Interview with Ernest Burden III of O'Really Inc.

Interview with Ernest Burden III of O'Really Inc.

Ernest Burden III is both a commercial and fine artist. He has worked as an architectural illustrator for more than twenty years. His clients have included such architectural firms as Kohn Pederson Fox and Robert A.M.Stern. His drawings have been published in The New York Times, Architectural Record, Progressive Architecture and CADence, as well as books on architecture and rendering.



CGA: Could you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your company?

EBIII: My wife just helped me write a bio for a book proposal, so here's a bit:

Ernest Burden III is both a commercial and fine artist. He has worked as an architectural illustrator for more than twenty years. His clients have included such architectural firms as Kohn Pederson Fox and Robert A.M. Stern. His drawings have been published in The New York Times, Architectural Record, Progressive Architecture and CADence, as well as books on architecture and rendering. His artwork has been in numerous group exhibits--both national and international--and has been included in a number of corporate and private collections.

That's a little too formal for my tastes, but it describes me well.

My company, AcmeDigital. is simply a one-man corporation set up to make it easier to be in business in my state. Governments often have a hard time figuring out artists and other self-employed people, so it is advantageous to be a company. Currently my business produces primarily architectural rendering, but I am working on an art publishing business as well. I have several books in various states of development and am looking forward to returning to making three dimensional art (real, not computer) when I can get all the equipment I would need.

CGA: Tell us about your background. How did you get into the Architectural
industry?

EBIII: I needed a job. I was in High School, the NY HS of Art and Design, and needed to earn enough money to eat. (It's a long story). My father, himself a famous architectural renderer, talked a renderer friend of his into hiring me a few days a week to do things like trace figures for entourage and run errands. I learned the business in that job from the ground up, even though I wasn't actually trying to be a renderer. In fact, when my friends at school and I talked about what work we wanted to do professionally, I had always said that the one thing I would NEVER want to do was architectural rendering. I could see the long hours my father had to
work, the uneven pay, the stress. It was not for me. My father was in the process of getting out of the field, so why should I be dumb enough to get into it? But like I said, I needed a job and the one open to me was in a rendering business.

CGA: How were you introduced to the world of computer rendering?

EBIII: It seems like it was always there. I started working in rendering at 16, in
1979, so computer images were already beginning to be commonplace. Also, my
older sister worked as a computer graphics artist (still does), so I was exposed to what was 'out there' through her as well. I was always interested in what was being done with computers and movie special effect from when I was a kid. So I simply self-taught myself by reading anything I could find about computer art and rendering. As 3D software became available for the PC, I would get my hands on programs that took hours to render one shiny ball on a checkerboard, but were a good education on the techniques I would later use in my work. (Anyone remember BigD)? Before the Internet there were BBS networks where you could ...access... useful software. Still, nothing out then was particularly useful in real commercial work.

CGA: In 1987 when computers started to make there way into your rendering
business, what motivated you to adopt this new technology?

EBIII: Laziness. I was tired of doing hand perspectives, especially when they included repetitive elements (common in modern architecture). It was obvious that a computer could do the job better and faster than I could by hand.

Having said that, I would not think of trading the years I did mechanical perspectives for the same time with computer modeling and viewing. There is so much to learn about composition, framing, view corridors and light and shadow rules from drawing buildings the old-fashioned way that I would hesitate to turn someone loose in a computer environment without first learning mechanical perspective. It gives you an invaluable intuition about views of a model, teaches the mental integration of plan and elevation and fosters 3D thinking. Computers handle so many of those things internally that a new user may never come to understand the values and limitations of traditional architectural documents.

My first job in the rendering field was as a studio assistant to master renderer Brian Burr (www.brianburr.com). It was usually my job to do perspective layouts (though Mr. Burr was usually very good at spotting my mistakes and re-doing my daylong work in an hour-he probably still could). Mr. Burr is an architect and render from Australia. Working for him I learned about reading architectural drawings, fact-checking them (I could tell you some stories...), and then the various tasks that produce a final rendering. I did things like transferring a line drawing to an illustration board, masking for airbrushing, mixing watercolors to match the client's material samples, spraying the paint and then coming up with ways to lighten what I had just done. I also had to be in frequent communication with the client and learned a lot about the terminology and general practices of the architectural field. Without that, all the talent and cool software in the world won't get you very far. The client must be able to talk to you in his/her lexicon and trust you will understand.

