It is our honor to have an interview with Yi Sun, the first place winner in Hum3D’s Three D Gun 2 Competition, which is also sponsored by Fox Renderfarm, a leading render farm service provider in CG industry. Share this interview with everyone, here are the dialogue between Fox Renderfarm and Yi Sun.

Fox Renderfarm: Hi, Yi Sun, congratulations to winning the 1st place in this contest, thanks so much for taking your time to have the interview with us. Firstly, would you please give a brief introduction about yourself?

Yi Sun: Yes, my name is Yi Sun, 25 years old, from China, I had a bachelor degree in 3d animation and I’m currently studying Master of Design in Sydney.

Fox Renderfarm: How long have you been in the CG industry? And how did you make the decision to get into the CG industry?

Yi Sun: I haven't found a job in the CG industry yet, but I've been teaching myself 3D for 5 years now. I started doing silly short videos when I was a kid. back then I discovered I can make some visual effects for videos in After Effects, but soon, I realized the 2D visual effects is very limited, I want to make more sophisticated effects, especially 3D effects. so I started learning 3D software. At that time I just thought it was cool, I never thought about doing this for a career, until I visited the universal studio in Los Angles. I got a chance to listen to the Hollywood VFX artists talks about the VFX production of the blockbuster movies and it blew my mind. I've been dreaming to work on a blockbuster movie ever since that talk and I've been working very hard trying to put my first step in the CG industry. I hope my dream will come true soon.

Fox Renderfarm: It is a great experience. Wish your dream come true. About the work "Porcelain 1911", what inspired you to come out the idea of making it?

Yi Sun: The idea is very simple, combining two completely different objects together. I used to do this kind of design practice a lot when I was learning character design in 3D animation. In "Porcelain 1911", I try to combine the porcelain element I familiar with and a gun which I'm not quite familiar with. I think as a 3d artist, the biggest advantage I had is my cultural background.  I've seen a lot of Chinese porcelain as I grow up, I found them very beautiful, so I feel very comfortable to work with porcelain element in my design. if this competition is about design a realistic and futuristic sci-fi gun, I believe there are millions of 3d artist who can design better sci-fi gun than me, because I never have seen or touch a real gun.

Fox Renderfarm: It is an interesting idea. How long did it take you to finish the work?

Yi Sun: I was doing a master degree while working on the "Porcelain 1911", I had 3 assignments from Uni so I barely had time to work on it, sometimes I only have 15 minutes before I got to go to sleep. It took me about 2 months, but I think the actual time I spent on it is only about 120 hours. Now I look at it, I think it could be done better, there are still many things I want to polish in this work.

Fox Renderfarm: What software, renderers, plugins did you use in this work?

Yi Sun: My main 3d software is Maya, and I used Mari (non-commercial) for texturing, and redshift for rendering and photoshop.

Fox Renderfarm: Did you meet any difficulties when creating this work? And how did you solve it?

Yi Sun: The difficulties I faced in this project is to create the realistic hand paint graphic of the Chinese porcelain, I tried to import vector into Photoshop apply filters but the result looks very fake, I tried to download watercolour brush for photoshop, but it doesn't look good either. Then I realized it’s not possible to create realistic paint mark on the computer, so I decided to create the texture physically with watercolour. I realized even though we had so many presets, filters and plugins to helps us create digital works, but they can never replace traditional mark making techniques, as a digital artist, I should always remember to respect the physical medium.

Fox Renderfarm: Anything else you would like to share with CG enthusiasts?

Yi Sun: I think CG is the best medium for self-expression, you can create almost anything and everything, that's why there are many things to learn, too many. I spent 5 years learning CG and I still feel that I know nothing about it, that's why I think we should always be humble to learn and we should try to use our cultural background as our advantage to develop our own unique style.

Fox Renderfarm: Yes, totally agree with you. I hope you can make more wonderful works in the future, and you will be an excellent CG artist. Thanks so much for your time.

More Yi Sun's artworks: yisun.artstation.com