Join us for Episode 24 of CGCast as we dive deep into the creative journey of Omar Nelson, a passionate CG artist and filmmaker. Omar shares his unique path from music production to becoming a dedicated 3D animator, culminating in his ambitious collaborative
short film project, "Hardwired." From his early days tinkering with Atari computers to his current endeavor spanning over two years, Omar discusses the challenges, triumphs, and lessons learned along the way. He emphasizes the importance of focusing
on quality over quantity, managing expectations within collaborative projects, and maintaining passion amidst long-term creative pursuits. Listeners will gain insights into the meticulous process of character development, animation, and production
management, making this episode a must-listen for aspiring and seasoned CG artists alike.
Welcome everybody to the 24th episode of CGCast.
Today I have Omar with me, Omar Nielsen,
and today I'm going to interview him and find out about his
short.
So Omar, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Well, as you mentioned, I'm Omar Nielsen,
and I was born in Jamaica, and I moved to Toronto, Canada
when I was about three, and that's where I am now.
And I used to work for a video game publishing company
in Toronto here.
And I used to do graphics for the box covers.
So they didn't develop the games there, but, you know, the
3D modeling,
not necessarily the layouts of the box covers,
but if they needed any 3D illustrations or 3D graphics,
basically that would be my department.
And I was the only 3D person in-house there.
So if they needed any multimedia presentations as well as 3
D,
I'd do a little bit of cinematics, but not much, nothing
really major.
They're like low-budget games.
so I do things like you know maybe logos find logos for the
publishers or the developers
and things like that anything in general dealing with 3d so
how did you get yourself get into 3d
um initially I was into music and that was music was my
first introduction to computers in general
and um I started out doing music using like a four a four
track tape recorder and as I was
basically very limited using that so a friend of mine said
you know i should try getting to
computers and that would be much better so i bought an at
ari an old atari you know vst computer
with cubase on it and i started doing sequencing and stuff
like that and from that i basically
that was my main introduction to using computers and
obviously that was that wasn't anything like
are you recording or anything like that i got a job in that
summer working for uh it was a small
video editing company and they basically had um a little
suite using a mac and the summer program
i was doing was just for a few months and we were directly
related to the video editing company
that's that video editing company was just um they were su
bleasing a space in there our
responsibilities were to do like um psa's public service
announcements on video and videotape them
and put them together like small documentaries.
And I guess they seen that I had some experience with
computers,
so they gave me permission on the off hours of the video
editing company
to go in there and edit our PSAs.
And that also gave me introduction to nonlinear video
editing.
And that really kind of opened my eyes to seeing that much
more can be done
than just sequencing music.
It kind of showed me that you actually before, you know,
not only audio,
but you could also record video.
and from that program i also met a friend who seen that i
was very talented with the computer and
introduced me to another friend who who they had known and
who also had a lot much more experience
with computers that i had and meeting this this person he
um he told me he kind of told me like
what i would need to start up a recording studio and that
was my main interest so him and i got
together and we started a small recording studio using um
hard drive recording and at that time
cd burners just came out they weren't even there was not
much of them on the market so our gimmick
was to have uh you know you could record your music demo
and then in like a big deal back then
it was like wow that was our selling point and that was my
introduction to actually using hard
drive recording stuff but in that space we had uh a person
who was stub leasing and he was a
aeronautics engineer and basically she was using a program
called truespace and truespace is a
as a 3d program a low-end 3d program and he was using that
to on design um like blimps and air
and things like that well it's also a 3d program and he
kind of said hey whenever i want to use it
jump on the computer when he is not using it and i could
basically mess around with it so i started
messing around with trueSpace and at first i was like
i didn't even really understand anything
what i was doing but i knew i seen 3d graphics like in
music videos and things like that so
from that point i kept on playing around with it didn't
didn't do anything great or anything like
that and then we started doing on this side that but that
kind of got me into multimedia stuff like
again expanding my horizons more than just music and seeing
that um seeing what the computer could
do with graphic wise because i remember when i was younger
i really liked to get into just
traditional animation a friend my partner at the studio at
the time seeing that i was really
interested in the 3d and one of our clients we started a
little bit of multimedia contracts
one of our clients was a site that that um what do you call
