The Battle for Perfection has taken Fausto from Brazil to Blizzard.
CGSociety :: Artist Profile
by Renee Dunlop
In preparation for ADAPT 2008, we bring one more artist profile from ADAPT 2007. Blizzard artist Fausto de Martini traveled to Montreal last September to present a lecture on his tasks as Lead Modeler on the StarCraft cinematic, a position he landed through his artwork submission of Marine, a path that started on CGTalk.
The Storm before the Blizzard
When de Martini first began his career in CG, he had already been freelancing for a long time. “I started my training in a small company before moving into bigger companies mainly doing advertisements, the main scope for VFX in Brazil.” However, he yearned to do something with a more creative scope, and had his sights on moving to the US to expand his opportunities there. To accomplish this, he began developing his personal portfolio of characters, leaning towards a futuristic Sci-Fi style.
“In Brazil we don’t have any universities for computer graphics like in Canada and the US. We have some good courses that you can get but overall, everybody is self taught in Brazil. I was surrounded by very talented people. We started together, we were learning together, and that really helped me. It was a nice exchange.”
He worked until the evening on his day job, and his personal work didn’t start until 10PM. He often worked until two in the morning. He did this for a long time, to the point where he was so overworked he couldn’t touch the Marine character anymore. His friend Mario repeatedly pushed de Martini to post his character on CG Talk, and the rest is history.
“I got some great feedback for that character. People really liked the design, they felt it was very interesting concept. I think that is very important for me and my work is the fact that when I model something, I don’t just try to create a model. I try to create something that is new, something people will be inspired with.”
He was hired at Blizzard Entertainment, fulfilling his dream of coming to the US. He’s been very happy there and is very protective of the company and impressed with his peers. “Right now my mentors are all my coworkers. They produce amazing work. We are always talking about art, and looking at references, so it’s a very creative environment. It helps the artists to improve so much. I think it’s about sharing, and always having an edge, always growing as an artist.” In the year since we met at ADAPT ’07 his title has been changed to Cinematic Modeling Supervisor. He said the work is the same but the title was modified to follow the industry standards. However, his humbleness kept him from initially mentioning not only the title has changed, but he now has leads under him to take care of smaller parts of the project.
