Zbrush Central Interview
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=62258
Excerpt:
What is your favorite ZBrush feature, and why?
Being able to work on multiple levels of subdivisions; being able to actually detail the sculpture at any point and then change your mind to go back and maybe move the lower res parts of the mesh in order to move all the detail around. That’s amazing for me. In clay, if you change your mind (which I did constantly) you’d have to cut parts off and then build them back up completely and re-detail. But we don’t have to do that in ZBrush. So I look at like you can basically see what it’s going to look like when it’s done, pretty much at the beginning.
I also like that I can paint the model as I sculpt and actually see what the final piece is going to look like. Not just work with green or gray clay and then have to “sell” that to a client or director and kind of go, “Well, it’s going to look like this when it goes through our paint shop.” I paint everything now, regardless of whether people want me to or not. Sometimes I just don’t show them. But we’ve had projects where people have said, “We have to do stuff in a specific order, and we’ll tell you when to go on to the next step.” After a while, they stop telling us and their art directors would then start telling us to make changes to the object AND the paint based on what they were seeing. That worked out really good for us. We can really cut out a lot of time and steps by working on all the artistic parts of the project all at once.
interview by Cricket, for Nerd Society May 2010
(Part1) Batman Year One sculpt
http://www.nerdsociety.com/2010/04/30/chat-with-batman-sculptor-jim-mcpherson/
Excerpt:
NERDSociety(NS): You sculpted the Batman: Black and White Statue based on David Mazzucchelli’s art from Year One. Can you tell us how you got involved in the project?
Jim McPherson(JM): Well, I met David when I was in high school. We were roommates in college when he did his initial samples and his first Master of Kung Fu story. He requested me to sculpt the figure. We had actually talked about a statue eight or so years ago. David had done some front and side drawing at that point. I put together some blueprints and reference of different angles. DC picked the early test drawing David had done for the pose. However, David wanted the sculpt to look more like the Batman in the finished comic. David’s intention was to create a simple iconic pose similar to the early poster type covers of Batman. I used Zbrush to sculpt the figure. We tried to convey the deceptively simple look of the art. David was drawing complex anatomy and then just drawing an outline around it. Your brain visualizes what is between the outlines. I knew David wanted his Batman to appear not to wear tights but more of a jersey material costume. No six pack abs on this version of the character and no spray on costume. It took two weeks. It had to be really clean to look like David’s work.
interview by Cricket, for Nerd Society May 2010
(Part 2) Alice in Wonderland Concept Art
http://www.nerdsociety.com/2010/05/27/concept-artist-jim-mcpherson-discuss-tim-burtons-alice/
NS: How involved was Tim Burton on the concept designs?
JM: Tim Burton did some drawings himself after we had completed our 3 month stint. He worked with some great concept painters, Michael Kutsche, Bobby Chui and Kei Acedera. These paintings were sculpted in Zbrush (digital in the computer) by Brandon and Heather Lawless at Gentle Giant, and output as maquettes. These include the Caterpillar, Frog Butler, Stayne, March Hare, White Rabbit, and TweedleDum and TweedleDee. Tim Burton approved the maquettes and said he wanted the character to stay as close to the maquettes as possible. Michael Kutsche told me it was the best and most faithful translation of his work that had ever done. It makes sense because all of our artists are very skilled in doing “on model” versions of Disney and Star Wars characters, actors or whatever design people need.
The digital data was given to the production and several of the characters are exact matches to the data. We’ve been doing quite a bit more concept and character design since.
NS: I loved your concept design of the Jabberwocky, what was your favorite design from Alice In Wonderland and why?
JM: I probably got to work on the Jabberwocky the longest, so I’ll say the Jabberwocky. I was told to closely mimic the 1866 John Tenniel illustration. All the pieces I did for Alice were done very fast. We were trying to deliver completely different versions of every character, every week. In the future, I’m going to slow things down a bit. The final Jabberwocky design was done by Michael Kutche.
Interview by Melanie C. Jordan for Imagine Daily, April 2010
http://imaginedaily.com/james-mcpherson/
Excerpt:
Melanie C. Jordan:
What is your work environment like?
J.M: I work on the computer with the program “ZBrush” all day long at Gentle Giant Studios. I’m surrounded by some of the most talented people I have ever worked with. I’m also surrounded by Sculptures, toys and books. It’s pretty quiet as people are serious and are concentrating on doing the best sculptures possible.
What are you working on now?
J.M: I do a lot of concept work for movies now, mainly sculpting characters in the computer. Sometimes we send the images to production, sometimes the directors sit with me and we collaborate. Sometimes I sculpt characters that other concept artist have designed.
