Share on Twitter!Our third artist profile has been in the video/visual effects scene for a very long time and is one of the most passionate video editors we've ever met. He's worked for Watoto, Elemental Edge, done lots of freelance and now he runs his own firm called ADDMAYA. His name is Peter Mukiibi.
We normally start our interviews with artist bios, but Peter decided to throw in a unique twist to the bio.
Peter's Bio.
Welcome Peter. Could you please tell us more about yourself?
First of all it’s such an honour to be invited on the Design Kingdom site.
Well my friends call me Pete. When I’m not working I love to play golf when I can afford to and relax by myself wherever the band Qwela is playing. I’m usually inspired by all kinds of things but mostly colours. As you will notice in most of my videos (sorry I only managed to post screen shots) I love to tweak the colours for a much nicer look or to set the mood. I actually repaint everything I look at.
When I walk into a place and see a crowd of people I don’t know, I will start by throwing out all the colour to a plain black and white image in my mind, then start dialling in the colours I want where I want them. So I will paint Benge red, Tiffany will remain in Black and white, blue for Robert and the colours will dictate how things occur from there onwards. Doesn’t sound like it makes sense but lets just say try looking at the sky every morning. See how the different colour mix and blend and notice whether it affects the way you feel or how you view life in all other aspects.
Your work from your portfolio is mainly Video and Visual Effects work. Would you call yourself a purely Video/VFX Artist? Or do you find yourself covering multiple skill sets?
I’d say I’m a bit of this and that and trust me it’s usually the case if you happened to just stumble into design. The industry requires you to also have multiple skills sometimes. There is a beauty about it though because breaking routine is what creates excitement in our lives. When someone walks up to me, I usually close my eyes and say, “God I wish they ask me to do something new. Something I have never done before”. But again you don’t have to know everything or be great in all the different elements of design. It’s better to focus first on the things that come naturally to you and those that you are passionate about, then develop or acquire other skills as you go. If you are a video editor that doesn’t know how to draw, then go out and hire a concept artist to do your storyboards. It will save you a lot of time in the process. Ahaaaa PROCESS is an interesting word in this field. We will talk about that later.
How did you become so good at Video/VFX? How much do you practice?
It’s a good thing to practise a lot but then in my view it usually boils down to the way you view things. Design of which video/vfx are a subsection of is not just a job. It’s a life style. You have to constantly be living with it. They say limitations create genius and I have worked in places where I was presented with the most challenging video footage. By that I mean the footage was shot in poor lighting conditions, poor compositions by the camera man, no depth of field in the frame, barely any clear audio to work with and the list goes on… And yet still the client would ask that you make it work.
Many artists (especially the self taught guys) know how to create things that look nice but don’t know much about the fundamentals of design. You see a nice animation or in Uganda’s case a nice music video shot with a professional camera but yet it lacks the fundamentals e.g. perspective, depth of field, form, shape and lighting so it’s just not that believable or saleable to the audience.
What influences or inspires you as an artist?
Knowing that you do not need money to become an artist will propel anyone into becoming a great one. I’m usually inspired by fellow artist and by this I’m not just referring to the ones that do something similar to what I do e.g. the dexterity with which Bishop TD Jakes preaches, Hillsong’s Music, Cold Play’s costume designs, Jonathan Ive’s product design at Apple, the team at 2advanced.com. How they build every site with incredible skills, how Andrew Kramer simplifies learning a software called AfterEffects and a few others.
What projects are you working on now and if not super secret, can you tell us a bit more about them?
Artist love keeping their work confidential especially when it’s still in progress and trust me there are many reasons why we do so. But only for Design Kingdom, I will go ahead and share something we are working on for now and hopefully it will be on TV soon for everyone to enjoy. Notice I said we and that’s because it’s a team that includes other amazingly talented people like Charlotte Namirembe, Jose Senyondo, Arthur Nakkaka, Trinity Mugaga, Brian Mulondo, Nargis Shirazi and Jaxon Lulika therefore I speak on their behalf as well.
For the past 3 months we have been carefully creating a TV Show. We hope to set a new standard on Uganda’s airwaves. Can’t say a lot about it as that would spoil the unveiling. I have a few snapshots though and I hope they can paint a faint picture of what to expect visually.
One of the most exciting things about our work is the attention to detail. With no availability of cameras that can shoot on film it’s still possible to mimic a film look. A good example is a scene that was filmed at the shores of lake Victoria and we coloured the water from grey to light blue and added clouds and sunlight to create serenity in the shot. Something I like to call digital atmosphere but you have to make sure you don’t over do it or else it all starts to look cheesy.
Well I guess it depends on what you are going for. See the original and final images side by side.
What is your most rewarding design work, the one project or piece that you are really proud of? Why is it your best?
