Join us for episode 15 of CGCast as we dive deep into the world of digital artistry with Sharaga Weiss, a talented artist who recently attended Vancouver Film School (VFS). Sharaga shares his journey from classical art in Israel to his transformative
experience at VFS, where he discovered his passion for modeling amidst a diverse cohort of international students. Hear about his unique blend of traditional art skills and modern 3D techniques, his insights into the rigorous curriculum, and his aspirations
in the film and gaming industries. With candid reflections on the challenges and rewards of such an intense program, Sharaga offers invaluable advice for aspiring artists considering VFS or similar intensive training grounds. Don't miss out on this
inspiring conversation packed with practical tips and real-world insights!
This episode is a must-listen for anyone intrigued by the fusion of traditional artistry and cutting-edge digital techniques, seeking inspiration, and navigating the rigorous path of professional art education.
Welcome everybody to the 15th episode of CGCast.
Today I have Shraga Weiss with me and he's a cool artist
and he went to the Vancouver Film Festival
and he'll tell us a little bit about himself
and his experiences at the school and what his goals are.
So Shraga, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Well, I came from Israel to VFS
after learning classical art and painting so that's my
background everyone in the vfs came from
someone of a different background because they come from
all over the place and after studying
fine arts i decided that i want to i want to go into cg um
i didn't know back then that i'd choose
modeling not just kind of happen while you're at school you
need to choose like halfway through
the program you need to choose a stream so uh i chose
modeling just because um it fit well with
my background and and it helped me a lot so it was kind of
the natural thing for me to do um
yeah like if you saw there's a like my whole class all the
reels are featured now in cg talk
almost all of them so it's about um it's about 40 animation
40 modeling and and about 20 visual
effects oh cool you do animating also well yeah i leave i
worked in animation um and i do 2D
animation but i didn't my real is focused on that it's on
modeling your real is focused on modeling
yeah my real is modeling okay which um but if you could go
back you'd choose modeling or
would you would you have done animation instead no i choose
modeling okay help why um well
The thing about VFS is that you're on a very tight time
budget.
I mean, you've got six months to do your project after you
go through a very intense or six-month course.
And I get a tendency to be very stubborn with detail, and
modeling gives you that outlet in animation.
You just kind of need to get it done.
so I just enjoyed going into subtleties of my models and
stuff.
That worked better for me, yeah.
Did your background in arts help you?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, for whoever saw my reel,
the first project is a recreation of a Renaissance painting
,
and the only reason I was able to accomplish that in the
end
after a lot of heartache was because of the background
I knew how to paint.
I just had to translate it into a different medium,
which was the challenge, to do it in 3D
rather than with oil paints or something like that.
So that was that.
Plus, for texturing, anything knowledge is very good,
even though not everyone in my class who did modeling
had painting knowledge, and some of them just kind of
found the talent through the years
to achieve very nice textures.
It's certainly a bus.
Okay.
Sounds very interesting.
Well, too bad that most of us...
Where did you get your background in art?
Before VFS, I went to...
There's this painter, came to Israel,
from the States, a very renowned painter
who opened a studio in Jerusalem
that teaches like oil painting,
classic oil painting
like they did in the Renaissance type thing.
So I just sit every day for eight hours
in front of a model.
Yeah, that's before VFS.
Did you do any modeling with clay
or sculpting or anything like that?
At VFS or before?
Before and now.
Well, before not really.
I did a lot of life drawing and painting
but no well I did some sculpture but not a lot in a VFS
they have new courses and sculpting
there's a beginner's course and then later if you pick the
modeling stream there's an advanced
course in sculpting the design the sculpting doesn't
necessarily I mean if you sculpt it
will it will help your modeling a lot but for example i
didn't find the time to really put
a lot of effort into sculpting and i was just too involved
with my demoreel so
oh i've named too much of that because uh i had another guy
on brin moro do you know him by any
chance oh yeah sure he did tons of he said he was oh he was
into sculpting yeah yeah he loved it
yeah uh welcome from your class uh he was in your class
friend he's a good friend of mine
Oh, cool.
Yeah.
So can you tell us a little bit about your experiences at
the VFS?
Well, the first three terms, when you get there, it's like
I was shocked because I never had such an environment where
there were people from all over the place that had the same
interests, basically.
And it was a great experience, the fact that everyone there
kind of grew throughout the year and helped each other out.
That was a lot of fun because it's a very intense program.