I also work on video game characters. Additionally, I specialize in doing likeness sculptures in the computer from photos, and “on model” sculpts of cartoon characters. We’re also working on some large scale statues for galleries.
.....
James, Not only has this been an honor but it took my breath away when you agreed to this interview. Please any last words?
J.M: If something can be sculpted or drawn it can be in your movie. If that’s what you want there will be no compromises. Thank you Melanie!
Interview with Zach Oat for Pop Sculpture Blogspot, November 2010.
http://popsculpturebook.blogspot.com/2010/11/jim-mcpherson-digital-interview-about.html
Zach Oat:
What made you want to become a sculptor? How did you get into the business?
Jim McPherson: I was really inspired by the early toys from Ideal, Captain Action and especially the Justice League/Batman Playset. I’m not sure how many people sculpted on these, or if it was mainly one really talented guy. The figures are very naturalistic, but also it seems to me that the comics the characters came from were looked at very carefully. I’m guessing they pulled a Wonder Woman comic, an Aquaman, a Justice League of America and a Dick Sprang Batman Annual among others. There’s a perfect Dick Sprang-style Joker in the set, for instance. Captain Action’s Captain America Mask looks a bit like Jack Kirby’s design, and the Aquaman looks like Nick Cardy’s. It’s sort of the early version of now, when Tim Bruckner does dead-on Alex Ross figures. I was really impressed by that.
I loved The Munsters, which got me interested in makeup. I loved the Adventures of Superman and Batman TV shows, which got me interested in toys and comic art. I wanted to be a comic book artist, but I had always done sculptures. In college, I decided I liked sculpting a lot more. I actually walked into a company called the Puppet Workshop and got a job sculpting puppets and walkaround costumes and performing in the puppet show(!).
I moved to New York, sculpted on music videos and commercials and Broadway shows and then moved to California, showed my portfolio and got work helping out on Howard the Duck ( the makeup on Jeffrey Jones, not the Duck). Eventually I got hired at Rick Baker’s and did a lot of behind-the-scenes character design work, which is really my favorite thing to do. Rick mainly sculpted his character designs in clay. Sometimes he did airbrush paintings. I do a lot of character design and visual development now, and use much of what I’ve learned from Rick and the other great artists who worked for him.
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=62258
Excerpt:
What is your favorite ZBrush feature, and why?
Being able to work on multiple levels of subdivisions; being able to actually detail the sculpture at any point and then change your mind to go back and maybe move the lower res parts of the mesh in order to move all the detail around. That’s amazing for me. In clay, if you change your mind (which I did constantly) you’d have to cut parts off and then build them back up completely and re-detail. But we don’t have to do that in ZBrush. So I look at like you can basically see what it’s going to look like when it’s done, pretty much at the beginning.
I also like that I can paint the model as I sculpt and actually see what the final piece is going to look like. Not just work with green or gray clay and then have to “sell” that to a client or director and kind of go, “Well, it’s going to look like this when it goes through our paint shop.” I paint everything now, regardless of whether people want me to or not. Sometimes I just don’t show them. But we’ve had projects where people have said, “We have to do stuff in a specific order, and we’ll tell you when to go on to the next step.” After a while, they stop telling us and their art directors would then start telling us to make changes to the object AND the paint based on what they were seeing. That worked out really good for us. We can really cut out a lot of time and steps by working on all the artistic parts of the project all at once.
interview by Cricket, for Nerd Society May 2010
(Part1) Batman Year One sculpt
http://www.nerdsociety.com/2010/04/30/chat-with-batman-sculptor-jim-mcpherson/
Excerpt:
NERDSociety(NS): You sculpted the Batman: Black and White Statue based on David Mazzucchelli’s art from Year One. Can you tell us how you got involved in the project?
Jim McPherson(JM): Well, I met David when I was in high school. We were roommates in college when he did his initial samples and his first Master of Kung Fu story. He requested me to sculpt the figure. We had actually talked about a statue eight or so years ago. David had done some front and side drawing at that point. I put together some blueprints and reference of different angles. DC picked the early test drawing David had done for the pose. However, David wanted the sculpt to look more like the Batman in the finished comic. David’s intention was to create a simple iconic pose similar to the early poster type covers of Batman. I used Zbrush to sculpt the figure. We tried to convey the deceptively simple look of the art. David was drawing complex anatomy and then just drawing an outline around it. Your brain visualizes what is between the outlines. I knew David wanted his Batman to appear not to wear tights but more of a jersey material costume. No six pack abs on this version of the character and no spray on costume. It took two weeks. It had to be really clean to look like David’s work.
interview by Cricket, for Nerd Society May 2010
(Part 2) Alice in Wonderland Concept Art
http://www.nerdsociety.com/2010/05/27/concept-artist-jim-mcpherson-discuss-tim-burtons-alice/
NS: How involved was Tim Burton on the concept designs?
