Important Looking Pirates (ILP) is a visual effects and digital animation studio located in central Stockholm founded in 2007 by Niklas Jacobson, Yafei Wu, Carl Hermelin and Eric Hermelin. The studio has more than 200 artists and have worked on big titles like Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker; and series like Westworld, The Mandalorian, Stranger Things, Lost in Space.

ILP was nominated for a number of Emmys for their work on Stranger Things and Lost in Space.

In this Episode, Co-Founder of Important Looking Pirates Niklas Jacobson talks about the origins of ILP (and its title), their work on Star Wars, Lost in Space and Stranger Things; as well as gives advice on how to stand out as an artist or a company, mindset of a studio owner, and the most important asset of a VFX studio.

For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/396.

Sir Wade Neistadt is a Freelance Animator, VFX Artist and YouTube Creator. Currently, his YouTube Channel has over 205K followers.

In 2014, after his short film about a sick superhero brought him to the Cannes Film Festival, he completed Animation Mentor's Character Animation Program and got immediately hired at DreamWorks Animation as a Technical Trainer / Educator. Two years later, he left the studio to travel, work freelance and build his YouTube Channel.

Sir Wade had taught over 50 classes across our pipeline ranging from proprietary software for animation, layout, and lighting, to third-party tools such as Maya, Mari, Substance, After Effects, Nuke, etc.

In this Podcast, Allan McKay interviews YouTuber and Freelance Animator Sir Wade Neistadt about his journey from an animation school to the Cannes Film Festival, his first job at Dreamworks, launching his YouTube Channel – as well as skills artists need to launch their careers.

For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/395.

Christopher Zammit is a VFX Supervisor and Art Director. He’s worked on many films like Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Tomorrowland, Ghostbusters, and of course films in the Transformers franchise Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Transformers: Age of Extinction and Transformers: The Last Knight. 

In this Podcast, VFX Supervisor and Art Director Christopher Zammit about his work on TOP GUN: MAVERICK, THE BOYS, GHOSTBUSTERS, THE THING, GODZILLA; as well as how to make production constraints work in your favor as a VFX Artist.

For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/394.

It is amazing how far Artificial Intelligence has progressed just in the last year! No one could’ve predicted the speed of this innovation. A lot of artists are now worried about being replaced with machine learning. While AI can automate and speed things up, it is still up to us as artists to know how to use it as an extension of their ability.

Before, we couldn’t talk to computers. We could only program computers via 1’s and 0’s. When GPTs came along, we started communicating with a computer and giving AI commands. AI is also able to read the internet and interpret the data it consumes. It knows that it also has to fail in order to succeed. Eventually, it will perform the task correctly. That alone changes the playing field! 

But what does that mean for artists? We used to think AI would be assigned repetitive tasks. But now AI is able to create art using the style of another artist. Things like that disrupt the industry. It’s a threatening time for a lot of artists. With the advent of Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, DALL-E, ChatGPT, it’s a really exciting time to be alive! All of these models that came out in the past year. As a matter of fact, Stable Diffusion is one a couple of months old (www.allanmckay.com/390)!

Innovation has always been threatening. As humans, we’re naturally fearful of change. No one can predict what’s going to happen. But historically, those who are early adapters of innovation – they win! Those who are fearful get left behind. Which is why it’s important for every artist to continue to evolve. So let’s now be afraid of this new technology but instead embrace it and be on the forefront of it. In other words: ADAPT OR DIE.

In this Podcast, Allan McKay discusses the most recent developments in Artificial Intelligence, the rapid speed of this innovation, how it’s been affecting artists’ jobs – and why it’s important for artists to innovate in order to be on the forefront of this new technology.

For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/393.