Meet the artist
We chat to the experienced artist about his work on blockbuster movies, his busy day-to-day life, and his nifty studio setup in a custom-built garden shed
Adam Dewhirst chats to us about his work on blockbuster movies
Adam Dewhirst is head of Creatures & Characters at UNIT Studios Film&tv – one of the latest key artists hires for the growing studios. Dewhirst has over 16 years of experience in VFX spanning film, TV, commercials, games and children’s television. Dewhirst’s film career started at Framestore, before moving onto Cinesite, MPC, The Mill London and New York as well as DNEG. Some of his film credits include The Golden Compass, which went on to win both an Oscar and a Bafta, World War Z, The Dark Knight, Clash Of The Titans, Maleficent, Les Miserables, John Carter Of Mars, Prince Of Persia, Hobbs & Shaw and Guardians Of The Galaxy where his team were responsible for bringing Rocket Raccoon to life. Some of his most famous commercials include: Monster.com’s ‘Opportunity Roars’, John Lewis’ ‘Man On The Moon’, Playstation’s ‘The King’ and Heathrow’s ‘Coming Home’. Dewhirst’s passion for creatures and characters extends to his talks, his tutorials, the lunchcrunch sessions he has run at many client spaces, and his own BTS breakdowns.
Do you have a background in 3D design or are you self taught?
I studied graphic design at Camberwell College of Arts, but about halfway through I knew that it wasn’t for me, but rather than quit, I completed the course, got my degree, and immediately registered for a threemonth intensive Maya course at Escape Studios. From there on it has pretty much been hands-on learning on the job and more role-based experience. Escape gave me enough skills-based training to get my foot in the door, everything else I taught myself and learnt within the brilliant teams I have been a part of.
How do you keep things fresh?
Honestly, it’s hard. If I’m sculpting for myself, I will always sculpt big troll dudes, I just love bulky, oversized, lumbering creatures. They’re my jam! But it’s good to at least realise that, so when I do have some downtime, I try to encourage myself
to explore other creature types. I always find it rewarding when you try something new – you may not succeed the first time, or the second, but when you do nail it, it’s that much more satisfying.
I find that the same can be said of the study of anatomy. It’s complex and it requires dedication – but when you get it, it’s really rewarding.
What’s your day-to-day life like?
During lockdown I’m working a later day. In the morning I look after my kids from 9-12, we have a family lunch, then I am getting down to work from 12.30-8.30. I’m still working a full day, it’s just split into two parts. I’m fortunate to have a separate office to work in that’s in our garden. The Shed studio! It means I can pretty much isolate myself, and have a productive day. My day hugely varies, so there is no standard day. I could be working on a creature myself, or be involved in a creative concept brief or early test. I could be reviewing work from our junior artists, or testing our new software and workflows. I try to make a plan the night before so I can hit the ground running and tick off as much as possible.
How long have you been creating in 3D and what software do you use?
I’ve been working since 2004, so about 16 years now – primarily I use Maya and Zbrush, that’s my bread and butter. But I also use Mari, Substance Painter, Keyshot – really any tool that can help improve the quality of your work is worth knowing. I don’t like to get bogged down in timeconsuming renders, my main goal is to realise my concept on screen, and then if I’m going to create a full pipeline-ready asset (rarely for personal work), then I’ll follow a more traditional asset creation route. Mostly I work between Maya and Zbrush for modelling and texture, and then rendering and post effects in Keyshot and Photoshop.
Can you walk us through a typical piece from conception to final render?
For client work, it’s quite a logical process. We normally receive a 2D piece of concept art, and I’ll spend a day or so doing a quick realisation of that as a 3D sculpt in Zbrush. Once we have that, we present it back to the client, and if it’s okay, I’ll make a base mesh in Maya, before sculpting more refined detail and anatomy. This then gets textured in Substance Painter or Mari before being rendered in Redshift. Along the way we present as many of the stages as possible back to our clients in order to get feedback and ensure we don’t take the asset off at a tangent. It’s a pretty flexible process and
this also allows me to input my own ideas onto the client’s initial brief. I think of it more as a conversation than an instruction. It’s collaborative.
“IF I’M SCULPTING FOR MYSELF, I WILL ALWAYS SCULPT BIG TROLL DUDES, I JUST LOVE BULKY, LUMBERING CREATURES. THEY’RE MY JAM!”
Can you tell us a bit about your current studio setup?
A few years ago I built a custom office in our garden. We changed the specification of the design so that I could get more light inside and have the door on the smaller wall. It’s about as wide as my desk, and I try to get as much up on the walls as possible to keep the floor space clear. Because I have a limited power line running from our house. I try to only keep the essentials in the office – monitors, computer, that’s it. The printer/scanner etc all sit in the house, but run on a Wi-fi connection so I can print wirelessly. I have a lovely collection of skulls and anatomy refs on my desk. It’s great to have this to hand, because I can pick it up and move it around to see how the light catches the forms – this really helps me to understand the underlying structure.
A couple of nice nods to previous films I’ve worked on sit in the office, I have a 1/6th scale replica of Harvey Dent from The Dark Knight, a limited-edition poster from John Carter, and shortly after Guardians Of The Galaxy came out, I met Aaron Kuder who was drawing the comic at the time, he gave me a signed drawing of Rocket Racoon, that is my prized possession – I’m a huge comic book collector.
How often do you sketch?
With pen and paper, not often enough! I do however try to do some form of daily sculpting – that could be 20 mins in Zbrush before I start my day, or more likely it’s one hour on the ipad, using Forger to sculpt while I relax at the end of the day. I’ve been using Forger a lot lately (you’ll notice this on my Instagram page) – it’s mobile
and incredibly robust, so it’s a great way to conceive of ideas while away from my PC. If anything is good enough, I can always export it and work it up further in Zbrush.
How often do you work on your personal portfolio?
Not as often as I would like, however UNIT are so supportive of me exploring training and software testing, and this affords me the opportunity to create something to test out for those purposes. I’m currently training our asset team in anatomy and muscle systems, so we are doing a lot of skeleton building and I’m showing them how to reproportion a basic digidouble mesh to different scans – which means I’m having lots of fun scanning my colleagues’ heads – and all of this goes into a central repository for me to play with. Note that if I ever ask you if you want your head scanned, you’re probably better off saying no, haha. I’m waiting for the Oculus Quest to come back into stock, so I can upgrade my VR headset and get sculpting in Medium. I made a Venom sculpt a while ago that I’m dying to get back to!
Going forward is there a dream project that you would like to work on?
Right now I’d love to create a massive cityscape through procedural methods. I really want the chance to delve into Houdini. I’d also love to create a short film project for one of my main trolls. They all have a ‘nature first’ drive, so it would be nice to showcase the world that they live in. That being said creature jobs are always fun, so something new and original would be fun (I might have one of those up my sleeve already).