So the first three terms, you kind of try to find your way
and see what it is that you're interested in.
Because most people didn't know beforehand which stream
they would pick, which was a real surprise to me.
but everyone kind of views themselves as artists, whoever's
there and here,
whatever they end up doing.
So the first three terms are very intense in terms of, you
know,
kind of understanding what it is that you are most
attracted to
because animation is a lot of fun and so is modeling.
And visual effects was a little intimidating
and they're going to change that now
if we're going to understood.
But the first three terms,
you're in soft image
and for visual effects,
you need to move into Mayan.
So that means teaching yourself a lot.
There's a lot of self-teaching in VFS.
Oh.
Yeah.
Do you like the aspect of self-teaching?
Does it help more teaching yourself
or is it better if you have the teacher?
Well, in the end,
we work a lot.
They kind of throw a lot of information
towards you VFS.
and you kind of you can't grasp all of it at the beginning
and it's a little bit intimidating
because you you think you need to understand everything but
really when you really understand
is when you do it obviously hands-on which is in the next
half of the course when you're actually
dealing with it yourself and making a demo that's when you
realize what you learned um and that's
the best way to learn obviously but firsthand you gotta
have a good teacher you know to start you
off okay or the teacher's good there um it was a mixture
not all of them were good um but the
program is built in a pretty straightforward uh
professional way i mean just the classes
and the information that you're supposed to gather is
nicely structured um so either of some of the
teachers aren't the best teachers, still kind of get the
right information for you to be able to produce afterwards.
But some of the teachers are really good.
They all have the professional resume, even though at the
first three terms,
sometimes they can throw TAs at you rather than give you a
professional teacher.
TAs are technically assisted, right?
Yeah, it's like some professional experience that sometimes
will fill in.
I mean, most of the time we had teachers with some
professional background.
That's pretty cool.
Yeah.
Before you went there, did you have any knowledge in 3D at
all in modeling?
What was it?
Very little.
Okay.
Very little.
I say just understanding how 3D works, the interface and
such.
just to know how the programs are structured.
I mean, basic understanding is enough.
It's just better to have that rather than have nothing.
Okay.
Yeah.
What program did you use before,
and what program did you use at the school?
Before it was 3D Max.
Okay.
So I didn't really understand it very well.
Now I use Soft Image.
That's what they taught us.
We're supposed to be moving to Maya.
I'm not sure if that's happening or not.
Yeah, interesting.
Yeah, Bryn told us that they might move to Maya.
Yeah.
I'm not sure if they'll still do it after the Autodesk
buying out Alias,
but who knows?
Who knows?
I have to say that my personal preference is Soft Image
because we had some Maya,
and the reason I think that they weren't Soft Image
is just because it's so much easier to learn and so much
faster to use.
Yeah, how so?
Well, then we'll argue that Maya is better for visual
effects or whatever, but I'm not even sure about that. The
modeling interface is much more user-friendly. It's, you
know, I could go into specifics, but I don't know how.
There's a lot of different functions that are just easier
to use
and friendlier to use for modeling.
That in Maya, you have to delve into the program,
get some plugins, and maybe there's five different buttons
before you can do something that should be very simple.
Well, maybe Autodesk could fix something about that.
Because I heard that they're keeping Maya alive.
I wish they would just combine Maya and Max into one big
mega program.
They should run all those programs and just do it right
once.
Yeah, but if there's only one program, there'd be no
competition and there won't be much motivation to advance.
That's true.
So just have like two big programs.
They should integrate ZBrush and Exasight, if you ask me.
Yeah, it's true, because importing and exporting all the
time is kind of annoying.
Yeah.
But we'll see.
Hopefully in the future, things will be better.
Hopefully.
So now what are you doing?
Well, now I'm preparing a trip to the States.
I have a few interviews in LA and San Francisco.
And hopefully it will go well.
What kind of job are you looking for?
Game work?
Movie work?
What?
One of those two games, cinematics, movies.
Yeah.
Well, I have an option to make models for a movie
and another option to work for a game company in the States
.
So we'll see what happens.
Which one would you prefer, games or movies?
I think movies.
Why not?
Well, I do.
I mean, I've never actually worked in the industry,
so I don't have much to say about it.
But from what I can understand,
You know, games are advancing a lot.
I mean, you know, there's new technology,
there's Xbox 360 and all those new gen stuff.