reviews on products and they were
doing a review on on uh i think 3d studio max and they
after they did the review they basically had
no use for the the software they had so they gave us gave
me the full version of the software with
the book and all that stuff and that was kind of um my
introduction to like a higher version
or higher level of 3dc and that's when i started to really
learn and get better with 3d studio
and i decided to take a course uh short you know summer
course i think it was um i think it was
about six months but at the time it was Maya and it was on
the SGI systems and I just wanted to see
what I was learning if I was heading in the right direction
and stuff like that and the course is
okay I learned a few things here and there but nothing
nothing much more than I already had
had learned on my own but at the time they didn't have Maya
for PC so I when the course was done
I followed up by using 3D Studio Max and figured out most
of the stuff that I learned in my year
could be done in 3D Studio Max so I kept on using 3D Studio
Max because that was pretty much the
the highest or the best 3D program for the PC platform at
the time and stuck with it ever since
then. That's pretty that's a pretty cool story actually. So
right now what are you doing? I
noticed that you're making a big collaborative short on CG
Talk Forums that's how I found out
about you i've been following this for a while and it's
pretty cool can you tell us a bit about
tell us a little bit about that sure um the short is called
hardwired and it's um
the idea from it came again back when i was at the
recording studio days and it was about in 90
i think it was around 97 98 i kind of wanted to i was
working on a song actually that's what
inspired the whole movie project i've written on a song and
this another play and it's it was a
hip-hop song and it was a metaphor i was trying to put my
life in a metaphor and instead of the
you know i'm a type of guy who's very observant i like to
watch things that are going on in the
world and observe things that are going on in the world so
the song was basically about
somebody coming from another planet not really being from
earth and just trying to watch
humans and watch earth and things that are going on earth
um objectively or you know so the song
i wanted to do a video music video for it so i figured the
best way i couldn't really afford a
film crew or anything like that so i figured the best way
maybe i could use 3d and do you know a
3d animated version since the song was kind of based in a
sci-fi science fiction type um metaphor
so I figured you know 3D would lend itself good to science
fiction so the initial idea was to do
like a you know one or two minute video and it would also
be a good way for me to test my skills
so I started out by trying to make this in this music video
and you know at the time my skills
were I didn't even know how to rig a character or anything
like that I just figured you know
I would do something fancy and and the mentality is pretty
much the same like I just I figured I
just do some good looking images and maybe do some simple
animation moves you know like a to b moves
and just compose real nice looking shots to music and that
was my initial idea after working in the
studio and um i started moving away from music and moving
more towards um you know multimedia
and and 3d animation i really wanted to explore this this
idea of the song and the more time
And because 3D is such a slow process, it gives me so much
time to think about the story and think about what the
possibilities are.
So the more I thought about it, I got so much ideas, new
ideas about where I could take this story.
And I no longer, because my interest in music was, you know
, decreasing, I no longer wanted to make it into a music
video.
I wanted to then make it into a short film and see where
the short film would go.
So obviously with things like, you know, getting, you know,
getting jobs and stuff like that,
I wasn't able to produce, you know, my 3D skills.
The major problem I had is that my 3D skills, as they get
better, you know, the production
gets better.
But because of things like, as I was mentioning earlier,
because of things like life and you
have to go and, you know, make money.
So getting jobs, anytime I got a job, the job would take
away time from working on the
project.
So time would pass where I wouldn't work on the project.
But because most of my jobs were within the 3D field, my
skills would get better, but the project wouldn't get
progress anymore than the last time I worked on it.
So by the time a year or two would go by, I'd go back to
work on the project.
My skills has far improved from what I've started.
So the majority of the times I'd go back and start all over
from scratch again with the new concept, new designs.
Basically, the idea stays the same, but the technologies
get faster and my skills improve.
So I keep on restarting the project.
But most recently, the project that you're talking about,
that you discovered at CG Talk, that project is the latest
incarnation of it.
And I started that about, I think I started it in March
2004.
So, you know, a little bit more than two years in duration
I ever stuck with it.
And, you know, I figured doing it by myself was not moving
fast enough
and see if I could collaborate with other artists,
maybe with similar interests to see if it speed up the
production.
But in starting the thread, I realized that it's not
exactly how you think it would be,
which life is majority of times never like that.
I know.
