Meet Patricia Hishikawa

Meet Patricia Hishikawa, modo enthusiast, who works as a consultant with IKIF+, an animation studio in Japan known for its CG feature film work on the Doraemon manga series since 1996.

Please tell us about where you went to school and what you studied?

I graduated from the Catholic University of Peru (Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru), with a bachelor degree in Graphic Design.

At that time, there were no CG productions in Lima, no animation studios, no big companies in the film industry (just small ones, or established by project, for live-action films). So there were even less people that could teach about these themes. So at school, I just went through a simple overview of some CG softwares (but mainly focused webpage design).

I started to think of studying about Animation abroad, maybe Japan or the US, but nothing concrete, so after I graduated, I joined a pre-press company as a graphic designer. Of course, most of my work was about printed matter, but maybe the closest thing to animation that I did at that point was some Flash-based work.

Ropple’s cargo cockpit. The interior of the cockpit was partially textured and painted modo.

How did you end up in Japan?

I was fortunate to get a scholarship to study Animation in Japan. I was very lucky as one of my professors who offered me to come to his CG studio (IKIF+), and practice there during the summer vacations. That is the first time I touched LightWave3D. I helped out in a short movie that was screened at the theaters, as an extra movie to a feature animation film.

So, after my studies finished, I was offered a freelance contract with the company. And I said YES without thinking twice. So I moved to Japan in 2002, and started working in animation titles, feature film animes for most part, but also in TV films and projections for live-action performances.

After a couple of years, I was asked to work as an assistant professor in the Tokyo Polytechnic University (Graphic Department, Animation specialty). I worked full-time at the university, but I also had some freelance works from my previous workplace. I also started to work in translation at that time.

How did you come into contact with Luxology and modo?

I got to know many people related to the CG industry in Japan while I was working at Tokyo Polytechnic University, including people of D-storm (and NGC), and they asked me to help them with some translation.  I had a chance to go to SIGGRAPH 2004 as a translator, and was very lucky to attend the presentation that Brad was giving about modo and Nexus. I was so impressed with it and found it hard to believe that there was such a software (modo) that had so much of what I wanted.

So that’s the first time I saw something of Luxology. After some time, I had a chance to help with the translation of a modo presentation in Japan. That’s where I met Immanuel Martin and Alan Hastings!

How did start your association with IKIF+?

After I left my work in the university, I kept working as a freelance artist. Recently I have been working under a series of production contracts with the IKIF+ studio whenever they have a big project and much work on-site
(and I still do freelance projects outside IKIF+ between these big film projects.) The range of animation projects in which I have participated at IKIF+ is quite large. I’ve worked in animation on their feature film, TV, commercials, video games, and artists’ short film projects.

Please tell us about your work with modo...

I started using modo at version 201. But at that time, it was very difficult to introduce a new software in the animation production pipeline. This was because many Japanese productions prefer general CG softwares, rather than a specialized software, like modo was at that time.

Doraemon: Nobita’s Great Battle of the Mermaid King

But in 2008, I got a contract position where I was responsible of a big portion in the CG part of a feature film. I introduced modo in our pipeline, for modeling, UV and texturing. Almost all of the mechanical transportation and spaceships were modeled in modo 302. And great part of these ship’s textures were painted in modo as well. The English title of the movie is Doraemon: The New Record of Nobita: Spaceblazer (released to theaters in March 2009).

Then in 2009, I used modo for the modeling of a mechanical eye device, in a mid-length animation film that comes together with that worldwide known video game. It is the latest one of the Street Fighter series, called Super Street Fighter IV (this will be released during this year, by CAPCOM).

In the same year, I used modo 401 in the underwater scene of another Doraemon movie, Doraemon: Nobita’s Great Merman Sea Battle (in theaters in March 2010). modo was used in this movie for modeling, painting, texturing, and rendering.

What other software do you use?

I work with other CG softwares in combination with modo. I still need Lightwave for the animation part, and also use After Effects for the compositing. I plan to keep using modo in coming projects, whenever possible. So I strongly hope (as many other modo users do), that the rigging and animation could be done inside modo, soon!

Why do you use modo?