JM: Tim Burton did some drawings himself after we had completed our 3 month stint. He worked with some great concept painters, Michael Kutsche, Bobby Chui and Kei Acedera. These paintings were sculpted in Zbrush (digital in the computer) by Brandon and Heather Lawless at Gentle Giant, and output as maquettes. These include the Caterpillar, Frog Butler, Stayne, March Hare, White Rabbit, and TweedleDum and TweedleDee. Tim Burton approved the maquettes and said he wanted the character to stay as close to the maquettes as possible. Michael Kutsche told me it was the best and most faithful translation of his work that had ever done. It makes sense because all of our artists are very skilled in doing “on model” versions of Disney and Star Wars characters, actors or whatever design people need.
The digital data was given to the production and several of the characters are exact matches to the data. We’ve been doing quite a bit more concept and character design since.
NS: I loved your concept design of the Jabberwocky, what was your favorite design from Alice In Wonderland and why?
JM: I probably got to work on the Jabberwocky the longest, so I’ll say the Jabberwocky. I was told to closely mimic the 1866 John Tenniel illustration. All the pieces I did for Alice were done very fast. We were trying to deliver completely different versions of every character, every week. In the future, I’m going to slow things down a bit. The final Jabberwocky design was done by Michael Kutche.
Interview by Melanie C. Jordan for Imagine Daily, April 2010
http://imaginedaily.com/james-mcpherson/
Excerpt:
Melanie C. Jordan:
What is your work environment like?
J.M: I work on the computer with the program “ZBrush” all day long at Gentle Giant Studios. I’m surrounded by some of the most talented people I have ever worked with. I’m also surrounded by Sculptures, toys and books. It’s pretty quiet as people are serious and are concentrating on doing the best sculptures possible.
What are you working on now?
J.M: I do a lot of concept work for movies now, mainly sculpting characters in the computer. Sometimes we send the images to production, sometimes the directors sit with me and we collaborate. Sometimes I sculpt characters that other concept artist have designed.
I also work on video game characters. Additionally, I specialize in doing likeness sculptures in the computer from photos, and “on model” sculpts of cartoon characters. We’re also working on some large scale statues for galleries.
.....
James, Not only has this been an honor but it took my breath away when you agreed to this interview. Please any last words?
J.M: If something can be sculpted or drawn it can be in your movie. If that’s what you want there will be no compromises. Thank you Melanie!
Interview with Zach Oat for Pop Sculpture Blogspot, November 2010.
http://popsculpturebook.blogspot.com/2010/11/jim-mcpherson-digital-interview-about.html
Zach Oat:
What made you want to become a sculptor? How did you get into the business?
Jim McPherson: I was really inspired by the early toys from Ideal, Captain Action and especially the Justice League/Batman Playset. I’m not sure how many people sculpted on these, or if it was mainly one really talented guy. The figures are very naturalistic, but also it seems to me that the comics the characters came from were looked at very carefully. I’m guessing they pulled a Wonder Woman comic, an Aquaman, a Justice League of America and a Dick Sprang Batman Annual among others. There’s a perfect Dick Sprang-style Joker in the set, for instance. Captain Action’s Captain America Mask looks a bit like Jack Kirby’s design, and the Aquaman looks like Nick Cardy’s. It’s sort of the early version of now, when Tim Bruckner does dead-on Alex Ross figures. I was really impressed by that.
I loved The Munsters, which got me interested in makeup. I loved the Adventures of Superman and Batman TV shows, which got me interested in toys and comic art. I wanted to be a comic book artist, but I had always done sculptures. In college, I decided I liked sculpting a lot more. I actually walked into a company called the Puppet Workshop and got a job sculpting puppets and walkaround costumes and performing in the puppet show(!).
I moved to New York, sculpted on music videos and commercials and Broadway shows and then moved to California, showed my portfolio and got work helping out on Howard the Duck ( the makeup on Jeffrey Jones, not the Duck). Eventually I got hired at Rick Baker’s and did a lot of behind-the-scenes character design work, which is really my favorite thing to do. Rick mainly sculpted his character designs in clay. Sometimes he did airbrush paintings. I do a lot of character design and visual development now, and use much of what I’ve learned from Rick and the other great artists who worked for him.