before, which also later applied to Pitching
Lucas.
Â
I had dabbled with some film related work a year or so prior to
Revelations, with the maverick director and FX wizard,
Scott Billups. But, the communication and direction was very
patchy, and ultimately it became a frustrating experience, so I was
really glad to have the chance to prove myself with
Panicstruck.
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HighÂ
Five©Adam Benton (kromekat)
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How long, from conception
to finish did it take to complete the film? Was your
contribution/collaboration virtual, or were you able to meet and
work with the film’s co-creators in
person?
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We started in January 2006 and delivered the finished film to
Atom Films some time in May — so it was only about four
months in all. We all worked from our own locations around the
world on the CG, and communicated via a private forum where we
could post our progress and critique each others work as we went
along. The live production elements were all done in the
Virginia/Maryland area of the US, since that is where the director,
Shane Felux is based. He’d post the raw green screen footage
on an ftp site, where we could retrieve and integrate into the CG
shots.
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At first glance your passion for science
fiction and fantasy appears to be the prominent genre within your
art gallery — which is understandable with the Star
Wars movies being such an influence in your adolescence.
However, upon closer assessment, your personal style is very
eclectic (photorealistic still life, artistic nudes, landscape,
etc.). What is your favorite genre? What is your
favorite medium to work in?
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Science fiction is still my favorite genre overall. It’s
the ability to show improbable things in a semi-realistic way that
has always motivated my own artwork. I have however got a love of
photorealism, although I am not sure I have ever really achieved it
yet … and, since I am a great lover of the countryside,
naturalistic scenes do crop up from time to time. Fundamentally, as
I said before, it’s all about lighting for me. I just love
how the positioning of a light can describe an object or scene, or
how it sets a mood, or explains a temperature or mood to the viewer
— it’s wonderfully addictive stuff!
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BlackÂ
Widow  ©Adam
Benton (kromekat)
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There is no doubt that you are a master
of CG lighting and that computer graphics comprise the majority of
your gallery. Yet, I have to wonder, do you on occasion have the
urge to go back to your roots and dabble with traditional art:
colored pencils, watercolor, acrylics?
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Well I haven’t picked up a ‘real’ paintbrush
in a very long time to be honest, so I think my journey to the
dark side is almost complete!
Â
My Dad bought me a new set of acrylics, brushes and some canvas
boards for the Christmas before last, in an attempt to inspire me
to use traditional media again. As apart from anything else, he
believes it’s very therapeutic and relaxing, which I tend to
agree with. But in all reality, clients know me for my digital
work, and commission me on that basis. From a personal perspective,
when I do have some free time, there are so many new tools, or
things in my existing apps that I want to explore or understand
better, that the idea of real painting goes by the
wayside.
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However … I will be moving in the next few weeks, and I
have decided to set up a table with a canvas, paints and brushes,
so that if inspiration does strike, I’ll be
ready!
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Examples of Adam’s Traditional
Artwork ©Adam Benton
(kromekat)
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Thank you Adam — I
appreciate you taking time from your busy schedule to share your
insights on art and Renderosity. Do you have
any parting words of wisdom you would like to
share with aspiring CG artists?
Â
Do what you love, and love what you do — it will show
through in your work, and might be recognized by others as having
something a bit special. Their encouragement will inspire you to
keep doing it, and get better. It has certainly worked like that
for me.
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