Starting it, I found it working on the collab is actually a
lot more work
than probably if I was working on it solo
because you have to do a lot of managing
and you have to, the consistency of people joining and
stuff
is not something that you can really rely on.
So majority of times, it's still pretty much,
it has the same feeling as if it was a solo project.
But the reason why I stick with the collaboration project
is because it's really cool to meet, you know,
meet new people who have the common interest in, you know,
the same interest in the same ideas yeah can you tell us
like a little bit of the issues you've had
so far like the negative side so far like any drama or
anything happened because of that project
um no drama really i mean the biggest the biggest thing is
uh kind of is just having people
basically join and say they want to do this or do that and
they don't deliver basically what they
say and that's that's become just a part of it now you kind
of expect that because obviously it's a
collaboration project and nobody's getting paid for what
they do so they take it a little i think
they're very light-hearted about it and they don't really
and i don't really expect anybody to you
know it consider for myself i consider if i'm going to
collab i do the best work i can because
i'm representing myself whether i'm getting paid for it or
not and stuff and you want to put your
best foot forward at all times so you kind of want to make
a good reputation for yourself
and i don't think people i think because i don't know if
because it's not in person i'm not seeing
people in person or it's you know people don't don't feel
that they have to you know protect
their reputation by doing a good job or whatever i'm not
sure i can't really say what why the
reason is but the only real situation i find is is people
just not really delivering what they say
they'll deliver and again something i've grown to get used
to and expect have you had like issues
with people that want to join but their skill level is not
high enough what do you say to them
oh i have i have that quite often and again something that
that is expected um i really
don't mind people joining who don't have the the skills and
want to learn but it has to be just
that you you really want to have to be passionate about it
and want to learn and um i'll always give
anybody the the benefit of the doubt like whether you're
skilled enough or not i'll give you
something there has to be something that you can do where
you know you could use it to improve your
skills or you know if it's just a matter of just you want
to work with somebody to to to get a idea
of what it's like to work on a production but i always
there's always something and the problem
it is with that is a lot of times and this happens whether
you're skilled or not is again going back
to people starting it and getting overwhelmed again
personally with my experience it's it's a
mountain yes i'm not saying it's it's an easy it's an easy
road and but i feel that you should at
least take the step the first step and deal with that take
the second step and deal with that i
usually tell people when they join that um i'm not so much
concerned about speed how fast they work
and stuff i am somewhat concerned about quality but i'm
willing to give a person the time to
develop to that quality stage like you know take something
simple take on something small which is
the first step a small project like the funny thing that is
everybody when they jump on whether
they're skilled or not they want to do the hero they want
to do the hero model you know nobody
wants to start at the bottom they want to kind of say oh i
want to do this i want to do the biggest
spaceship where I want to do the biggest character model
and the hardest thing is character you know
character modeling or character just creating a character
my project is pretty much character
based it's not really an epic based on big spaceships and
stuff it's more character driven
and that's what I'm focusing on and my first character
which is a lead character I think that
took me about a year just to set that character up and it's
still in it's still pretty you know
That's not the best rig.
It's not the best setup.
But that's the steps I have to take.
I had to first create a character that I liked.
And then after modeling the character, modeling and text
uring is usually the easiest stage.
And then I had to learn a lot about rigging, how to set up
the character, like doing facial morphs and hair.
How do I set up hair?
How do I render hair?
All that stuff is like research and development.
Most of the things that go on with the project is research
and development.
That's why when you look at most collaborations,
there's very little footage and a lot of WIP stages and
stuff like that.
And you come to discover a lot of it is spent in research
and developing your pipeline and things like that.
But hopefully as time goes on,
that will, you know, you get a little accustomed to,
you know, creating characters or creating sets and things
like that
and speed up the process.
That must be a great learning experience.
