 |
 |
|
|
Interview With Rob O'Neill
by Kate Caiazza |
Kate Caiazza is the Archives Manager at Exit Art and a former co-worker of Rob’s from the American Museum of Natural History.
KC: So I guess we should start from the beginning. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about where you grew up, what your parents did, your childhood.
RO: I was born and raised in Marine Park, Brooklyn. My mom stayed at home and my dad worked on Wall Street. I have a brother and a sister who are quite a bit older than me. As I got older, my mom became a New York City schoolteacher and taught mostly pre-K, kindergarten, and 1st grade.
KC: What was your school experience like?
RO: I hated school; I was terrible at it. It’s not that I wanted to just stay home and play, but I knew I didn’t want to be in school. I use to play sick all the time and didn’t do my homework.
KC: Did you know what you wanted to do when you grew up?
RO: No. I wanted to be everything; I wanted to be a magician or an artist. I was into comic books and cartoons; I liked drawing and nature, those were the two things I knew.
KC: So you survived school obviously and you went on to college. Where did you go to college and what did you study?
RO: College is when I really found my groove. I went to Brooklyn College and studied Anthropology. I was very focused, having interned at the American Museum of Natural History since I was fifteen. All I wanted to be was an archaeologist and studied really hard all through my undergrad. I did take other classes, such as film and art classes; I had a very well rounded education.
KC: Could you talk a little bit about your relationship to the American Museum of Natural History?
RO: I would say that the American Museum of Natural History is my home away from
home. When I was growing up in New York, I would beg my mom to take me there.
I went to an alternative high school for my junior and senior years in which we
were required to do internships. For three semesters I worked in the Museum’s
Education Department where I wrote up training materials for teachers, made inventories,
and built training carts to be brought out on the floor. I maintained a relationship
with the Museum all through college, working part-time.
By the time I had graduated
from college, I was interning in the Anthropology Department and shortly thereafter
was hired by the Cultural Resources Office. While there, I worked on issues of
repatriation, connecting cultural objects and human remains with contemporary
living tribes, acting as an intermediary and doing a lot of research. Even after
I left for graduate school I maintained a relationship with the museum, working
part-time as a systems administrator. I still have a relationship with the museum
today as a consultant and researcher on a number of projects there. It’s a place
I will always have a relationship with in some way or another.
KC: How long were you at the American Museum of Natural History all together?
RO: I think all together I worked there on a regular basis for almost nine years, from the age of fifteen all the way up through graduate school.
KC: Where did animation come in? What about your experiences at the museum led you to animation? Was this a continuation or a complete change of course?
RO: No, it was absolutely a continuum. I spent a lot of time as an undergrad learning how to measure things, quantify things, in order to understand human evolution. Once I got to the museum, I spent a lot of time looking over the shoulder of scientists, watching projects that used CAT scanning and other imaging technologies, where you had an object in your hand and then there on the computer screen was an identical 3D model. I started getting really interested in those technologies, while at the same time, I was going to a lot of movies and seeing a lot of special effects. Suddenly, I realized that it was all the same technology and I quickly I became enthralled with 3D graphics and that is what prompted me to pursue a graduate degree at Parsons. Visualization was my focus at Parsons; it was 3D graphics from a very broad perspective. While I studied a lot of traditional animation, my intention was always to use it to go back to science. Science was the fueling agent of my graduate career, especially from the conceptual side of things.
KC: Do you want to say a little bit more about your experiences at Parsons?
RO: I was sort of an odd ball at Parsons since I didn’t have a very formal art background, though I always maintained a very personal pursuit of art in my life. At Parsons I got very heavily into programming and high-end graphics and began mixing them together, looking at natural phenomena and trying to recreate them with computer graphics. My first major project resulted in a tool that allows animators to simulate a flock of birds for Maya. The idea came from my interest in natural group behavior and the ability to translate it into computer code and then into something highly visual and controllable by an animator. It was very much an artistic tool; it wasn’t a dynamic simulation. When I started thinking about my thesis I came back to the idea of repatriation. I started investigating animal behavior and realized that elephants are similar to humans in that they recognize their own bones and actually have a place where they bring bones to, a sort of bone yard. At one point, the museum was thinking of bringing in some circus elephants to parade around an elephant skeleton, until some of the scientists pointed out that such a parade could in fact cause a stampede. I took that story or that kernel of a story and wrote a script about a woolly mammoth, who upon his death is transported into the future to the museum to confront his own bones that are now on display.
KC: And so your interest in science and anthropology carried through into your schoolwork and your thesis. What did you do after you received your masters?
RO: While I was wrapping up my graduate degree, I was invited by Eyebeam to interview for a new position. Eyebeam is an art and technology center, at the time it was called Eyebeam Atelier and it was all about bringing together both young and established artists. They were building a team of four people to work on a project with the artist Moriko Mori and so I was brought in as one of the first of what at the time they called Production Apprentices or Fellows.
KC: Could you talk a little bit more about the Mariko Mori project?
RO: Mariko was building this sculpture called the Wave UFO, which was this giant
sculptural object which people could climb into, three at a time, and strap on
this headband that had brain wave sensors built in. Visitors would lie down and
watch a film that was controlled by their brain waves. If someone were calm it
would show one series of images and if they sensed a lot of brain activity, it
would show another. We created a prototype of the movie, which was a photo-realistic
zoom from space to earth and down into the Amazon rainforest. We also worked with
the planning of the actual real time graphics.