It was several years after leaving the studio of Brian Burr and establishing myself as a renderer in the New York market that I was able to buy a PC, a Kaypro 16 Mhz NEC V30-based screamer (I was non-Intel from the start). In early 1987 get a copy of DataCAD, which I use to this day. I had looked at many other programs, but most of them did not do perspectives at all, including Autocad. DataCAD was a wonderful program that could do panned two-point perspective right from the start, something many current "architectural" programs still cannot, including Autocad. The perspective interface was good, and was based not on the camera concept but on the traditional hand layout paradigm. I was right at home. I used DataCAD to layout a rendering of a skyscraper within a week of getting the software. I have used it on almost every project since then.

Right from the start I was aware of computers being used to do light and shade renderings, but there wasn't anything good for the PC in 1987. If there was, I couldn't afford it, and the images were too weird to be useful beyond their "look, computer images" appeal.

CGA: What have been your biggest challenges both past and present, with
regards to computer renderings?

EBIII: Without a doubt, the biggest challenge has been using digital tools to produce work as good as what I could produce by hand with traditional media. That problem persist today. In the last five or six years I have developed techniques to merge the two worlds. I call the results 'hybrid rendering'. These techniques have produced results of varying success, but some recent projects have, I think, shown much of what I set out to do.

I have written a tutorial that demonstrates some of these on three recent
jobs. Producing a Digital/ Watercolor Hybrid Architectural Rendering
This goes into more depth than I can here.

Another challenge I have found in digital rendering is getting tools that think in the ways architectural artist traditionally have. Calling a product "architectural visualization software" does not do enough to earn my respect. It must present tools that allow for easy, understandable viewing of your 2D and 3D information and it must understand the parlance of architecture. A top view is called a 'plan' view in archi-speak. Is that so hard? If you look at the commands in Autocad you will still see things like 'DVIEW' (their misguided idea of a perspective projection). In far too
many programs you simply cannot easily produce a panned two-point perspective. That is an image where you have, say, a low eyepoint (man on the street) but still show the entire building subject without tipping the 'camera' up, causing vertical convergence. While this may be an aberration to how we look at things in real life, it is the default view projection method used in rendering for the past few centuries. Keep in mind that while we are looking up a building our brain is busy reminding us that we are seeing a vertical plane so it still feels straight, but when converted to a 2D view all we see is the building getting smaller as it goes up. Renderings on paper or a screen are still 2D interpretations of a 3D scene. The software should be at least as adept at this as any old-timer.

Software that deals with architectural subjects must work in real-world units--foot/inch, metric by the meter or millimeter--and be able to change unit types
on-the-fly so you can be working in metric and decide to set a window sill projection to 2" if that's how you think, and then back again.

Of all the CAD and visualization software I have seen and tried, the best by far have been DataCAD and Lightscape, because they meet the criteria I stated and much more. Each is flawed, but no program is ever complete until its dead, and who wants to work with dead code?

CGA: What type of lead-times are you given to work on a project? Is there a
project in particular that was completed in record time?

EBIII: Usually I get anywhere for a week to, more commonly, a day lead-time. "Are
you available?" is often followed by "let's get you started" within a few breaths. That is if I can get the assignment, which of course I don't always. Having my portfolio available on-line has had a big effect on the time it takes for a client to be able to make that decision. I used to have to either go to the client's office to show my book or FedEx samples, each a big waste of time. Now a potential client can see my work instantly. I also rely very heavily on email for exchanging information, progress images and even final renderings with clients. All these time-savers can be
reinvested in your work, or let you see the sun once in a while.

Unfortunately, the business is still one of too-short deadlines and late-night work. It can be very frustrating living in a hurry-up-and-wait profession, but exercising any more control over your time in this business is a very hard thing. You can try to train your clients to reserve your time well in advance with the threat of not being available when they need you, but what you will more likely teach them is how to call your competitors. However, getting booked in advance can be a hollow victory, as the client will likely not be ready for you to start when they said they would be, thus foiling your attempts at scheduling. The more experience you have the better you can judge exactly how long it will take you to complete a job and that is where your control is best exercised.

