Our next featured artist is originally from Manila, Philippines but currently residing and working in Hongkong. He has been into VFX production environment for a long time and work with some prominent directors in HongKong. Our next featured artist is no other than Mr. Justo Tito Cascante.

3DP: Can you tell us a little about yourself and your history with 3D?

Tito Cascante: I have been living in Hong Kong for 14 years now; I’m originally from Manila, Philippines. After graduating Fine Arts major in Painting, I started to work as a Special Effects Make-up Artist and a Senior Sculptor for the studio of Maurice Carvajal with a long record in the business of his family as pioneers in Philippine make-up Effects. After few years I moved to Hong Kong I worked with a Hong Kong Director Tsui Harks film outfit and production house as a Multi Media artist using all mediums to produce visual effects for movies including 3d animation. After a 10-year stint in the effects studio I left the company and run my own company. I learn to like the kind of set up of work with small group of animators that you can easily communicate and most of the time we can perform our work smoothly.

After few years I got some difficulty running the studio as an owner and an animator, I cant make both ends meet and clients delayed payments and you’ll never know when your next check will come. So after few years working on my own studio I decided to work with a company doing toys and custom design product.

So now I’m currently working at Creative Original Gizmo as a 3d animator and illustrator. I enjoy every minute of it. Good people intelligent management , smart and nice boss.

3DP: Tell us what is your job description in your current work at Creative Original Gismo (COG,LTD), and how did you end up there?

Tito Cascante After working in a busy production environment for almost 12 years I decided to try a new challenge not aiming for something big but something simple source of income, thinking that I can still do 3d at night the way I wanted without any art directors, directors, supervisors at my back. COG produces toys, I do illustrations and Special effects on 3d ads. Our work ranging from package design , marketing books , pamphlets, brochures and 3d animation video as a TVC for the company’s products.

3DP: Working in a upscale company what matters to you most; the quality of work or the promptness? And how do you manage to keep the quality and still able to meet the deadline?

Tito Cascante All 3d artist would love to keep the quality more than anything else , but we have to face the fact that what we are working on a company that needs to earn profit with a must to meet the deadline thing. I think the need to balance quality and to efficiently finish the job in a schedule is important . The company hired you to produce the best work u can in a budget.But at the end of the day people will watch your creation at its final outcome but will not judge on how long you finish it.

But in Hong Kong they are concern on time, to deliver something in a limited time animator should train themselves to research or do extra work ahead of time.

3DP: What is the average time frame of your projects?

Tito Cascante: Its difficult to say the average since I have done projects with extreme timeframe one projects need to pass 8 shots per day for tv or a shots for movie for 3 months.

Sometimes it depends on the content , I can say sometimes we are like a factory . We have to beat the deadline so we are producing shots very fast on a tv series, but of course as everything has been prepared like our 3d model and research on lighting and look has been prepared ahead of time , and so much input like suggestions and comments from fellow animators .And for movies the fastest I can finish is like 10 – 15 shots for a month.