KC: From there you went to PDI/Dreamworks.
RO: Dreamworks were looking for younger people to take on the role of Character Technical Directors. They were having a hard time finding people and so they decided to do a search for what they were calling “diamonds in the rough,” people that had the knowledge but not necessarily the three to five years of experience they were looking for. And so I was hired and was there for two years as a Character TD, working on Shrek 2 and Madagascar.
KC: Did you work on any specific characters and what kind of programs were you using to create those characters?
RO: I didn’t really know what to expect, as this was a company that had been around for about twenty years and was a real leader in this field. And so I had to get up to speed really quickly on their proprietary software. At first I worked on really general things, things like setting up hats and eventually I inherited the Puss n’ Boots character, which was a really prominent character in Shrek 2 and a very difficult setup at that. I spent a lot of time finishing that character, getting it up to speed, as well as maintaining it through production. I ended up being the point person for Puss, though I also worked on Prince Charming and on the studio’s parenting system. It was truly an educational experience.
KC: You actually left Dreamworks, returned to the East Coast, and returned to Eyebeam. So what was the reason for the move?
RO: It was a tricky decision, as I was really happy at Dreamworks, but more than anything I really missed New York and the pace of things here. I also had a lot of my own projects I wanted to work on and I thought New York would offer me the most flexibility. Upon my return, I took a job with Charlex, but eventually went back to Eyebeam, to the role of Studio Technical Director, a staff position in which I was co-director of day-to-day production in the studio. It was interesting to come back and to go from a really large production studio to this fast paced, but smaller commercial studio and then into this very small, art-related studio in Chelsea.
KC: You also started teaching.
RO: Yes. One of the things I knew I really wanted to do was to teach, so as I
was leaving California I contacted Pratt and some other New York schools. I came
out one weekend while I was still in California and interviewed with Rick Barry
and was really impressed by the school. Since I have been back, I have been teaching
a little bit at some other schools, but I have been teaching at Pratt now for
two years.
KC: How do you like teaching?
RO: I love teaching. Teaching is the thing that really rounds me out and keeps me energized. I am really inspired by the students and I enjoy seeing the work they are doing. I find it inspiring on a daily basis.
KC: So you are about to leave Eyebeam for a full-time job here at Pratt. Can you tell us a little bit about that transition? What brings you to Pratt and what you expect to do here?
RO: I am really excited about the opportunity to join Pratt on a full-time basis.
As one of the first Research Associates in the new Digital Arts Lab, I will be
working on my own research projects.
There are a few things coming up that I am
really excited about, the first of which is a textbook I am writing on character
technology. The second project involves the creation of a number of open source
tools for smaller animation productions. Another project will bring me back to
where it all began, as I will be working with scientists to create new tools and
methodologies for analysis and visualization. From this work, I hope to spin off
of that a number of art projects, things I have been kicking around for a little
while. Applying programming skills and computer graphics towards creating art
and visualizations from scientific data is something I am really interested in.
KC: Can you give us your philosophy as an artist?
RO: That’s something that I struggle with often because that word “artist” is hard to deal with. I am really interested in blurring the lines between science and art, scientific analysis and artistic practice. I see them as one and the same and a lot of my art is about that, about taking scientific data and turning it into art or using visualizations and animation to bring scientific data to life. That’s really where I am coming from, coming back to nature as inspiration for graphic tools.
KC: Between your teaching, the book, and the open source tools you are working on, it seems you are really trying to promote the creation of open source materials. Do you want to talk a little bit about your thoughts on open source and transparency in this field?
RO: At this point, I feel like I have accumulated enough experience to really just want to share. I want to create tools that people can not only use, but actually spring-board off of and make better. There are a lot of great minds out there and more than anything, I am interested in throwing an idea out there and seeing what people do with it, as opposed to creating the be all, end all greatest tool. It’s about starting a conversation and seeing where it goes.
KC: How will you incorporate these ideas into your book?
RO: In looking at a lot of other textbooks, I noticed a lack of materials regarding character setup and character technology, on basic fundamentals and underlying principles. This book is basically about those fundamentals, about the why’s and how’s, and not necessarily what software you are using; it’s software agnostic. The plan is to incorporate into the book a piece of open source software that allows the user to implement a lot of the principles that are in the book and because it is open source, it will be easily plugged into Maya.
KC: You have a lot going on, how do you find the time?
RO: That’s a good question. I think it’s just about constant momentum. I really like to walk and that is what I feel like this is. It’s not about just sitting in front of a computer, but rather walking from idea to idea and as I do that, things get done. I am not the kind of person to sit down and work on one thing; I like to meander through projects.
KC: If there is one piece of advice you would have liked to have received as a student, what would it be?
RO: I think my best advice is to just keep your eyes open all the time and don’t be afraid to look back on your experiences, to participate in a sort of collaboration with yourself. I often times think of myself as an undergrad studying biology and anatomy and then look at where I am today and it often feels like a collaboration between these two points in my life. I think inspiration and reference is oftentimes something you already have and it’s just a matter of tapping into and looking at from a different point of view. That’s where things become really personal, really powerful. |
|
|
| |
|
