Exciting Interview with Turkish 3D Artist Kerem Gogus

Kerem Gogus is a talented Turkish 3D artists that has a colossal experience behind him and a great number of victories in different CG contests such as Art4All Contest (his work “Memories” created under the influence of Dare’s song “Take Me Away” took the 1st place), DeviantArt Seasons of 3D Contest (with the work “Spring In Atlantia”), Miramax/Deviantart.com Eagle Vs. Shark Movie Poser Design Contest, Miramax / DeviantArt Renaissance - Live Forever: Movie Poster Contest where he took the first place as well and many others. He managed to win several E-on Software Picture Of The Day Awards. The list of Kerem’s achievements seems to go on forever. And you, guys, have a great opportunity to read the interview with this skillful artist where he tells about himself, shares his experience, ideas and thoughts.

 

“Memories” by Kerem Gogus

 

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Kerem Gogus is an all-arounder with vast interests: art history, traditional painting, and architecture. He adores music, especially Celtic music and fully and emotionally involved with Computer Graphics. But, let him personally tell about this!

 

Could you please tell us about yourself a bit? How did you get into the world of CG and 3D modeling? When did you first notice that you have talent for drawing?

 

My name is Kerem Gogus. I’m a 30 years old freelance digital painter and graphic designer. I always love to draw things – mostly imaginary stuff. I remember that I was drawing an UFO abduction scene in nursery school! But I wasn’t aware that this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I met with computer graphics on Commodore Amiga computers. They were so great on it and they were a revolution indeed. My parents bought an Amiga 500 with 512kb of ram in junior high school. It always kept me away from being a good student at school because all I was thinking about was graphics! Then the PCs came up to the scene with their 3d accelerator graphic cards. First thing I saw on them was the game we all know well - Doom. I was always asking myself “how they do that” – and began to research into the 3D software I could afford myself. I bought a copy of Bryce 3D and everything was started with it.

 

“The Wishing Tree” by Kerem Gogus

 

Is 3D graphics your primary activity that you do for living or a hobby?

 

It was a hobby first. I always listen to the music that takes me away and let me dream about other worlds when working on 3D. And when I came up with something good I try to find the e-mail of the musician who inspired me and sent a copy of my work to him/her to share. One day a musician I never knew – Michael Gabriel contacted me for a cover design work! It was so exciting because it’s a thing I always want to do. I was working on a graphic design company at the moment and I was already using 2D design software. After the work I’ve done with Michael Gabriel. Another great musician Karin Leitner contacted with me for logo designs and cover illustrations. During all these happenings I was sending the pieces I’ve created with inspiration of his music to 3 times Grammy nominee David Arkenstone and one day he replied my e-mail with telling that he had a project for me! And I found myself working with him and his close friend Johnny Wilson who works in Hollywood as a special fx artist! It turned out from a hobby into a profession by itself because it was something I wanted.

 

Cover artwork and design for the Michael Gabriel’s debut album “Visions”

 

Cover Illustration “In The Wake Of The Wind” for Karin Leitner’s album

 

When you are working on some project, do you imagine at once what you want to see in the complete image or do you work by intuitive suggestions? Do the ideas for your artworks appear during the working process or before it?

 

Ideas appear before the working process. I don’t like to mess around with 3D program and see what I’ve come up with. I prefer to sit down – or lay down – and play the music I love and dream about it. When something comes to my mind I draw it roughly. Drawing before 3D is good, saving you from wasting time when working on 3D because pencil sketching is way faster as you know. After I cleaned up everything in my mind I start to work on 3D modeling when that part finished texturing & lighting. Modeling and lighting are actually my favorite parts of 3D.

 

“Satellite” by Kerem Gogus

 

How do your relatives and close people regard your works? Are any of them also connected to Arts?

 

My father is a photographer and my mother is art historian. They are so special to me and I always ask their opinions and their knowledge is always useful. And it’s always nice to see that they are enjoying my works.

 

“Journey To Eternity” by Kerem Gogus

 

As you have mentioned on your personal website, music is your biggest source of inspiration. What else gives you ideas and inspires you?