Do you want a nice hearing little lie, or a harsh truth?  Ha ha, I’m just joking. I’ll make it the easy way, tell it just the way it is.

I have been a LightWave user for a very long time, and I’m still using it because it is very light and simple. I like softwares that are simple. And modo is quite simple too. I mean, it is easy to use. modo has a similar background to LightWave, that is maybe why it was easy for me to get used to it. And also, I liked very much its cool design.  modo had all the things that I wished LightWave Modeler’s had. It made it very easy for me to model and UV, the idea of getting the workplace fit just to where I wanted was so great! and UV unwrapping was so easy and let me keep all my UVs nice and tidy. These were things that I was really needing at that time.

modo also has the ability to use instances and replicators. That makes me possible to handle scenes with tons of information and render it giving out excellent results.  An example of what I’m talking about is the undersea scene I made for the movie of Doraemon. It has a huge amount of rocks, corals, seaweed in it. I could make a group of corals by instancing with mesh paint. Give form to the seabed and rocks with the sculpting tools. Treat the textures by combining painted textures (in paint mode) and procedural textures. And then render it all in a reasonable time. This would have been almost impossible to do in other software that have a “limit” in handling such an amount of geometry.  Another good thing is that, I could get different render passes from a single scene, and this is something that so important for us who work in CG for anime films. We take this render passes into After Effects or other compositing software, and treat them to match the hand-drawn artworks. It is good that you can get in modo a very realistic render, but it is also important for us to be able to separate it to different passes, so to treat and composite these to look like an cell-anime or an illustration.

I am certain I can’t go back to other modeling softwares now. And I will use modo even more, when it becomes able to animate characters in it! (This is something that many many many people working in anime here in Japan want).

Another little wish of mine (though this doesn’t have much to do with an answer to your question) is that now that modo is still developing, it’s interface also develops and changes to keep things nice and tidy. ‘Cause that’s one of the things I like in modo!

We are seeing more females creating computer graphics - have you noticed this and do you have any ideas on what is causing the change?

Well, sincerely, I don’t know! But I can speculate about it.

When I started working in CG, about almost ten years ago, there where really very few women in this area. You could see a lot of women in the scanning and painting section (I’m talking about a production studio that make anime films). But in my section which is 3D, there were only one or two females in a group of about 12 people. So you can get an idea of the ratio.

If I think of a reason, it may be that CG softwares at that times seemed to look “difficult”, “mechanical” and “hard”. You would also need some ability in spatial perception, rational thinking and calculation. It is said that men tend to be more able with skills that need these abilities. But then, women are more skilled to work with design and color. That may be the reason that there are more women in works that treat color. Maybe my brain is slightly more manish in that aspect! Ha ha ha.

But in these past ten years or so, there has been an increase in number of works in GC. People’s awareness in CG works have also increased with the number of titles that have been winning awards all over the world. People became also interested in how these works have been made, so there have been many more presentation of the making of these films, as well as the acknowledgement of their creators. User profiles and user case studies are presented in exhibitions, seminars, web pages and DVDs. So now more people are able to know that CG isn’t really such a thing “to be scared about”, that it can be used easily to make great works (that doesn’t mean effortlessly, of course), and most of all, that CG is fun!

And also, I think the CG softwares have also developed in such a way that is easier for people to use. There are constantly new tools developed to get the aimed results, in an easier and faster way. You don’t need to know about programming to get an character animated, or to paint in 3D, or to have a nice lighting in your 3D. You don’t have to go under the stress of writing scripts and expressions to have things working on your scene. Of course, the knowledge of these can be very useful. But anyway, you can now simply do what you want, design, paint or animate, even having fun, without feeling that it is “difficult”, “mechanical” and “hard” anymore.

On the other hand, CG softwares are making a good effort of making their interfaces look good and understandable. That’s important, ‘cause the efficiency of a software depends greatly on how fast the user can get familiar with it. And also, there’s much more information on these softwares available, which help the users to find quickly the answers to their questions, and get connected to a growing CG community.

So, I really think that there are not only more women using CG in these days. There are many more younger talent, both male and female, that are being able to use CG softwares. So I am looking forward to being able to see great works coming!

Luxology thanks you Patricia Hishikaw for your time!