Generally speaking, I over-do all projects. I am prone to being too detail-oriented and often will lavish time on an aspect of a rendering that is fairly unimportant in the final. Therefore, a careful analysis of the final rendering is key to scheduling your work and dealing with quick-turnaround jobs. If your output will only be 10"x16"
(a size I use a lot) just how much detail do you REALLY need for that background building? In a digital rendering is it worth the hit in rendering time to use the
32,000 polygon car when a 200 poly one will do almost as well?

As mentioned earlier, the problem for me is knowing that there are some aspects of my job that are best handled digitally and others that I can simply do in a few minutes with a pencil or brush that are very hard in the computer. My solution is to merge the two, but even that can cause a project to go longer than anticipated.

There have been projects where mixing digital and hand work has allowed me to produce great renderings in a timeframe that amazes even me.

One in particular was a series of five renderings of a shopping arcade and the exterior of the core block the arcade bisects. The finals were to be watercolor sketches. The problem was to integrate a fairly complex skylight structure within existing buildings but with some new storefronts, and then make it all lively and loose. Oh, yes, and quickly.

The layouts were done as a mixture of Datacad models and photo-montage in Photoshop. There was no sense trying to model the existing buildings beyond simple shapes when I could scan photos from the actual site and twist them into the computer perspective. I converted these composites to cyan-only and printed them on 11"x17" paper. I could then take a non-photo blue pencil to sketch on additional details and entourage before hand-drawing the picture in black pen to give a loose feel. The result was transferred onto watercolor paper using an ordinary photocopy machine. The cyan print and non-photo blue do not copy. All that remained was to add paint, which went very swiftly and produced results that should have taken me much longer than they actually did. But for the record, I prefer longer schedules. Sprinting is not my sport.

Retail development, Holland - Robert A.M. Stern Architects

CGA: How has the evolution of the CG industry affected your business?

I am finally in possession of software and skills to allow me to integrate CG techniques into an existing hand-media business. Although I have been keeping pace with the industry in terms of what was available, it was not keeping pace with my skills as a traditional media artist.

Also I have become more willing to experiment on projects. Previously, I would want to incorporate some new level of CG into an illustration but revert back to my tried-and-true methods at the last minute out of fear of screwing up. After all, messing up a job can be very costly in lost time, income and clients. But time to experiment without risk comes at the expense of income-producing work. It is a balancing act that each artist must do on their own terms. There is hardly a technique that I use today that I did not try out on a short-deadline project for a real client (without telling them I was experimenting without a fall-back). You see a sleek car flying about the woods then read: Profession driver on closed course-do not attempt.

CGA: Do you find that your clients are still leaning more towards the use of your traditional rendering methods or have CG renderings started to become more commonplace?

EBIII: My clients usually want traditional media renderings, most often watercolor.
So I give them exactly what they requested. Never mind that 70% of the image is digitally rendered and enhanced before I paint the final. My client may not have been interested in digital work. If they were interested in CG rendering they would have called a specialist in digital rendering, but they didn't. Clients want to put their sub-contractors into easily labeled boxes. One renderer is the watercolor person while this other is the digital go-to guy. They don't want to know that the first is
good with computers and the later can really draw.

However, I have managed to indoctrinate some clients into seeing the advantages of my working in both traditional and digital media, so the scene is slowly changing. The new challenge is getting clients to see the separate value of the underlying digital modeling and viewing apart from the final renderings, regardless of media. In other words, how do you get a client to pay for these services separately?

CGA: You have a unique approach to creating your renderings, using both
traditional and CG techniques to create 'hybrid' type images. What led you to combine the two rather than employing a single technique?

EBIII: Boredom, ego and laziness. After more than twenty years of doing the same
job I am always looking for new and different ways to do get the same or better results. Even if I don't save one minute of production time, it is simply more fun to be doing something new and challenging. Being typecast as a paint and paper guy, I want to be able to show off my skills in computer graphics, even if only among colleagues. And again, it is frustrating to take all day to draw in a complicated background skyline on a rendering knowing all the while that if you could just drop in the photo you are working from and have it print out lightly with your line layout. You could save lots of time that could be spent on the more important aspects of
the drawing.

