Creative destruction with Sandy Sutherland
Sandy Sutherland a.k.a Lippykid has been working in feature films’ visual effects for over 12 years, collaborating with companies like Weta Digital, Framestore, Animal Logic and Dr D. His strong set of skills are usually focused around FX destruction and simulation, with a solid 3D Generalist background. Throughout his career he’s taken part in many of Hollywood’s blockbusters, Oscar winning films and a wide range of commercial work. We caught up with Sandy to find out what got him into the field, the challenges of destroying a space shuttle and what softwares he usually works with.
You’ve done some amazing VFX work — Lippykid was about getting “back into the sandpit” of VFX work, learning new techniques and remembering why you got into VFX in the first place. Can you tell us a little about Lippykid’s set-up, what you’ve got coming up, and why you got into VFX in the first place.
Thanks! Lippykid is just me, working from my home office, mostly working with just a single workstation. I’m lucky enough to know quite a few people scattered all over the world working at some of the best VFX companies, which is where I source a lot of work from. It’s about as far as you can get from some of my previous jobs at places like Weta and Framestore, where you have vast amounts of computing power at hand, and can call for help at any time. For the 12+ years I’ve been working in VFX I’ve been a Maya guy, but since starting out as Lippykid, I’ve moved to Houdini and Unreal Engine 4.
“It can be easy to get stuck doing the same kind of work when you are part of a large film VFX team, so going out and sourcing my own work was an antidote to that.”
It was a pretty scary prospect and still often is, but I’ve managed to land a few great projects since starting out in April 2015.
Forcing myself to use new software has been daunting but has also given me a huge creative push. Houdini is absolutely fantastic for FX work which is my main focus. It can be known as a package that has a steep learning curve, but once it “clicked” I’ve found it to be very consistent and logical, which makes it much easier to work as a one man army, where you often need to take on multiple aspects of a project. I’ve also found using Unreal Engine 4 and working in realtime to be a huge breath of fresh air, especially after years of running heavy and slow FX simulations on feature films. Don’t get me wrong though — I lucked out big time and loved many of the films I worked on!
We’d love to know a bit about your work on Gravity — what were the challenges in creating Alfonso Cuaron’s vision, on such a VFX heavy shoot. Was the approach you and the team took completely unique? What were the major surprises, and the pre-production challenges?
It’s a bit of a long story, but Gravity was well and truly underway before I joined the team. I was at Framestore in London when the first mentions of the project started to appear, but I was about to move back to Australia. It was disappointing thinking I might miss out on what was sounding like an amazing project, but that was that. Back in Australia, Fury Road was just firing up and I was part of the early CG team on that film before the shoot was unfortunately delayed 12 months. That spurred the move to New Zealand for 5 months where I worked on Tintin at Weta. Tintin was a great show, but my partner and I decided we really missed London and we decided to move back there. Through sheer luck, I was back at Framestore just as the FX work was really kicking off on Gravity, and I was handed the initial destruction of the space shuttle shot. In the time I was away from Framestore some of my old colleagues there had developed some fantastic destruction tools — still the best tools and team I’ve worked with — and I was then left with the fun task of destroying the shuttle. Technically, it was by far the most detailed destruction work I’ve ever had to do, on one of the most detailed CG models I’ve ever seen — every thermal ceramic tile and patch of insulation cloth was modelled on that crazy thing!
I would have to say it’s certainly a career highlight, amongst what was a crazy couple of years, where I became a Dad, moved countries 3 times, and worked with Alfonso Cuaron, George Miller, and Steven Spielberg consecutively. It was a dream run!
VFX seemed like an almost second-nature career for you. What was the moment in your early life that made you love and get into CG/VFX work?
I used to build model kits as a kid, my Grandfather made remote control planes and often designed and tooled the pieces himself using AutoCAD. He was the one who introduced me to things like Photoshop, and on school holiday visits I would often spend evenings drawing and clone brushing people out of photos . I remember I did a pixel by pixel drawing of a Spitfire plane in MS paint! Thinking back, it was seeing the film Independence Day that made me realise that you could actually use computers to make images for a living. The Matrix was also a massive influence for me. I made a 6 minute long animation about the development of a thought called “Mind Machine” for my final High School art project — it has The Matrix influence all over it. I made it in 3D Studio Max, and despite the fact I really had no idea what I was doing, I’m still pretty proud of that thing. It was shown as part of a travelling art exhibition called Art Express, and was even shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. I don’t really remember wanting to do anything else really, I’ve always just liked making things. I like the technical/art split that working in CG often requires.
Tell us a little bit about Polly’s Gone — we read about it on your blog, and it sounded pretty intriguing — personal project, or something commercial?
Polly’s Gone is a personal project, inspired by watching my two young boys grow up. I’ve renamed it “The Rip”, it’s basically a physics driven platform puzzle game, set inside the mind of a 4 year old. It’s one of those things where I know the scope of it is probably well beyond my abilities, but I like to be at that point where you start something, and someone asks “Is that possible?” and the answer is “Maybe”. That is a fun place to be. It’s kind of on the backburner as in recent weeks I’ve had a burning idea for a VR game that I’m having lots of fun chipping away at. It’s called “Flak Jack” and is a WW1 themed flying game featuring a haphazard Scottish pilot and his far more capable co-pilot dog. Yes, it’s as mad as it sounds. You control the plane with your head movements, and shoot with the motion controllers. but it’s super early days so who knows what it will turn into. I’ve always got a few personal projects on the go that I dip in and out of. I find putting something down and then coming back to it later often gives you a fresh perspective and new ideas. It’s also a good filter — the ideas worth following stay with you for a long time.
You’ve done some work with Hammerhead VR — what do you think the future holds for VR and VFX?
I’ve found that VFX is an awesome starting point for moving into VR development. There is a lot of technical crossover. There also seems to be a huge demand for people with Film VFX and realtime skills. VR is in a really exciting place where nobody really knows where it will go, everyone is still trying to develop the language of VR, so there are very few rules yet. It’s the ultimate “Sandpit”. I love seeing how many groups of people are coming together to throw their ideas into the mix, it’s all just very accessible and you really don’t need millions of dollars to get something out there. Small groups and individuals can have their say and make big things that have real impact. That’s pretty much the idea behind the name Lippykid itself.
How might Movidiam be of use to commercial VFX freelancer?
The thing I’ve found since starting out as a freelancer is that you really have no idea where the next job could come from. Especially working in CG, there are no boundaries to where in the world someone can be in order to collaborate with them on a project. Movidiam is an awesome way of focusing those kind of like minded people together.
A lot of your work includes destruction sequences, after spending a huge amount of time creating is it satisfying to see them destroyed on screen?
It sure is, especially when they are major events in the film. The work I did on The Dark Knight was hugely satisfying, partly because The Joker is such an awesome character, and that hospital explosion shot was at IMAX resolution. It’s one of the few FX elements I’ve had to make where most people really don’t know it’s CG. The bottom two rows of windows in that building are real, but the top two rows are all CG glass, synced up to real debris mortar cannons they used on set.
Likewise the shuttle destruction in Gravity is the culmination of that amazing super long opening shot, and is the event that kicks off the rest of the film. I was freakishly lucky to be handed both of those shots!
