Feature Filipino Digital Artist Wins Visual Effects Society Award Stargate Digital's Anthony Ocampo wins for work on Helen of Troy John Virata Page 1 of 1 3D artist Anthony Ocampo came to the United States from the Philippines in the Summer of 2000 with a dream of providing a better life for his family and finding a job at a visual effects house. He left behind a pretty good position at GMA Networks, the largest TV network in Manila, where he created 3D effects for title cards, plugs, and weather graphics. While the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts graduate knew that some of the best visual effects were coming out of the many Southern California-based facilities that feed the Hollywood movie making machine, Ocampo never envisioned that just two months after he arrived in the United States, he would find himself working at Stargate Digital, the visual effects facility founded by visual effects supervisor and director of photography Sam Nicholson. Ocampo, a traditionally trained painter, also had no idea that after just four years working at Stargate Digital, he would be nominated and win a Visual Effects Society award in the category of Outstanding Models and Miniatures in a Televised Program, Music Video or Commercial, for his Trojan horse work on the USA Network Productions special, Helen of Troy. [an error occurred while processing this directive] "I only realized that I had a good chance during the dinner while meeting some of the VES members and they all said they voted for my horse," said Ocampo. "Before that, I kept surfing the web for pictures and videos of Battlestar Galactica and was convinced I wasn't going to win. When my name was called, everything went blurry, I could see smiling faces and all of a sudden I'm back on my chair holding the award." To build the horse that is so integral to the story, Ocampo used a Dell Precision 650 workstation running Windows 2000 and a 3Dlabs Wildcat 7110 graphics card. His animation software of choice was Softimage. "I used Softimage 3D from modeling to rendering. I could have used another package but Softimage had all the tools I needed that the other package didn't have. This is not a plug, but Softimage rocks!," he said. "Creating the Trojan horse was one thing. Adding imperfections like wood splints and rusted and dented metal was another. The modeling and texturing took about two and a half weeks while adding the imperfections took another three weeks. These tweaks were done in areas closest to the camera. The key to getting the look I wanted rested on the "skin" on the model. Using a texture for the skin just wouldn't hold up for the close shots so I modeled some planks of wood and wrap deformed a bunch of them along a rough model of the horse. I could have painted my textures but I've always believed in using real textures as much as possible." While the fine arts graduate has accomplished quite a bit in his few short years in the industry, he is thankful of the opportunities that have come his way in the United States. "I came to the U.S. for two reasons; to work in a visual effects house and to have a better life for my family," he said. "Working at Stargate Digital was a dream come true. Ever since Jurassic Park, I've always wanted to do 3D. Back then, winning the VES or any visual effects award wasn't even on my mind as I didn't see it as a possibility. I still can't believe I won." While Ocampo has a full plate at Stargate Digital, creating effects for film, TV, and commercials, he does hope to find some free time to paint, but things seem different now that he is well versed in creating his art digitally. "I'd like to go back to painting just for fun, but I keep looking for that "undo" button." Related sites: Related forums: • [an error occurred while processing this directive]

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