Ultimately, the problem is how to make the most of my divergent skills in both realms with clients that see them as completely separate and incongruous. The simple answer is to not make a point of showing hem how I work. The less they know the less they can complain about what happens between hiring me and receiving a final image that they will legitimately judge. Looking more closely, you get to questions about just what is important about hand rendering, and what is about digital. Are there aspects of this work that can be improved by abandoning any claim to the
terms "traditional" and "digital"? I have a friend that does caricatures. He says that a good caricature should look more like the person than the person himself. I think that goal should be applied to architectural rendering.

CGA: You are also President of the New York Society of Renderers. What initiated the formation of this organization and what role has it been playing in New York's rendering community?

EBIII: The New York Society of Renderers was founded in 1985 by NY renderer Andy
Hickes. The goal was to have a loosely organized group of professional renderers who live or work in the New York market. The group has organized marketing seminars for our members, legal explorations, demonstrations of software and techniques through studio visits. We meet socially and we have held many exhibits of our members' work in galleries and schools around New York. We also have published four books of our members' work, spaced at about two to three years apart. These books are marketing vehicles for renderers to reach potential clients, and the books are mailed free to thousands of firms in our region. Since about 1998 we have also featured our work on our website, www.nysr.com . This site is a wonderful resource for anyone looking to hire a renderer.

The NYSR has been very helpful in providing a communication link between renderers, who often work in a very solitary way. The community aspects of the group are, to me, the best things about it. NYSR members are quick to recommend each other for commissions when they cannot fit them in or feel another artist's work would be more appropriate for the job. When we get together we will discuss rendering techniques, computer issues, clients that are dis-honorable, food, travel, cars, anything.

A few years ago the NYSR saw that there was a big problem in the rendering
business in NY: sales tax. There was no clear set of rules telling us what to do. Most renderers had not been collecting the tax, leaving them open to audits that would put them in debt for years. So we went to the state and worked out an arrangement where we would be free from worry of past audits when we began collecting the tax under a new set of guidelines that we worked out with the State. The actual document is available on nysr.com The end result of our legal initiative is a little more paperwork and no more fear of being audited for back sales tax. So all renderers who live and work in NY can sleep easier.

CGA: Which rendering are you most proud of and why?

EBIII: Any artist will have favorite examples of his or her work, and often their
choices will leave others a little baffled. I am no exception. Although I have been very satisfied with some recent hybrid renderings, the one that stands out to me is San Francisco Courthouse, 1995. This rendering is a watercolor and pastel picture rendered over CAD linework transferred to watercolor paper by a pen plotter using waterproof gray ink. (That's how I used to transfer all my work before the Epson Stylus Pro printer made inkjets usable for final work).


San Francisco Courthouse
Lee/Timchula Architects design

I love everything about this picture.

Even though I was hired to do a black and white rendering, I used a warm-to-cool colored underpainting to make the original vibrant. On the web it is presented in color, so this should be visible. Compare the building entrance to the left end at the street. By being basically monochromatic I was able to push the light/dark in ways that are harder to pull of in color. Overall, it is the values that carry the picture. The rendering of the City Hall at left and the building on the right are as good as I can do.

This building is a prominent addition to my hometown, San Francisco, where I haven't lived since I was a kid. So I symbolically placed myself, my wife and our child into the city I love so much. This is the only time I have ever draw myself into a rendering.

The day I completed this rendering I stood back and looked at it and thought "this is the best rendering I have ever done and likely will ever do". Handing in the original was one of the hardest things I have ever done as an artist. I actually contemplated refusing to hand it in at all. Doing so would have cost me my $5,000 fee and a good client and probably gotten me sued as well. So off went my favorite rendering, never to be seen by me again. Today I would simply do a high-res scan, get a giclee print and hand that in, keeping the original. But that wasn't an option then. Of course, now I can do the print for myself and at least have something close to the original to hang on the wall. Excuse me, I've got something to go do.

CGA: What software do you currently use and have you used in the past for
computer renderings and why have you chosen those particular applications?