How far along are you though right now on the project?
um well i'm shooting for um 15 15 minutes i'm not specific
on how how how long i want it to be i just
want to get enough footage that somebody could watch it and
understand what is going on but so
far in the two years time i've only created about a one
minute of of completed fully rendered
completed with sound and everything footage and like i said
the first year again was just me
developing the first character i did other stuff obviously
i modeled sets and things like that but
i can't render the final footage until the character which
is like i said it's it's focused
around is up to par so the first year was pretty much
developing the first character and then
after the first character was developed i started rendering
the first um animating of course and
animation is my i'm worse that's my um weakest talent right
there and i really have a lot of
trouble with animating but I still have to do it so anim
ating I animate the first shots and render
the first shot so the second year was pretty much
completing you know the the first minute
and that was pretty successful I'm pretty happy with the
results I've I was able to do every
aspect of production with that first minute I was able to
like I said do modeling rigging animation
do lighting do rendering i was able to you know experiment
and learn about all aspects and kind of
you know um develop my pipeline so that sounds pretty cool
but um did you like uh make storyboards
and make animatics or anything towards the project to for
like pre-planning yeah i did and
the thing with my project is i'm doing it chronologically
okay so um as the shots appears
as I work on it shot by shot.
So I try to treat each shot as a project in itself.
Like if the project dies and I quit tomorrow,
I would at least want to complete the shot I'm working on
fully.
So I've done up to, I think, three shots fully completed.
And there's a six I'm working on.
I have six shots now, but three of them are fully rendered
and fully completed.
I do do animatics.
Back to the original question.
I do do animatics based on if the shot needs it.
I do, same thing goes for scripts.
I write the scripts.
If, for instance, the voice actor will be doing, you know,
has a lot of lines, then I'll write the script.
But I only do pre-production based on the shot-to-shot
basis.
So I won't go and spend like a whole month or two working
on doing concepts and pre-production for the entire movie.
I would just do it for the next shot, basically, if the
shot requires it.
Because some shots are really simple.
You don't need, you know, a storyboard.
Like if it's just a picture of a computer monitor with some
graphics on it.
Maybe if I need to storyboard the graphics, I will.
Also, most of the times I'm working by myself.
So a lot of times the most I would do is like a doodle on a
piece of paper sketch.
And some most of the times if I am doing it by myself, it's
in my head.
So I really don't need to do that.
But it does help to have pre-production in more complex
shots.
The opening sequence, I did do an animatic.
And I find animatics are good because you could take that
animatic file
and then use that to actually update the models and update
the scene elements
to complete the final shot if your animatic is really put
together really nicely and really tight.
So the better your animatic is, you know, the closer it is
to the final shot,
you know, it's an easier transition to go from animatic to
your final shot.
That's a good point. I never thought of that way.
Have there been any pleasant surprises along your little
two-year adventure?
Oh, well, not much.
But, you know, talking with you right now was a pleasant
surprise for me.
I didn't really think much people check out the
collaboration section or I know there might be a lot of lur
kers checking it out and stuff like that.
But I always enjoy, you know, one of the main things for me
is just when people drop in that I unexpectedly that I
wouldn't expect to even notice my project drop in and say
hello or, you know, say that, you know, it's coming along
great.
Like I said, you know, the main thing is just meeting
people right now.
Doing this interview was a pleasant surprise.
One of the people I met on the projects, he does Jonathan
Rez.
He's one of the newer members, and he does some of the –
he helps me out with the TD, like the rigging and stuff
like that.
And he made a mention to, he learned his stuff from, what's
his name?
I'm trying to remember the guy's name.
I can't remember his name.
But he dropped by one of the TDs in my local area,
who was a teacher at one of the colleges, dropped by the
thread.
And that's one of the main things I really like,
is just people dropping in who are unexpectedly.
But other than that, you know, nothing major.
That's cool.
About the community, how helpful has the community been?
