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Richard Reynolds
Malibu, California
rar3@shoreline-wireless.com

"I've changed my career focus since I started working with form•Z. Being an Art Director required lots of coordination - making sure information was getting to all the designers, ensuring the progress of workflow. Since using form•Z, though, I've discovered my passion. It has allowed me to enthusiastically embrace drawing up set designs."

Currently, Reynolds is hard at work on the upcoming sure-to-be blockbuster Terminator 3, using form•Z for the previsualization of the film's entire set. This is no easy process. "The previsualization of a set requires repeated iterations. Often times the design will be OK'd by the Art Director, the Production Director, then it gets all the way up to the construction crew...and someone changes their mind. You have to start all over again. We usually end up creating four to ten versions of a set before we can settle into something that everyone's happy with."

Because of this, form•Z has become integral to Reynolds' success.

"I now work exclusively in form•Z. It has greatly expanded my abilities to present sets in a variety of formats in a short amount of time. When using traditional media in the past, I could only produce one rendering of a set in the same amount of time it takes to produce ten in form•Z! form•Z has made me more valuable to my art department."

After completing the previsualization of a film's set, Reynolds uses form•Z's drafting capabilities to create drafts from which a construction crew builds a set.

"Most people in this business are heavily trained in AutoCAD. They're usually stunned to see that I can create such high quality drafts in form•Z. With other applications, it's a pain to continually export and import files into different formats. Files are constantly passed back and forth between designers, directors, and construction crews. To put it into perspective, I've already created 8 drafts for the set of Terminator 3 that have made it to the construction crew and have been sent back at the last minute. form•Z is great for me because it allows me to keep the drafting and modeling files together, avoiding any problems or confusion."
 

Planet of the Apes set design
"The spaceship was initially done as a sculptural model. From that, they tried to draft the set traditionally, but were unsuccessful because the geometry was so complex...there were so many pinnacles. They called me up and I was able to create a form•Z model of the physical model. form•Z allowed me to take section cuts at any point and produce construction drawings from them. Because of its complexity, the whole thing was built in 20 foot sections. It was enormous." "All the parts were constructed in LA and had to be taken to the Mojave Desert, where the scene was shot. There were seven truckloads worth of pinnacles alone. Each of the pinnacles were nearly 100 feet long. The final product ended up being equivalent to a 10-story building tilted at about 30 degrees. It was a real challenge because the footings had been placed in the sand nearly a month before the pinnacles were put in. There was absolutely no room for error. Due to form•Z's precision, the whole thing went together beautifully from the draftings."

"PLANET OF THE APES" © 2001 Twentieth Century Fox. All rights reserved.