EBIII: For modeling and anything CAD I have used DataCAD since 1987. I started
using it because it was the only program that was setup to do architecture right out of the box, and could do all the 3D viewing I needed. It still is one of the few. http://www.datacad.com/

For rendering I use Lightscape. It, like DataCAD is properly architectural (except for the complete lack of an iso/axon view, ARGH!). The realistic lighting is a plus, though I often pervert that purpose by pushing lights and textures to un-realistic levels, and then by taking the renderings into Photoshop and assaulting them further. Reality can be so limiting. http://www.autodesk.com/lightscape

In the past I used a program called Renderize, later called Visual Reality. It was a great scanline renderer with a quirky but functional interface. Unfortunately it was bought by a larger company that never upgraded it, even though there was a new version in the works at the time of the sale. If you can live without raytracing, it is still around, recently made a stock rendering add-on to DataCAD. While it also could not do a panned perspective, I had developed a work-around. In the end, I just out-grew the program.

I have tried many programs, TrueSpace, 3Dstudio (version 1, not MAX) and many
other I can't recall. They are all good, all have good features, but never felt right to me. I have bought each version of Bryce up until now and only recently used it for anything. I own every version of Poser and don't use that one either--despite its promise, same for Painter.

I also bought all versions of Rhino after using the beta for a year or more before v1.0. Unlike so many others, Rhino has everything it should, including the CAD feel. It is a winner, but I have not gotten to use it much because my work is so much rooted in the rectilinear designs of my clients. A polygon modeler like in that DataCAD does that stuff so well that I have yet to put Rhino through its paces. But I will. My own design style is very organic, and when I get to modeling (I usually just draw this
stuff) I will use Rhino. http://www.architecturalvisions.com/

Before, during and after any rendering these days is Photoshop. I have only scratched the surface of what it can do. This is one program with no equal.

CGA: What do you not like to see in computer generated architectural work?

EBIII: What I like the least about CG renderings is what I see the most--boring
images with low dynamic range, unsaturated colors and poorly chosen and composed view angles. Too many digital artists seem to think that you can still get by on the novelty of computer generated pictures. You cannot. In the end, your rendering must succeed on pictorial grounds. Everyone knows how easy it is to adjust a view in a 3D program, so why do I see so many poorly composed images? Also, with Photoshop in our toolkits, there is no reason to have a low-density, gray image, unless there is an artistic reason that is being employed. I find that Lightscape renderings often suffer an overall grayness, while the raytracer will burn in normal texture maps to be super-saturated, very annoying. There is a particular look that most 3DS MAX renderings have that drives me nuts. Usually it is instantly obvious
that a rendering was done in MAX. I see a low contrast rendering with overly even lighting and I just know--MAX. Light is only meaningful as it contrasts dark. A picture that exists solely in the gray world in between says so much less than it could. Of course, the renderings that don't fit my stereotype I just wonder "what was used for that great picture"? The fact is, I have seen MAX and Lightscape used to produce some amazingly good images, and I expect to see more in the future.

CGA: What tip(s) can you give our readers to improve their architectural
renderings?

EBIII: Go Old-School. Buy books on rendering that were done before digital rendering was common. From these you will learn so much about composition, coloration and layout tricks (that are easily adapted to post work in Photoshop). Seeing the work that was done when your clients were young will tell you things about what they are likely to expect. Look at what the renderers chose to abstract and what they chose to detail. There are also many more recent books, and now websites, where you can see renderings done in traditional media like watercolor and pencil. Look at these. Decide what you like about them and find ways to get the same effects in digital. That may involve more creative texturing, lighting or view composing.

Draw. Draw anything, just pick up a pencil or a brush and move it across some paper. Drawing is a very important skill to any artist working in any medium, it has as much to do with training your perception as your 'hand'. Probably the best subject is one of the oldest: the human form. Even if your work is all architecture, you will learn so much from drawing the human figure. In most cities there will be art classes in figure drawing, often there will be open studios where you pay a small fee to come and draw from a live model who has been hired to pose. You need not sign up for a course, just show up and draw. No-one will judge your work, its just for you. You can find these classes through most colleges, or try a pin-up board at a local art supply store. Or just draw a willing friend or family member. There is also endless opportunity to draw people in public, just sit down and draw whomever walks by.

