Get Inspired - An Interview with Janine Pauke - Part I

Thanks for taking time to do this interview; we know you’re a little busy at the moment with multiple projects, including the brand-new CGI course for Photigy, so let’s just jump right in. You launched your own studio, Liandi, last year (September 2019), but you have been involved with CGI for quite a while. Can you give us a brief history of your work experience in the industry and how you got started?

It all started when I was 12; my mom brought home a 3D software package called Dali for my Amiga computer. It was very basic, but I loved reading about raytracing in the manual. A couple of years later I was using Cinema 4D version 1.5, which was a lot more user friendly. That experience eventually led me to take a job as an in-house CGI artist at Maxon Computer Germany in 1999—Maxon as you know is the publisher of C4D. I also provided tech support.

A couple years later, I moved to the UK and continued working as an in-house CGI artist at Maxon Computer UK. From there, I went to work as a digital matte painter at the Moving Picture Company in London, making digital movie environments and backgrounds with Photoshop, Maya and RenderMan. [Editor’s note: readers not familiar with the history of CGI in the movie industry may enjoy knowing that Pixar’s RenderMan was used to create the first feature-length computer-animated film, Toy Story in 1995].

That’s an impressive start to your career. What were the movies you had an opportunity to work on?

I worked on visual effects for both Aliens vs. Predator and Stage Beauty, both released in 2004. [Editor’s note: readers can see some of Janine’s matte paintings here: http://liandifoto.nl/files/avp1.jpg and here: http://liandifoto.nl/files/avp2.jpg]

What came next?

For the next decade, I worked as a freelance CGI artist in England and later the Netherlands, doing work for companies including Design Bridge, Landor and McCann, which was McCann Erickson back then. The work often involved making realistic renders and animations of products at various stages of the design process. Brands included Rémy Martin, Heineken, Ballantine’s, Macallan, Fosters, Marlboro and Walls.

During that time, I also co-founded 3D Fluff, making and selling video tutorials for Cinema 4D. I took a break for a while to be a full-time mother and then went back to working as a CGI artist at Label4VISUALS in the Netherlands in 2017. I worked as a 3D animator and VR/AR content creator, working with Cinema 4D, Octane and Unity.

With such varied experience, did you ever take classes, were you mentored by anyone, or did you teach yourself when you first started out?

I’m completely self-taught. There was no YouTube back then, no video tutorials and the Internet was too slow anyway. I did have some online contact with other 3D artists, but they were about as experienced as I was. A few written tutorials were all I came across. My first task as a Maxon employee in 1999 was actually translating those written tutorials and making a database of tips and tricks for Cinema 4D when I was 17. That’s when I really started learning a lot more.

That’s amazing. The mental image of you creating a Tips & Tricks database at just 17 is great. What were some of your first projects?

My first commercial project as a freelancer was making realistic renders of a bottle of Rémy Martin cognac. I made a few different renders with variations in the bottle design and label artwork (they provided me with the CAD models and artwork). They must have liked the results because that was what jump-started my freelance career and I made many more bottle renders for them over the years after that.

Gradually I also branched out into animations and other subjects but when I look back, it’s those bottle renders that I was especially good at. That was the inspiration for me to make a modern-day version of a similar Rémy Martin bottle for my current portfolio. I’d love to do more of that kind of work.

Did you have a particular niche that appealed to you right away?

Photorealism! And lighting. But those two things go hand-in-hand. I found myself making a lot of realistic still-life images, analyzing the lighting in photos and applying that to my 3D scenes. I realize now that a lot of my inspiration came from product photography.

Who were some of your clients?

Design Bridge is one company I did a lot of work for in London. I made realistic images and animations of bottles and other products by big brands there. Landor was another one, a branding agency. I did a lot of work for Marlboro there, visualizing interior spaces where smokers could slowly kill themselves without harming others—at least that was my take on it. I also worked as a Cinema 4D trainer; McCann Erickson was one of the companies where I taught.

Let’s talk about the process a bit. In general terms, what segments make up a CGI/3D workflow? What tools are needed for each segment of the pipeline? What tools do you use?

I use Cinema 4D for almost everything, including the modeling, materials, lighting, animation and most special effects. Most of my projects are rendered with Octane (a 3rd-party GPU-based render engine), which is seamlessly integrated with Cinema 4D. You can use C4D’s own render engine as well of course, especially if you don’t have a fast video card. C4D runs on pretty much any reasonably modern PC or Mac, and product visualization projects aren’t as complex as say big architectural projects, so no need for expensive hardware.

I use Photoshop for creating textures and for post-production, and Adobe Premiere for videos. A lot of people use After Effects for post-production of animations, but I only have some basic knowledge of that program, so I stick with Premiere.