You studied design in the University of Kansas, what brought you to 3D animation and to LightWave 3D®?

When I was in college, I worked at a tee-shirt company called Screen-It where we made tee-shirts for the local community. That’s when I started learning about 3D programmes.

Then in the early 90s, I had a college friend, Jeff Scheetz, working on a local television station and I happened to spend some time at the TV studio one week-end. By chance, they had a VideoToaster and I ended up working on the LightWave portion coming with it. It was so much faster than Stratavision, the software I used before.

The feedback was so fast that I realized that you could actually do things and see the result straight away... Jeff and I gathered some money and split a VideoToaster for ourselves and basically, I set up a calendar with some time for each of us to use it... In a short period of time, we both had a demo reel to show and we could take the next step beyond and look out for a job.

Then I got a job in an advertising agency and that’s when I moved to California. Approximately at the same time, LightWave 3D® split from the VideoToaster™ and made its first jump to PCs from the old Amiga.

You’ve been involved in great projects since then and your movie 405, released in 2000, was widely acclaimed. In the past couple of months there has been a huge buzz on the Internet about World Builder, your latest animation movie: did you expect such a success?

Well, when I made it I thought it was very close to my heart and I thought it would connect with people. In the end, it didn’t have a lot of success at first. I accepted that. I thought we’d keep working on it and make some changes. I also figured out it might be a smart idea to put it on the Internet. I thought “let’s see if it puts an audience”. So it was online around October or November.

I put it on Youtube first. I told a few friends about it, emailing about twenty or thirty friends, hoping they would spread the word. Yet at that point it didn’t really spread. It kind of sat there and nothing happened. In February, on a LightWave dedicated website, some community members urged people to watch World Builder. William Vaughan was the first one to say “check it out”. Then architecture forums started mentioning the movie, then philosophy forums and so forth. Up to now, over 1,5 million people have watched it on Youtube and approximately the same on Vimeo, which equals to roughly three million total, plus people that I have tracked down on Digg [the Chinese equivalent for Youtube, as the latter is forbidden over there]. Most of that happened in a very short period of time, within four weeks.

More recently, I built a Facebook fan page dedicated to World Builder and guess what? There are already four thousand fans!

What took you so long between your two artworks 405 (2000) and World Builder (2009)?

After 405, my partner Jeremy Hunt [co-producer of that first movie] and I started a business of visual effects and we were extremely busy. In 2003 and 2004 I decided I wanted to slow things down and go back to Kansas City, based on the lower cost of living and a the fact that it was a quieter area. So Jeremy and I closed down the company and I moved back there. That’s when I wrote and shot World Builder. I actually shot it around 2005 or 2006, and then it took me two more years to do the post production on the project - editing and doing the visual effect - , while working on other projects at the same time.

You see, I had the idea of World Builder straight after 405. But it didn’t make sense, emotionally speaking. So I never feel compelled to do it.

What story lies behind World Builder?

It’s about a guy who is using the digital tools that he has to create something for the woman he loves, so that she might have a moment of happiness every day, even though she’s in a bad physical state [she’s in a coma] for some reason. He uses holographic tools to build a world for her.

The city that the man builds for the woman he loves is all based on European architecture. I’m a huge fan of European architecture – I took architecture in college. Centuries ago, people would build beautiful cathedrals, and even petty streets are significant to me, as people would move very heavy rocks to build them, and there’s an interesting comparison to draw between that virtual world the hero of my movie is building and 3D animation itself.

Beyond the question of 3D animation, the story you tell in World Builder is emotionally charged: what lies behind that movie and what inspired you? You have a three-year-old son; did his birth influence your work?

Was I inspired by my own life? Not really. Of course, when I moved back to Kansas City, I was making my life more manageable, so it may have had an impact on my thoughts. You draw from your own experience. Yet it’s not autobiographical and my wife is perfectly healthy! You see, now that I mention it, I recall that I got a lot of emails from people enduring these kinds of issues, their close one being struck by a disease, and the movie brought tears in their eyes. It’s surprising how far you can touch people, and it’s breathtaking to see how you can touch people THAT way.

I think it’s a simple love story. Yes, truly, it’s intended to be a love story. Anyhow, everything you do in your life, even painting a wall, is somehow related to love. We’re building a life for our family, trying to make the world better, that’s what we do. Of course we use different means than what we did before, because we use the technologies we have now.