Simplify. Let's face it, you are not likely to get pure photo-realism within a normal deadline, payscale and using current software. So it obvious that you will have to cut some corners somewhere. Don't let your software's limitations become your limitations. If it cannot be done convincingly, find a simple, straightforward alternative and keep going. How you will simplify and stylize what is in your renderings will largely define your work as compared to others. So take the time to choose what to simplify and how. It could be that you motion blur people or do a simple sky instead of the usual out-of-scale, cyan-athon photo skies we see all too
often. Perhaps you use color boldly, or hardly at all, perhaps you print out half-finished digital renderings and watercolor over them (no, wait, that's me).

Specific to the renderings I would advise renderers to pay special attention to glass. This material is everywhere, and is in almost every architectural rendering. And yet it is often rendered poorly, either too reflective or not transparent enough to reveal what lies beyond. Many times renderers treat it as if it was a curtain of metal with a color fade and little else. I am certainly guilty of bad glass at times. While unrealistic glass is less a problem with digital, you should not just drop in the stock glass
material and call it a day. When glass will be transparent, you must pay attention to what will be seen through it, and when reflective what will be seen bounced off it. That may more than double the work of modeling and should be planned for. Or the interior or reflections could be 'cheated' with images instead of objects. To get the best balance of the front of the glass to the back you may even find it useful to do two or more renderings from the same point to feature the interior, the glass and the exterior. These can be matted together in Photoshop. Poor glass can be as much a
failure of the renderer as the rendering software. In the end, good glass in a rendering may have little to do with what would be photographically accurate.

CGA: Where do you see the future of computer renderings heading?

EBIII: I think computer rendering in the future will be very transparent. You won't see it. Really, it will be everywhere and you just won't realize it. What will make that happen is advancements in software to produce images using techniques like global illumination, radiosity, caustics. Ultimately, rendering is about how light reacts to the physical world. So the more accurately a picture mimics real-world light, the more the average person will take it as real. Also, as the power and cost of computers come down, more and more complex scenes can be rendered so that renderings will be so much less obvious for their starkness and lack of believable texture. It will not be such a noteworthy achievement to have a complex scene rendered so well as to completely fool the eye, so these renderings will not be noted as such. While it is currently quite computationally intensive to process these images, it will inevitably become a task that average computers can handle in real-time. That will make them all-the-more prevalent. One advancement I anticipate is the incorporation of the psychology of perception into the rendering algorithms. To some degree, how we see things is a product of expectations and not just the pattern of lights, darks, and
colors. M. C. Escher figured that out long before digital rendering. The more you see psycho-photo-real images the less you will notice them. The more transparent they will be.

Conversely, the biggest divide between digital and traditional rendering is currently looseness, vagueness, and abstraction, and those are exactly the characteristics I expect to see migrate into digital renderings of the future. A desire for the more 'artistic', hand-drawn sort of technique is what keeps many artists and their clients from embracing digital. It is seen as cold, sterile and much too literal. That will change. This could be through better shaders and materials, geometry deformers, post-rendering retouching or 2D/3D software that one way or another reads and interprets the input actions of the artist and manipulates the model/rendering in ways that produce effects long associated with traditional media. This is already happening and I fully expect it to continue until the average person has no way to distinguish digital art from traditional.

But that leads to the next big challenge: to develop art forms that are rooted in both digital and manual, and neither. I am sure that future artists will do what artist have always done with new tools-invent new forms of art that no-one predicted.

CGA: Which individual(s) have/has influenced your renderings the most?

EBIII: There are so many. But some would be:

Ernest Burden, my father. He wrote some great books on rendering and used to look the other way when I would raid his art supplies. He did many great renderings during his career. I find that my father and his contemporaries working in the late 1960's and early 1970's showed much more creativity in their work than those of us working today. Then later he got me the job with...

