What would you say is the most important thing when working on animation projects for major companies?

Mia: In my opinion, it's all about translating ideas. If you want a project to run smoothly, you have to really understand the vision your client has in their head. And then of course you have to surpass it! We have some clients who we know so well, they can give us an idea scribbled on a napkin and let us run with it. That's what you aim for, but it's not always possible!

Jason: Adding value to their storyboards. You often find that Creative Directors don't know that much about 3D, so it's our job to help them with new and different ways of executing their ideas. Also adding that little bit extra to each job goes a long way to repeat business.

You told me you also got a Maya license: do you work with both software for each project, or do you favor one of the two depending on the project?

Marc: We have great Maya character animators and riggers. So if there is any character animation that needs to be done, we always go through Maya®. If it is a smaller job, we may also render it through Maya, but we will usually do all the animation within Maya, and then take it through to Lightwave for texturing, lighting, and rendering.

Do you find it easy to work with both at the same time? Are they highly compatible?

Marc: It is pretty easy to work with both at the same time. We use Point Oven to transfer the animation between the two packages, it works very well for us. If the animation being transferred has many polygons, it can get a bit slow because of the file size of the MDD, but otherwise I have no complaints.

If there were 3 adjectives you’d pick that’d fit LightWave the best?

Marc: Fast, Friendly, and Reliable.
Jason: I think Marc put it best. Think that needs to go under the LW logo.
Mia: Marc – that description sounds like you! ;)

Some things that you’re looking for in future versions? (and as it goes, for
LightWave® CORE)

Marc: A fluid simulator would be great. Not like Realflow™, but something like Dynamite for Lightwave. We use Dynamite at the moment, but it really needs to be integrated, it is way too limiting now. There is no possible way to get realistic looking wispy smoke inside of Lightwave without Dynamite. This would be a very useful feature to add.

Jason: Better particle system.

What companies have you been involved with?

We have done work for several major brands like Chevrolet/GMC, Pepsi/Mirinda/Doritos, Barclays, Kelloggs, Philip Morris (Marlboro/Virginia Slims/Parliament), Pizza Hut. In addition, we do a lot of work for regional and local brands ranging from banks to bottled water.

What about the animation market right now in Dubai and in the Middle East?

We still feel that there is a lot of education needed about what kinds of things you can achieve in animation. People have either put off 3D because of bad experiences with poor quality work or they think that the high end 3D is not within their budgets, etc. We work very hard to dispel these myths and it is exciting to see more and more boards written with 3D in mind. With the economic downturn many clients are turning to CG to create good content, rather than having the expense of live action shoots. So things are changing and growing. Dubai 2009 is a very different place to Dubai 2005.

How are things going for Clockwork VFX right now?

Mia: We are back to the exciting and terrifying times, I am pleased to say. We are on the brink of another expansion that will see us adding to our LightWave 3D® and Maya teams, plus we are looking at adding editing and onlining services.