 

Artworks of the other artists – especially Eric Hanson, Johnny Wilson, Jeremy Engleman, Alex Alvarez, Deanna Hancock, Jerry Composano. Eric Hanson is a great mentor also, his approach to the subjects and his techniques are really inspiring. Also I love Hollywood movies some of them are really great inspiration such as The Fountain and The Forbidden Kingdom.

 

Recently you were invited for a TV Show on a Turkish TV channel Gercek TV. Thousands of people saw your interview. What did you feel in that moment? Tell us, what’s that like to be famous?

 

I’m not seeing myself as someone famous. My duty was going there and sharing my humble knowledge about 3D and special effects generally. The things I’ve learned on my experiences and on my work. I feel like that I was doing something good because most of the people who’s not interested in 3D graphics believes that computer is generating everything we need on our work and of course that is nonsense. Working on computer could be much more harder than working with canvas and oil. Besides the artistic view, 3D artists also have to have knowledge about hardware and cinema techniques and stuff like that. So it was good to tell these facts to the people who were watching that channel at least!

 

“Spring In Atlantia” by Kerem Gogus

 

As we know, you take a keen interest in the History of Art. How do you estimate the artists of the Past? What could they give to the modern artists, in your opinion?

 

I think they were much more skilled than anyone who currently producing art. Because they weren’t distracted with the facts of the modern world – such as TV, Internet, stock exchange, money, bad economy etc. They were able to focus on what they want, and the most powerful laws of the universe brought them what they focused on. They attracted miraculous pieces of art from extremely detailed paintings to marvelous architecture. Ancient Egypt Pyramids, Inca/Maya Pyramids and other art pieces of the history in my humble opinion, can not be exactly re-produced by today’s technology because we all distracted from focusing on what we really want and our technology is nothing but the result of this distraction.

 

 

Among your works I mostly enjoy “Take Me to This Place”. Can you please tell us about the process of this work creation? What inspired you? What was the most challenging part of it?

 

“Take Me To This Place” by Kerem Gogus

 

That scene was one of the three attempts of mine to Eon Software’s Landscape Contest. Eon Software are the makers of Vue Infinite – a landscape software I’m using since version 4 for creating my natural landscape scenes and some of my sci-fi scenes. It’s very logical, user friendly and easy to use 3D application. During my work I discovered a musician called Camiel. His song “Take Me To This Place” directly inspired me. Most challenging part of it was adding a proper ecosystem to mountains and using my new grass objects properly on the close up.

 

Can you please name your favorite works (among your collection)? And why do you like them most of all?

 

You can find my favorites on my Awards Gallery page. I think the online digital art communities enjoyed my personal favorites as well. Actually I like most of my works: if I’m not totally satisfied with them, I just don’t get them online .

 

“White Stones” by Kerem Gogus

 

“Rwenzori” by Kerem Gogus

 

“World Inside My Heart” by Kerem Gogus

 

With this brilliant 3D image Kerem Gogus became The Winner of the Landscapes!

 

Do you have an aim as an artist? Do you have any dreams related to CG, for example, to create somebody’s portrait or to take part in some CG competitions?

 

Would be great to work on cinema industry, like Hollywood. Most of my idols working on there. I’d love to create a 3D portrait of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkish Republic. He had really great charismatic face. Making a 3D portrait of Adriana Lima would be really awesome. Also I’d love to create 3D versions of the Ancient Egypt sphinx and statues. About the contests, I’ll keep joining the CG Society contests which is really big deal. So it would be awesome to win it once!

 

“Someday” by Kerem Gogus

 

And the traditional question at the end… What would you suggest to the beginning CG artists?

 

Hard to tell – I always see myself as a beginner. That’s keeping on the continuous learning level. That’s the best way to keep yourself up. Always try new things and always keep learning from books, from training DVDs, from other artists. Always keep your mind open to the critiques, not matter how harsh they are. There’s always something to learn from everything. And never give up – remember what Thomas Edison said: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”.

 

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Thank you, Kerem, for a great interview. We wish you success, plenty of luck and inspiration!
I hope our readers also enjoyed the interview as I did.

 

 

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 8:17 am and is filed under interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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