Brian Burr, mentor, former boss. Brian has a true love of architecture and a sharp eye where rendering it is concerned. He taught me to look at my work critically and to have a sense of humor about it at the same time. See his work at: http://www.brianburr.com

Andy Hickes, founder New York Society of Renderers. In the 1980's Andy was doing airbrush rendering, but has long since switched to digital. He, more than any other artist I can name, has successfully transferred his trademark "look" into the digital domain. Most of what he does is in a 2D environment with Photoshop, amazing work. http://www.rendering.net/

Tom Schaller. Tom is the most well-known watercolorist in New York, and by his own hard work. He decided to work in the most classical of rendering mediums at a time that most of us were doing overly tight airbrush work. He re-awakened the market to the magic of watercolor rendering and in doing so opened the doors wide for anyone who wanted to do looser, more evocative rendering. He has written several books on rendering that I highly recommend. http://www.twschaller.com/

Sven Johnson. In the mid 1990's Sven began scanning his watercolor renderings and using Photoshop to drop in graphics, entourage and other images. That was very important to the cause of hybrid rendering. We regularly trade tips on work techniques, both digital and traditional http://www.svenjohnsonillustration.com/

Gil Gorski, Chicago area renderer. It's misleading to say I was influenced by Gill, because he is just so talented that I am not even sure how to emulate his work. http://www.gilgorski.com/

Roger Dean. Not technically a renderer, Roger is an illustrator who often includes imaginative architecture in his work. He is best known as the creator of the artwork and iconographic logo for the band Yes. When I was 13 I bought his first book Views" and was very influenced by his work. The book included preliminary ideas, sketches and alternate versions of many of the well-known illustration. I recently had the honor of meeting Mr. Dean at a gallery opening and buying one of the original sketches that had so inspired me as a kid. http://www.rogerdean.com/

The New York area has some very talented digital renderers, among them are:

AMD - Advanced Media Design http://www.amdrendering.com/
Ian Kinman - Animation + Images http://www.animation.to/
Nick Buccalo - DrawingStudio http://www.drawingstudio.com/
Don Dietche - Perspective Arts (forget everything I said about MAX
renderings all looking alike) http://www.perspectivearts.com/

Of course classically there is always Hugh Ferris, father of modern rendering. Really great stuff, and a clear inspiration to Doug Chiang, head artist behind Star Wars, Episode I--a movie that was more about architecture than anything else.

That is such a short list, but a good start.

CGA: What is your favorite link to visit on the web? (not necessarily CG
related) Which web based resources have found the most informative?

EBIII: All of them. I cannot possibly pick a favorite, other than to say whichever one I need right now. The web has already grown so large and so fast that most of it will never be seen by any one mortal person. It's like trying to personally say hello to every person alive on the Earth. The web represents the greatest advance in human communication since people first began speaking languages. And yet it is the biggest time-waster there ever was. The problem is to use it wisely.

There are so many good links related to 3D rendering, free models, 3D tips and magazines, etc. that I think it would not be helpful for me to list any here. First of all, if you are reading this you already are on a great 3D site with many links that you should pay attention to. If I see any glaring absences I will offer the links to CGArchitect. Most readers would find my list to mirror theirs.

But there are so many areas of the web that interest me. A few:

I find news sites to be useful, sometimes abcnews.com, sometimes cnn.com, but by far the most rewarding news site on the web is The Onion: http://www.theonion.com/

For news on our sister profession, film visual effects, there is no better site than: http://www.VFXPro.com/

While there is no shortage of "expert" sites, this one has more useful info on the web, coding, even 3D than any other: http://www.webreference.com/

The slick, commercial aspect of this site really bothers me, but it is still very useful for general architectural research: http://www.greatbuildings.com/

I am very interested in science, space, astronomy, physics, etc. Tip of the iceberg: http://www.nasa.gov/cool.html

A good starting place for researching my ancestors: http://thunder.indstate.edu/~ramanank/

Since legal issues that effect artists are often poorly represented and understood in general society, I love the fact that the web allows direct access to the laws themselves. You can find the full text of state and national (US in my case) laws online, and with more searching, court decisions and interpretations. People will always be trying to intimidate artists with legal mumbo-jumbo. Recently there was a very important case of freelance writers against the New York Times and others over on-line re-use of their writing. This must have implications for visual artists as well.
Read the US Supreme Court's decision. Arm yourself--read the REAL laws.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/

Finally, here are two wonderful sites for humbling yourself by seeing what was already accomplished before you and I ever thought of gracing the world with our creations: http://www.artchive.com/ftp_site.htm
http://cgfa.kelloggcreek.com/fineart.htm