But, you know, so there's more for detail,
but the type of quality that's needed for feature film
movies
is still much higher, I think,
even though games are, I mean, it's endless where they're
going.
Yeah, they're expanding.
Have you seen the source models for like Doom 3 and for
Unreal, for the new Unreal?
It's not out yet.
The source models are really, really, really high quality.
They just optimize them and put on the normal map, which
they got from the high source.
That's probably like movie quality modeling.
Yeah.
I mean, the differences today are probably mine.
Yeah.
Hopefully they'll be able to do that in real time soon.
Yeah.
So what can you tell us about, I don't know,
I don't know.
What else can we talk about?
Let's see.
Well, I mean, people want to know what it costs,
or the EFS, other schools compared to the EFS.
Have you been to other schools?
No, but I participated in the debate a lot before I decided
to go to VFS.
A lot of people on CG Talk, for example, are usually pretty
impressed with VFS work.
And I think the reason is that as opposed to places, maybe
three or four-year programs, whereas VFS only one year.
But, you know, when you're actually there, you realize what
's happening is just that it's really not one year.
It's 12 months, which is about two, you know, academic
years.
Because it's 12 months with hardly any vacation time.
I didn't have any vacation at all.
No, there was vacation.
But, like, you know, there's winter vacation, which is a
week or a week and a half.
And summer vacation is another week.
But it's 12 months with those vacations.
between semesters there's like a longer weekend that's it
there yeah it's crazy so it's it's very
intense like what happens to some people is that you know
it's very hard also to realize
and there's people helping you kind of coordinate your time
but still if people think they can
accomplish something that they can't or they come with
certain ideas about what they can or can't do
They end up losing time or choosing the wrong path and
their demoreel suffers and there's a lot of pressure.
That's the downside of it.
Yeah, has anybody reacted from the pressure?
Yeah, it happened.
Now in my class, I mean, some people kind of, they didn't
follow through with everything they planned to at the
beginning.
But it's not because of the pressure.
It's just that they didn't schedule themselves properly.
But there's people who drop out because of pressure.
It's manageable.
It can be done.
I mean, most people go through it.
It's fine.
But it's a lot of pressure.
And some people even come out disappointed, too.
And it's a lot of money.
How much is it?
well truthfully today it's it's even more expensive i don't
even know this it's something
insane how much did you pay i paid uh 27 000 us wow yeah
and today it's it's more than that
but it's still cheaper than uh one year in a normal
american college because i had applied
to go to the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale.
That was 40 grand a year.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
Yeah, that's why I didn't go.
It was too expensive,
and I couldn't get a scholarship in time.
Well, that's insane.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that's what it probably costs now
to go to the VFS.
40 grand.
Wow.
Maybe.
I mean, don't quote me on this.
Just go into the site.
It says it there.
They just keep, you know,
as long as people are coming,
just raise the price.
Supply and demand.
Exactly.
That's how it works.
And then there's the question whether or not it's worth the
money.
All those questions, that's a little bit problematic.
For you, did you think it was worth it?
For me personally, for sure.
Just because the experience was so special.
And I learned a lot.
The experience was great.
I mean, the people were great.
And I got very lucky because it has a lot to do with class
dynamics.
I mean, there's classes with bad chemistry, you know, it's
luck.
And then there's classes that people really help each other
out and work.
Some people work at home, right?
But classes that come to school and do the work at school,
those are the classes that really produce good demo reels.
And my class was like that.
So I was lucky.
Do you keep like the same class, the same group of people
for the entire year or do they keep switching students
around?
Say that again, I'm sorry.
Do they keep the same group of students together for the
entire year or do they switch you guys around?
Yeah, it's the same students, but we just, when you pick a
stream, which is also a complicated part of the program,
you know where you have to choose what it is you you want
to um you know focus on then there's a
certain separation you know because everybody works in the
same area but you know the mavelers
are dealing with different issues than the animators and
the visual effects people
so usually the people who are helping each other out are
from the same stream um but that didn't
but we were all always in this like once you start doing
them real there's you go into the
and farm, which is this big room with computers and
everyone sits together.
It does their work, so it's not like we really separate.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
That was very fun.
Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
I mean, while I was there, I was feeling a lot of pressure,
but in retrospective, when I think about it, I have only
positive thoughts.
It was a lot of fun.
But again, it's not like everything's perfect, right?
I have a lot of criticism about the program.
Like what type of criticism?
Well, the price is crazy.
