What sort of machine are you using for LightWave?

At home I have an old P4 1.9GHz with 1GB RAM - it's one of the three machines we made the original Akryls on. At work, I generally use a dual Xeon 3GHz machine with 2GB RAM.

Are there any plug-ins you wouldn't be without?

FPrime - it would be inconceivable to work without it now. Even if I only use it for previews, it gains the user an unthinkable amount of time to prepare for a render.

In your opinion, should LightWave 3D stay separated or become integrated?

Oh integrated! With the ability to only load certain elements at the start of the program so that you can launch LightWaves for animation, rendering, modelling or all together as you like.

Are there any parts of LightWave that you've never learnt but would like to?

No... there are functions that I never use, but I'll learn them if and when I need to.

Tell me a bit about the history of Akryls?

It started with the final year film that Xavier and I made. It was a project where we were free to choose what we did and so we put ourselves in this universe based on the forms you see through a microscope. Each of these forms was a starting point modified by our imagination and inspiration, until they were ready to take their places in the Akryls universe. The name Akryls itself was likewise modified from a combination of the names of several of these microscopic creatures.

Were your inspirations for city and vehicles the same as for the other forms?

Yes, the starting point for finding these forms was the microscopic organisms and that's why the shapes are pretty organic, even though a lot of the detail is more mechanical. From that starting point we were led by our particular influences (SF films, Manga, etc.) without trying to emulate anything in particular.

Were you asked by Cube to provide a film for Futuroscope, or did you propose it?

It was Cube that contacted us. The idea was germinated in their first viewing of our short film and they contacted us while I was working at Duran on Immortel. Little by little, we got organised and started work on the project.

Did you use any products other than LightWave 3D for the 3D in the films?

No, all the 3D was done in LightWave, for both films.

What are the differences between a 70mm ride film and one intended for computer or video screen use?

There are quite a few. From the start, the content is different - the principal attraction of a ride film is the movement given to the seats to duplicate the camera movement in the film for the spectator. Therefore the animation has to be created for maximum impact, so we need to make the film more dynamic and with a lot more action than our first Akryls movie, which was, after all, something of a mood piece.

Even if the visual approach of both films is similar, they are pretty different when all's said and done, because the constraints of them aren't the same - the image format of the second film was much larger, so objects had to be more detailed, which made for heavier scenes that took longer to render at a higher resolution. Film can handle a much wider range of lighting conditions than video can as well - on the computer monitor if we corrected the image the same way as we would for projection you'd see no detail in the shadows or really bright spots. This means that we end up with a very flat image upon which you have to several different luminosity curves depending on the part of the image you are working on. To compare it with sound, it would be a bit like composing a soundtrack with just little living room speaker and having to constantly adjust the volume to compensate for the difference in power between those speakers and ones for a cinema hall.