Nadav Brill is a very talented CG artist who has lived and worked in numerous countries on numerous film projects. He has a wife and son, and is just a good guy. A mensch no less. I caught up with him in his busy schedule and asked him some questions about his life and career.

What is your training and background?

I think I should start by mentioning my family's influence. I come from a wide family of artists, starting from my grandfather's carpentry skills, to my dad (who is a brilliant artist and architect ) to my brother and sister. We were all artists in the family, so with that in mind , I sort of taught myself the language of art with a lot of influences surrounding me at all times from a very early age.

(Some of Nadav's artwork)

As for my professional computer training, it started when I was around the age of 10. I was indroduced to "Basic" language as well as "Logo" (another graphic language used in the past). That lead me to my first trials with real 3d animation software, 3D Studio (dos version). I had started with architechtural models for consruciton company's and moved my way through to creating models for TV commercial sets.
During that time I was also working as assistant to commercial art directors and building sets for TV shows with my brother. Later on I started working for Dreamteam-ltd, a high-tech company who were in the midst of developing real time motion capture and post solution. It is there that I discovered another "skill" I had, designing GUI and visioning the work flow of tools that had not yet been written.

A lot of my production and animation education came about from working in Israel's biggest animation studio at the time called DPS'I. It was a new studio owned by IDT entertainment and they had set to produce a feature film called "Happily Never After", and "Yanki Irving" aka "Everyone's Hero". It was excellent leverage for me professionally as I had stayed there working with the team for around 2 years, founding the simulations department, creating tools and techniques for simulating stylized hairs and cloth, learning a lot about the importance of a good pipeline and its relevance to a production, introducing myself to tools such as Render Man, Syflex, Shake and many more.

After failing to produce the right results in time, the company shut down its branch in Israel and sent a handful of people to work with IDT'S other studio's in Canada, DKP (toronto), and Mainframe (Vancouver). I was sent to DKP in Toronto to work on the feature "Everyone's Hero"(Christopher Reeve and family's last legacy). Professionally, that was an eye opening experience, working closely with directors and seeing some of my methods follow through the entire production successfully. Finally I had come to see a full working process of creating a feature film from A to Z.

What projects have you worked on?

I've been involved with a number of projects, not all came to fruition under my hands though. But never the less they were all very educating. A number of productions I was involved with recently are:

Fred Claus - live action movie.
In Fred Claus, some of my work is when you see hundreds of elves in one room together. Most of them are not real and the cloth is, of course, simulated. Other than that, you can see some particle fx snow shots on some long shots.

(courtesy of Warner Bros Pictures)

Everyone's Hero - cg animated feature
In Everyone's Hero , one out of 3-4 shots approximately has my name on it. The shot after this is mine as well, he gets up and throws the blanket back.

(courtesy of 20TH CENTURY FOX Pictures)

This was a hard shot since the directors were asking for a result that did not happen using "natural" simulation. It had to be tweaked so to get the right result without it looking odd or out of place.

Dinosaurs: Giants of Patagonia - IMAX stereoscopic feature.
In "Giants of Patagonia", I made the flying dinosaur wings flapping simulations using Syflex . The idea is this bird was huge as an f-15 , so it had to look like the flapping is minor from certain angles.

Where were you born and what interesting places and what memories do you have from interesting places?

I was born in Haifa, Israel on Jan 1,1976. Haifa is the northern capital of Israel and sits on the Carmel mountains. I think Haifa is one of the more interesting places in Israel and probably the prettiest city in it (maybe after Jerusalem). You can see the sea from both sides of the ridge. The Bahaien Gardens, the forests, down hills and up hills give the city much depth and charm. To me it gave much inspiration over the years.

(The Bahaien Gardens)

I remember myself taking long walks and hiking in search of a good "zula" (a cool place to rest in over looking great view). One day I walked up to an area with lots of huge boulders peeking from the under the treetops of a rain forest-like area. After climbing one of those boulders I remember being in awe, looking at all the tree tops from above and being one with nature, the silence with the wind only... it was a great feeling, I don't think I ever wanted to come down....

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

It's pretty hard trying to look 5 years ahead in to the future, especially now days as everything in this industry is changing in a blink of an eye. But as a person who has lots of interests I would like to vary my funcionality and do something that might be more influential to the industry then working on this or that project doing shot specific details. As an artist and entrepreneur, I have many ideas, in this field as well as in others. I hope I could be in the process of making one of these ideas happen.

If you want to learn more about Nadav, check out
http://brillfx.blogspot.com/
http://www.brillstudio.com/

Stay tuned for more interesting interviews and anecdotes about the film industry.

Brill FX magazine

private NGN commercial

iphone of the future?

and..... another one.

butterflies test shot

yet another morbid zbrush picture i made today...

Zbrush is awesome!!

Another Scary glimpse into the future....

Ncloth optimizer tool on highend3d

fantastic new game

great tracking and iphone app

The Future

Pre Milenium tension 1999

Israels 54th independence birthday clip

My first script on highend3d

My talented Cousine's stream from flicker

My photo stream from flicker

Photos

50 cent - Blood on the sand

GhostBusters Video Game

Nutty Proffesor - facing the fear 2008

New Design

ShowReel 2009

Feedback

ice

galactic Baby'S

Hair sim on the movie Happily Never after

fx on the shofar video clip

old animation from around 2001

an interview ..

abstract geometrical architechture

one my favorite sketches

Prime TV

To freedom

The Happy Elf

Happily N'Ever After

Giants of Patagonia

Fred Claus

Everyones hero Trailer

one of my sculpy tests

one of my favourites cg art works

nice picture i did a while back...

Sketches

My Reel 2006

Microbots