And at some point, you know, while you're doing your demo
reel,
you're really, most of the time you're helping yourself.
You're just working, right?
And like you hardly have any classes.
So, you know, it's like you're paying for the first half of
the year basically
and then you're just busting your butt.
But I mean, you have, you're not alone, right?
You earn meals from your classmates.
That's what happens in the end.
But, you know, you need, I think the reason VFS does so
well is just because of the structure.
It's because you're expected to work lonely hours every day
, you know.
And people who can't, you know, who don't know how to
manage their time have only one opportunity to finish their
demo reel.
And with one year, you know, if you make a couple of wrong
decisions and your demo reel is not finished, you know, and
it's not a good feeling.
So that's the biggest problem.
So you got to be, it sounds like, okay, I'm going to go on
one year,
I'm going to give it all I got, and I'm going to come out
with a great reel.
Most people do.
But while you're doing it, you start getting tired.
It's a lot of pressure.
A lot of people make a mistake, and I did that too.
They put too much effort right at the beginning of the
course.
There's no reason to stay weekends when you start up the
course.
in my opinion um you know you gotta you gotta do the work
but take it easy because then when
you're doing your demo you're really gonna really gonna
bust your butt also there's a lot of people
who debate whether or not to start your demo reel at the
beginning of the year you know and and and
you know kind of get a head start that's that's wrong if
you ask me because you don't know what
you're doing and it's just going to be a waste of time you
don't realize that people kind of think
they know what they're doing but they don't okay cool when
you're making the demo reels like are
the teachers there available if you have any problems
because you make it simple and like
you're very isolated from the staff when you're doing the
demo reels well there's there's you
know there's scheduled time where the teachers come and
they help you um you know but it should
be that way i mean it should be that you're doing most of
the work right but at a given moment if
you have some technical problem you're not going to
necessarily have someone there to solve it for
you that's why you know there's always the technical guy in
the class and then he gets
you know he gets bugged a little because he's the one who
has all the answers we had a guy like that
right so he he ended up compromising the time he had for
his reel at this every he was helping
everyone so hopefully he had a good reel he had he had a
very good reel yeah but he didn't finish
here uh that yeah and that's one of the reasons he also
went to you know he kind of dwelled too
much into the technical aspect of things um he ended up
kind of building these crazy rigs and
everything so that he spent too much time setting up the
animation rather than had a meeting but i
mean israel is still really really nice oh maybe he should
have been a rigger or something since
he liked that so much.
Yeah, that's what everyone was telling him,
but he's a good animator too,
so he'll do what he decides to in the end, I guess.
Yeah, I guess.
You have to follow your heart, I guess.
Yeah, totally.
Well, is there anything else you'd like to share?
Well, if anybody wants to see the reel,
then you can visit my site.
Yeah, I'll put the link in the show notes
so everybody can see it.
Cool.
it's shragerwise.com shragerwise.com yeah s-h-r-a-g-a-w-e-i
-s-s.com
well i think that's about it we've recorded about 25
minutes it's not bad sounds good sounds good
any final comments to anybody looking to get into the vfs
or into the or into 3d
um wait one more point so just you prepare to work hard and
i'll see that sums it up what
what are the requirements to get in oh okay um there's a
lot of you know missed around that
like it's not very clear what what the what the demands are
i know there's a lot of people who
are trying to get in but i never i don't know what the
percentage is or what it is that they're
looking for it's not very clear um i know that you know the
people in my class were all capable
artists but they all had different abilities i mean there
were people there who couldn't draw
and they ended up doing something you know that didn't
demand a lot of drawing skill for example
um and then they were you know they were good in other
things so i'm not sure what the requirement
starts to tell you the truth it's it's we we debated that a
lot throughout the year we it's
kind of nobody knows did they interview you first i haven't
well you know it's so international
you know some people they believe that that it's all about
you know the money over there
but it for me it's it's a little bit hard to believe
because i mean my class had so many
talented people in it you know so why would you know how
could that be the case and and usually
the reels are good still that doesn't make sense to me
maybe you have a crystal ball to find talent
i had to know maybe at the well yeah i don't know it goes
goes behind the scenes spooky black magic
probably most likely that equaled if it was real oh well um
i think that's about it um thanks again
for thanks again for coming on the show probably i know i
gave you a lot of problems a few weeks
ago about it but it's all right i hope you didn't get mad
about that that's all good
well say bye to everybody all right see ya bye everyone bye
