An interview with FREDERIC ST-ARNAUD

Interview for the web site CG Tantra in India.

This is the link: http://www.cgtantra.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=261&Itemid=35


Few lines...

Frederic St-Arnaud is a Senior Digital Matte-painter at Rodeo FX. He is a visual effect artist with 12 years of experience, focusing on high-end photo-realistic digital matte painting, set extension, concept art and art direction in the film industry. He has contributed to more than 25 feature films, dozens of commercials for television and a few TV series. He is working for different visual effects companies as a matte painter, concept artist and sometimes as an art director or teacher. These are few of his Honours:

Honors:
2008: CGTantra Showcase Challenge winner.
2008: Endorsement for the coverpage of the book d'artiste - Matte Painting 2 (Ballistic Publishing)
2007: Endorsement for the coverpage of the book Digital Art Master volume 2 (DAM II)
2007: Jury Member of the Unofficial Matte-Painting Challenge on CGsociety.org / CGtalk.com
2007: Award Winner on Pixel Theory 3D.com
2007: Excellence Award on www.3Dtotal.com
2007: Artwork "The Decline of Babel Myth" released in the book EXPOSE 5
2006: Excellence Nomination Award for the book EXPOSE 4
2005: CG Elite on www.CGchannel.com
2005: Award Winner for the book EXPOSE 3

We caught up with him to share his experiences with us.

Q. Glad to have you here for the interview, Frederic! To begin with, tell us something about yourself?
Hi to every CGTantra readers! I'm living in the province of Quebec in Canada. I was born in a small French town in the mid seventies just in the middle of the province. I did my first drawing at 3 years old and since, I never stop. I always dreamt about doing special effects for cinema. I did many latex puppets, creatures and make-up effects for theater plays when I was a teenager until I discover the first 3D visual effects from movies such as Terminator 2 and The Abyss. I decided to do a traditional cartoon and 3D animation program in a private school in 1996 and 1997. I did different type of jobs for the first 5 years after school, from storyboard artist, character animator, texture artist to finally end-up in matte painting field.

Rise of Niburu - The myth of planet X

Rise of Niburu is a personal matte painting inspired by the myth of the planet X, also called Niburu. This hypothetical astronomical object become more popular since the arrival of 2012. I though it could be funny to do an image about this story. I made it in 6 hours, inside the same day.

From Wikipedia:
Sitchin's theory proposes the planets Tiamat and Nibiru. Tiamat supposedly existed between Mars and Jupiter. He postulated that it was a thriving world in a much differently shaped solar system, with jungles and oceans, whose orbit was disrupted by the arrival of a large planet or very small star (less than twenty times the size of Jupiter) which passed through the solar system between 65 million and four billion years ago. The new orbits caused Tiamat to collide with one of the moons of this object, which is known as Nibiru. The debris from this collision are thought by the theory's proponents to have variously formed the asteroid belt, the moon, and the current incarnation of the planet Earth.

Beginning in 1995, websites such as ZetaTalk have identified Nibiru or "Planet X" as a large brown dwarf currently within our planetary system, soon to pass relatively close to Earth. Sitchin disagrees with the timing of passage.

To the Babylonians, Nibiru was the celestial body or region sometimes associated with the god Marduk. The word is Akkadian and the meaning is uncertain. Because of this, the hypothetical planet Nibiru is sometimes also referred to as Marduk. Sitchin hypothesizes it as a planet in a highly elliptic orbit around the Sun, with a perihelion passage some 3,600 years ago and assumed orbital period of about 3,750 years; he also claims it was the home of a technologically advanced human-like alien race, the Anunnaki, who apparently visited Earth in search of gold.

This is the link to the real webpage:
http://www.laberge.qc.ca/fred/gallery/displayimage.php?album=20&pos=0