Dive into the creative mind of Lucas Piazzini, a Jr Generalist at Industrial Light & Magic, who recently won 3rd place in pwnisher’s "Rampage Rally" challenge. In this exclusive interview with Fox Renderfarm, the industry’s top cloud rendering services provider and render farm, Lucas reveals the inspiration behind his high-octane roller skating project, inspired by “Alita: Battle Angel,” and walks us through his meticulous creative process. From initial storyboards and tackling animation and FX to leveraging the power of cloud rendering, he shares invaluable insights on overcoming artistic hurdles and the tools that brought his vibrant vision to life.
Fox Renderfarm: Hi Lucas! It’s a pleasure to have you with us. Could you briefly introduce yourself to our audience?
Lucas Piazzini: Hi! My name is Lucas, and I am 23 years old. I am currently a Jr Generalist at Industrial Light & Magic. Before that, I worked on game trailers at Unit Image as an Env/Light apprentice until I joined ILM after graduating.
Fox Renderfarm: Huge congratulations on ranking 3rd in the "Rampage Rally"! What does this achievement mean to you? Also, we’d love for you to introduce your project—its name, concept, and what inspired you to create it.
Lucas Piazzini: Thank you very much! My project was inspired by “Alita: Battle Angel,” specifically the “motorball” sequence, which features a high-speed roller skating competition. I absolutely loved this feeling of free flow, gliding over asphalt, and stadiums are always very interesting to light. I didn’t want to recreate that sequence to avoid direct comparison with the movie’s masterful VFX, so I created original characters, stadium, and animation to take some distance from it.
My inspiration! Alita: Battle Angel
Winning 3rd place is amazing! After spectating the challenge for a few years and providing feedback to the community, I recently decided to participate, marking my first serious involvement, second overall. The Top 100 was impressive, so it’s an honor to be included!
Rampage Rally Submission
Fox Renderfarm: Are there any artists or works that particularly inspire you?
Lucas Piazzini: Many artists inspire me, Aaron Westwood, Samuel Krug, Antoine Gandon, Pierre-Lou Guillore, Steffen Hampel, William Fiorentini… There are too many to cite, but make sure to check them out as each shares incredibly valuable knowledge in 3D!
Fox Renderfarm: We’re really curious about your creative process. Could you walk us through the tools and software you used? Did you encounter any technical or artistic challenges, and how did you overcome them?
Lucas Piazzini: This project started on the drawing board! I initially battled between two ideas: this one and a Harry Potter Quidditch shot. After spending a couple of days on the HP idea, I decided to compare the two and let the community vote, and the response was unanimously leaning towards rollerskating.
Storyboard Frame
On this project, I decided to start with the hard stuff first. As an environment/generalist, I am confident in my speed on those aspects, whereas animation and FX are much bigger challenges for me! Therefore, after initially blocking to get the shape of my road down, I jumped straight to chara and animation. I knew most of my character was going to be Hard-Surface, therefore I wouldn’t have to worry about rig preservation and animation versioning on most of it, as the torso would be the only softbody part that would actually deform with the rig and require extra attention.
Longest part to create on my character: Legs.
Similarly, I quickly moved to FX, which is the department I have the least experience in, and to that I must take the time to thank Robert Kouts, who helped me a lot! With that done, I rendered a low-quality version with a missing environment to prepare compositing, as I liked the idea of being able to work on the environment as long as I can while knowing all other aspects of the project already taken care of, or at least have a solid V1 to submit. My number 1 target was getting a decent submittable render; with that target reached, all I would have to do is improve each aspect until the deadline hit.
V01 render, 10 days before deadline
With work, days of rendering/QC and only starting at the end of the first week, that left me with less than a week for environment and two weeks total for the completion of all aspects to a satisfactory level. Let me tell you, nights were short!
Nights were short, but eventually, you make it work!
Fox Renderfarm: Have you heard about or tried Fox Renderfarm before this project? We’d love your honest thoughts on your experience with our cloud rendering services.
Lucas Piazzini: I had actually. I used Fox’s services the first time I participated in one of Clint’s challenges: Chasm’s Call. This was also my first time using a render farm, and it completely changed my perception of them. I imagined a lengthy process to submit scenes, collect all files, conflicting versions, and missing plugins…none of that applied to Fox, and the process was jaw-droppingly smooth. The only downside is that rendering was so fast, I hadn’t prepared anything to render for the 13 more hours I could afford to wait during the night and work!
Lucas’s Social Media
ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/lucaspiazzini
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucaspiazzini/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lucasprismal
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