Interview

Rodeo FX’s Deak Ferrand tells Trevor Hogg why being in the proper mood for conceptualising is important…

“I need somebody to tell me the story. I want to project the emotion and I believe you can do that if you put yourself in that mood for two days. ”

Along with the many talents that have seen him employed as a concept artist, matte painter and art director on major projects such as Blade Runner 2049, Dune and The Sandman, Deak Ferrand has developed an interesting workaround when it comes to ZBrush as he literally creates clay sculptures. “For Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, I was asked to design a few creatures and I’m not good at ZBrush. That’s a problem. You have to be good at so many different methods of creating an object.

“Artifices are fine but sculpting in ZBrush to the level of other concept artists, I can’t do it. But I can sculpt in clay, so I asked the visual effects supervisor, ‘Do you mind if I do clay maquettes of the creatures and I can change them quickly. It’s just a matter of removing things. If you like it, I will take a beautiful picture and do a turntable where I put it on a Lazy Susan, roll the thing, and film the model.’ He said, ‘Fine.’

“The client was happy to see a clay model. It’s funny how people react to something real. Even if it’s rough, they’ll go, ‘That’s cool. It’s different.’ I love to have the freedom to do things like this. It’s fun, and you develop and maintain skills. You’ll lose your skills if you don’t use them.”

SYD MEAD’S LAS VEGAS “The architecture of Las Vegas was designed by Syd Mead. It’s like, ‘Oh, my god, I don’t recognise Las Vegas.’ The scale is gigantic.”

Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and Rodeo FX

Before becoming the head of the art department at Rodeo FX in Los Angeles, Deak was a shy child growing up in Switzerland. “I started to draw early on and it was a way to escape and invent my own little world. At the age of 12, I was doing Super 8 movies and makeup effects. I was crappy, but wanted to be a makeup effects guy. It all started when my father took me to see the original Star Wars film in the theatre. I must have been nine or ten. That changed my life. I came out of the theatre transformed.”