What are you working on at the moment?

The Annoying Thing seems to remain my destiny for a while longer. My current occupation involves him as the star in a TV commercial and some print ads for a company called Harley World in Amsterdam. I have granted them limited rights to the character and have a lot of creative freedom to do an animation pretty much as a sequel to the first one. It contains a slightly different wardrobe for "the thing", but what I find most exiting about it is that I was able to involve Daniel Malmedahl to do a brand new sound for it. And this time, the Annoying Thing will attempt to ride a real bike!

Did you enjoy the architectural visualisation you did recently?

Yes, very much. I mostly do organic stuff, so I found it exciting to have to measure where to put the points and follow precise patterns. The texturing was especially fun as I could calculate the exact sizes and quantities of bricks and stuff and make them fit precisely into 3D geometry as everything was built to an exact scale. A lot more thinking and planning went into making these models than the more "intuitive" kind of workflow I am used to. I wouldn't want to spend the rest of my life doing architectural models, but I'd love to get back to this once in a while if I get the opportunity.

I love your picture of the solar system, any more plans for astronomical animation or images?

I would love to, but have no actual plans for it I'm afraid. I have tried to get jobs in this field but never got any luck with that. I have always loved watching all those astronomical science-shows on TV. Of course because I am interested in the subject itself, but also because I get an almost childish enjoyment out of the CGI-artwork filling up the shows. It tends to be very simple stuff, but I like it anyway. It is such a perfect "media" for illustrating astronomical events and visualising the vastness of space that anything from the opening sequence of "Contact" to the simplest balls spinning around gets me sold as the imagery always manages to tell what it intends to. With LightWave in my hands I have done many experiments with astronomical set-ups, just because I can and to blow myself away with the scenarios I create. It was one of those experiments that led to the image of the solar system you refer to. I was in my best astro-freak mode and tried to build the entire solar system to scale, using NASA calculations for guidance. "To scale" meant not only having the planets in their accurate sizes, but to have them positioned with accurate distances from each other, having them rotate at accurate speeds, following accurate trajectories and so on (do not try this at home, kids ;). No need to get into the hows and whys, but this did not work out! However, this ended up with me having to comfort myself with a more compact set-up, an animation and the image you refer to. Though it is not showing any perspective in distances I am still amazed by the huge differences of scale it shows in our solar system.

Have you spent time on yourself lately?

Hmm... do you mean like going out buying new clothes and foundation creams for my skin? If so, the answer is no, but I get a strange feeling I did not quite understand the question... :)

I'm talking about the self-portrait model of yourself! :)

The direct answer is no, I haven't worked on that model for a long time. If I got around to it I would do new hands for it, as I think they are really poor. But the thing is that my beloved NIN-shirt in the real world is falling apart and full with holes, so it is emotionally disturbing to be reminded of its glory days from viewing that model.

Hehehe! Last thing, do you have a present for our readers?

I was thinking of my chopper-model, the one shown at the top of Page 2.

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Cool! That's great Erik, thanks very much for the model and for talking to us. Keep us posted about the follow-up animation for the Annoying Thing! Readers who want to see more of Erik's work should point their browsers here.