because you said sometimes it feels like it's just more
work but like have you gotten in a lot of
models or anything um not much um most of the times like i
said before it it feels you know
like a solo project that sometimes and the most as far as
models and things and things go i'm
really kind of i'm really it's really important for me that
if somebody takes a project i really
want them to take ownership of that project and see it
through and a lot of people don't see it
through so I feel if it's not complete I can't really use
it so if somebody comes in and say
they want to model a head of a character and they they don
't complete it I don't feel like I could
I could go ahead and use it if they complete it then and in
most cases I don't think I've ever
seen anybody fully complete something that sense in concept
art on the other hand I have a little
bit more luck in in that sense I would still like to work
with a lot more concept artists and
do a lot more pre-production work and with concept art is I
've been getting better luck because
concept is much quicker turnaround so I get more work done
as far as concept art goes the only
problem with concept art is because I don't have a lot of
modeling or modelers and modeling is
such a slow turnaround most times the concept art doesn't
get to be realized unless I do it
myself and again because i'm going chronologically
sometimes the concept art is on hold until i get
to that stage oh fair enough um would you like to give any
tips for anybody who wants to make like
a short movie on their own because it happens to be a
popular subject right now on the forums
um the only tips i really would say is try not to spread
yourself too i skip a piece
break let's give a static start and they you have to keep
ignoring you know in most cases you're not
a big major studio you can't treat it like a major studio
would treat it you can't i like i say spend
you know a whole bunch of time developing these giant
universes and these um you know you could
have a grand scheme of things but you can't let me try to
sum it up simply um what i'm saying is
again let me recap by spreading yourself too thin what i
mean is some people have a project they
have a big universe they they will do a model they'll do
like a model of a character here
they do like a hand of a another character here they'll do
like a wheel of a vehicle here they'll
do like a vehicle here so they're all over the place when
they should kind of concentrate their
energy on like i say in a sense what i'm going to
concentrate it on a specific shot try to complete
bring something to completion because a lot of times things
don't get completed because
they spread themselves too thin whether it's a team they
have team members doing projects here
to the left to the right all over the place and those ends
are not meeting those ends are not
coming together so if you have a team try to focus all that
energy and try to focus it to a point
where maybe it's a big project but if you focus maybe there
's a main character and that's the
most important piece maybe you could get the whole team to
focus on getting the shot with that
character completed and then moving on to the next stage
usually the team the the projects they spread
themselves so far all over the place that it's like an an
example would be like if george lucas
was creating star wars and instead of him being star wars
first and then moving on to
Empire Strikes Back and then Return of the Jedi.
He's basically trying to do all six of the movies,
like working on the story with Luke here,
working on the story with Darth Vader there,
and trying to film all six projects.
A lot of people take it on in that sense.
They spread themselves all over the place.
So I think they should just really try to focus
on getting completed things,
footage done or models done and things like that.
It sounds good.
Sure enough, you need to focus on one thing at a time.
Baby steps.
Exactly.
So what's the future for Omar?
The future?
The future is never what he expected it to be.
So I really have no idea.
But I would like to at least, you know, if not complete the
full short that I'm working on,
at least move it towards, you know, like I said earlier,
a stage where at least people could understand where I'm
heading with it.
Other than that, that's my main focus right now.
If the project doesn't go as I expect,
I guess I'll probably end up doing something with an HD.
Maybe a 3D generalist working for a company somewhere,
modeling or something like that.
But if all goes well, the ideal situation will be that Hard
wired
could eventually grow into something larger than just a
short film.
Maybe into merchandising type stuff.
and you know the typical the typical dream of anybody who
creates you know tries to create a
universe well if you want you could try and get a venture
capital and then maybe build up a little
team and then maybe you can go places with that definitely
that's you know i'm open the original
i'm open for anything really as far as the project goes i
mean i'm just a person who likes to dive in
and do things so you know whichever which whichever way it
takes me i'm basically on it for the
journey i'm basically on it for the ride um it's like an
analogy would be uh i don't know if you
ever watched star trek voyager but it's somewhat i see it
somewhat like that where they're millions
of miles away from home or millions of light years i should
say away from home and it's in the
in the tv series it's going to take them something like 70
years to get home and you know on the
journey home basically their their motto or their creed is
that whatever technologies they find
whatever races whatever you know civilizations they find on
the way there you know they'll do
whatever means it takes to get them home you know and to me
whether whether i make it to the end of
the journey or not it's pretty much i'm trying to make the
journey itself an experience for myself
you know that's fair enough um i want to i'm trying to make
a a short also but i want to
organize like a little team so that it doesn't take as long
to make it back i suppose right but
right now i'm still in the pre-production i'm still trying
to plan things out i'm trying to
rewrite the story and the storyboard so hopefully i can
have some luck like you and have some people
participate yeah maybe you could participate if you have
some free time yeah that'd be interesting
to see um i would like to do something as far as my project
sometimes i do need a break from it
and i'm always trying to think of ideas to like i would
like to do something cartoony
something that's just not so serious as you know science
fiction and where people you know
something there where I could just, you know, use really,
you know,
funny looking characters, something just where I could just
have fun, you know?