Design Kingdom has an inveigle way of asking but I must say it’s hard to pick one particular one piece. It’s like asking a father to pick out his favourite child. I guess from the comments I have received from many friends there is a tie between a Qwela advert I scripted and worked on with my partner in crime Arthur whose interview you should all look out for here someday and the Watoto Sponsorship advert telling Joseph’s story scripted by Sydney Berry and I did the animation.
Joseph’s story was a simple but yet powerful piece that stood out evidently. Sydney had drawn some images and I had filmed some footage in HD by the way. Love that word. Anyway we had to find a way of integrating the drawings with the footage so I had to make the pencil drawings move in the way video footage would. At first I thought about redrawing frame by frame but then with a few hours and some mathematical expressions I was able to drive the pencil lines to the speed and direction of the footage in a convincing way. Hmmmm can’t actually remember how I did that but I know I did.
Tell us a bit about your general work flow: from idea, to concept to finished piece. What techniques, tools and software do you use?
I’m a night person. There is less distraction and you get to set the mood of the environment in which you work. I call it the zone. Usually I will pick an idea from a client and discuss my inner desires by involving them in the creative process. Some clients just don’t have the time or knowledge so they give you the freedom to do whatever you feel. I like to have a snack by my desk when I can afford one. I also keep a Spiderman toy car to evoke my superhero powers when I need them.
It’s good to psyche yourself with every task you do. I go ahead and do a basic cut to the audio in Final Cut Pro which I export into an advanced professional grading software where I also do all the motion graphics and animations. It’s actually quite a process and when you are new you tend to wonder why the footage has to go through all those applications especially when working on video/VFX. Sometimes you have to multiply, add or subtract layers using their luminance or chroma values and a particular software may not have the capabilities to do that. So, you need to export the footage to another application that can, then back.
I always start and end in Final Cut Pro and in between depending on what the task calls for I will use Cinema4d for 3D, AfterEffects, Color or Shake for compositing and colour grading, Photoshop and Illustrator for art work, Soundtrack Pro for sound and I’m yet to add Maya to this collection hence the name ADDMAYA MOTION PICTURES the company I work for. If well used, Plugins can take your work to a whole new level. I love the Sapphire and Trapcode Packages. DVD authoring is another thing that’s under looked and yet very vital in the presentation of your final work. I use DVD Studio Pro 3
What are the difficulties or challenges you face in your projects (personal and commercial work) and how do you overcome them?
The biggest challenge is technical limitations. At times I sit down with a friend and we create an amazing idea but then we realize that to pull it off we will need to do some Motion capture or film the footage in 2k or 4k resolution especially when the final piece is going to be viewed in a cinema or large LED or Plasma screens and yet we don’t have any of the tools here in Uganda that can do that. So you end up feeling like you went to school to learn all these amazing techniques but you actually can’t get to practice with them. But that doesn’t mean we should run away from the challenges. They make us better when we grab them by the horns. Find other ways to achieve the desired look or concept with what you have at that particular moment. Sometimes there is really no way out but it teaches you a lot when you at least try.
Where do you see yourself in the next five years?
This is a good one. Let me see, maybe somewhere receiving an award or handing one to a fellow artist for best Video/VFX in Uganda. I think we need more avenues to encourage Ugandan visual effects artists and appreciate them for their creative work. The industry is growing here but usually the best music video award is determined by how big the artist is and yet that shouldn’t be the case. Or maybe I’m wrong but I have seen some really amazing visual work that goes by unnoticed because the judges on the panel are inclined to something totally different. I’d love to travel more because it’s only then that you get to have a different worldview.
Thank you for the time and for the interview, do you have any last words of advice or tips for designers?
There is a lot of material out there to help you with every challenge you could imagine. Visit sites with work done by other artists and be inspired by them. Every artist is different and you don’t have to be exactly like someone else. Be you, develop you, grow you, love your work and lastly learn to collaborate with other artists because some tasks are way bigger than you. Ever wondered how 2,000 artists work on one project like Lord of the Rings? Well they understand the process and pipeline and have trained themselves to join forces by sharing the workload hence generating billions of dollars with the final piece of art.
Thanks guys for sitting through this and hope we can all share and collaborate more here on the Design Kingdom site.
A big thank you to my Lord Jesus, my family and all my friends that have supported me to this day. Love you all and finally the team at Addmaya Motion Pictures. You guys have blessed me in so many ways.
Cheers.
***
That's it from Peter. We hope you have learnt something new and have been inspired by his work and his interview. Our next artist profile will be none other than Arthur Nakaka, one of the quietest but also one most talented VFX / Video people in this city.
Our recent website update kinda messed up our shedule, so we'll skip one week.
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