28 minutes with Jacys Lin on his career, personal short film 'E-Guan' and his latest 52moshi.com TP training
Cebas: Hi Jacys Lin, please give us an update paragraph about yourself. Tell us how you learned FX in Taiwan and your journey to Vancouver FX studios...and beyond.
(Note: contents are different from the video. There may be English subtitles if there is demand)
Jacys Lin: Yeah, I started with a commercial company followed by an animation company in Taiwan for about 3-4 years, then opportunity knocked and I got an amazing chance to work for Square Enix, a well-known Japanese game company. I joined their cinematics department, Visual Works. After a few years, another opportunity knocked and I moved to ScanlineVFX Vancouver for about 3 years. I had a great time there because Scanline is a thinkingParticles-friendly company, and TP is one of my favourite plugins.
Then after that due to a family issue back home, I had to move back to Asia. Luckily for me, I manage to join ILM and moved to their Singapore office. And now I just got another great chance to work in New Zealand, for Weta Digital as their Senior FX Technical Director and this just started five months ago! I made the journey this year.
Connect with Jacys Lin @ <jclinstudio@gmail.com> Wechat ID: 'jacyslin'
Visit his TP advanced training at Gumroad https://gumroad.com/l/pSoYk
PRC student, sign up at http://www.52moshi.com/article/370
Cebas: I heard you started a short film project of your own?
Jacys Lin: Yeah, I am currently working on my own short film in my spare time, and there will be a lot of destruction effects as well inside my project. The film is called “E-Guan”, comes from a legendary eastern character from history in China called 'Guan Yu.'
Cebas: JC, tell us how you came with up with the idea, and how many hours you are spending on the Guan short film?
Jacys Lin: Yeah, I have created several RnDs (see video) but I'm not a pro when it comes to sound works. I need some volunteers in this area.
Cebas: So, were you a user since TP 4 or 5 and what major difference, as a ‘legendary’ user of TP :) did you see with the launch of TP 6?
Jacys Lin: I started from TP4 and with the epic Joe Scarr’s video tutorial. Then I got a great opportunity to join the cebas thinkingParticles Beta tester program for TP 5, and I got to learned so much with the many great TP artists. ShapeCollision is one of my favourite feature. And the upgraded VolumeBreaker helps me a lot on my short film fx.
Cebas: Jacys, what is your specialized area when it comes to VFX - what do you yourself enjoy doing most? Did you get to do those effects or were you asked to do some other effects?
Jacys Lin: Hmm,.. actually I started as a modeller and then moved into rigging/animation in school. Since I have a lot of passion to learn new stuff, I joined the FX and Creature territory very soon. My favourite part is rigid body dynamic.
Cebas: Did you leave Taiwan for good because you could not find any avenue as an VFX artist? Spill some beans on how the VFX industry in Taiwan is like? Who are the big names and the monolithic companies..? Did you like doing vfx in your home country?
Jacys Lin: This question will get me in trouble. :D The best VFX company now probably is MoonShine VFX.
Cebas: What is your opinion when comparing VFX technology and use in cinema / game designs between Taiwan and Mainland - what are some of the positive developments and what are the negative things?
Jacys Lin: I dont know the situation in China, sorry.
(LIVE recorded moshi.com interview with Jacys Lin from Shanghai. Thank you to Moshi for sharing this: Title: VFX career moving from 40,000 to 100,000 annual pay.)
Cebas: From experience, what do you find… usually are the most difficult aspects of 3d/ fx work - creating explosion seems easy or is it? Creating fluids or smoke? - procedural destruction? - and how do you resolve it?
Jacys Lin: destruction and emitting according smoke is my favo, and tP did a great job on destruction. I dont even meet any serious problem while making FX with tP. I LOVE TP. More than Houdini, to be honest.
Cebas: Please give us a few particular memorable stories you have had with fellow users at a studio while creating the special effects / animations with the cebas plug-ins
Jacys Lin: No. I signed the NDA, I cannot say anything.
Cebas: How did cebas software integrate into your production pipeline? How straightforward was it?
Jacys Lin: Now seems deadline is getting popular and someone has released the script that could send jobs to deadline. It works well.
Cebas: What was the most fun or rewarding part of a project for you?
Jacys Lin: When people comments this is awesome.
Cebas: In your view, what is your wish for cebas software to achieve that is not currently doing for you?
Jacys Lin: Please release a maya version. Please.
Cebas: what projects can we expect from you in the future?
Jacys Lin: For now I probably will stay in NZ for some years, not sure when I will go back. But still I will work on my short using my free time. And 3dsMax + thinkingParticles will be my main pipeline.
Thank you Jacys for the interview and we wish you all the best
in your VFX career!