Yeah.
So I'm always have an eye out for projects like that.
I did join up for another collaboration, which was in the
collaboration section.
It was just a free for all basically kind of concept where
everybody would come in
and throw in their ideas, what kind of story we'd like to
do and so and so.
But that project apparently, I don't know if it's dead,
But the director, I guess all of these projects need a
director to kind of keep everything together.
The director disappeared.
So I don't know if the project is still alive or not or the
director will return.
So right now it's on hold.
But, you know, if your project, yeah, they do.
You know, they need some kind of, they need some funnel or
some filter to bring all the raw ideas together.
But if, you know, if your project is something cool and fun
, hey, you never know.
and you stick with it like i noticed that just by sticking
with my project whether the progress is
good or bad a lot of people it gives us some credibility a
lot of people tend to follow it
just seems like just for that reason the fact that i'm
still doing it you know yeah i guess
it becomes somewhat of like a reality tv show to see if i
'll survive or not because i saw it like
last year where i was working on a short and i was like
when i get bored during the renders i would
this uh you're right time not too long ago and i noticed
that you were still working on it and i
was like very impressed because the character is so good
and what you have so far looks really good
and i'm impressed that you're still going at it that's real
that's real dedication yeah i think um
i think that was an interesting discovery of mine just
recently just noticing that
even though it's taken me a real long time to work on the
project,
I find out that the time it's taken me to work on the
project
is then somewhat of an asset in the sense that
it is bringing somewhat of a fan base to the project
because it's been there for so long,
it's starting to become something that people come to check
out.
You know, they could leave and come back a month later
and I'm still there or still working on it.
So I find that, you know, as long as it's taken me,
that is somewhat working in my favor.
You could make a site for it and be the next Russ boy.
Well, I do have a site.
And the only problem with the site is,
initially, I didn't even want to create a site
because I didn't want to worry about maintenance
and things like that.
And I know I'd have to get somebody to update the site.
But I had to take off a good,
I think I took off a good two months
or maybe even more to develop that site off of the project.
And it's nothing special.
It's just there is a site that I try to use the site
as all of the completed content
and all the completed renders or assets.
I basically post them at the site.
But anything that...
It's hardwired.boywonder.com
or boy1da.com.
Okay.
I'll post the link in the show notes.
Yeah.
And it's just a simple flashlight.
Like I said,
just to show all the completed content.
Anything that's with
in its work-in-progress stages
remains in the CGTalk thread until it's completed.
So hopefully the site will, as time goes on and as more
content is created,
hopefully the site will have more, you know, interesting
things.
You know, like, I don't know if I'll ever create a message
board or anything like that,
but maybe just more things to download and maybe a little
bit more interactive things.
You never know.
Oh, cool. Do you have any final comments?
No final comments, really.
Just, you know, check out the thread, drop in, say hello.
And if you're an artist working on a short film and, you
know, or CG art in general, you know, passion counts a lot.
So be real passionate about what you're doing.
And, you know, even when things get a little bit hard,
believe in, you know, yourself and your work.
That's basically it.
Any shout outs?
I'd just like to say thanks to the people that have
followed the thread over the years that I've been doing it.
And especially to Mark Alford, Element5.
He's been with me from the beginning doing concepts and
supporting it.
As well as Jonathan Rez for helping me out with the rigging
.
He's the newest member.
But I found that it was a real good experience working with
him.
and as well as all the other people who have ever posted in
my thread.
I really appreciate it.
Yeah, I even saw that my friend Ruben,
he's the one that made the website for me, and he's a
really cool guy.
I saw he had posted in your site also, and that kind of
surprised me.
Oh, yeah?
Well, shout out to Ruben.
Yeah.
Also, thanks for coming on the show.
Hey, no problem.
I really appreciate it and enjoying the experience.
Okay.
Anybody have a forum where they can do it?
If you'd like to, you can always join the CGCast forum,
help out the show.
If you post your work there,
we can ask the guests to like crit your work
or stuff that could be more interesting.
You know, make the show a bit more interactive
and the CGCast chat will be back soon.
I'm trying to work out an IRC thing.
And look out for the CGCast movie project.
We just need to finish the pre-planning and all of that,
and we can try and work something out.
Okay. Bye, everybody.
