IT'S ART : How would you define your style?

Mike Winkelmann : Hah hah, good question.  Wish I knew.  I think in broad terms, my work has predominantly focused on the tight syncing of audio and video.  I've taken a couple breaks here and there for other little projects, but that has been the driving force over the last 5 years or so....

IA : Can you speak about the work you do on the very short experimental loop sequences (VJ Clips)? What's your creative process for these one?

MW : The VJ clips are a perfect outlet for what I like to think of as little micro projects.  Just a small little idea or look that I'd like to explore for a couple hours.  In terms of creative process it is very much "guess and check", as with many of them I only have a vague idea of what I'd like.  I usually start out with some very basic concept and then tweak it, and tweak it and tweak it until it's something that I like.  Many times the end result is absolutely nothing like I had in mind when I first sat down.  I like these little projects because they offer "fairly" immediate gratification in that I can render it out and see the finished product quickly. 

IA : You also have worked on some story-telling pieces, like ‘subprime’. Can we have details about this piece and its making of?

MW : This piece was mostly a technical exercise and was started a couple months after first picking up and trying to learn a 3D software package.  I had done a similar 2D piece earlier where things were kind of in this constant flux of constructing themselves, so I thought it might look cool to do something like that in 3D.  The idea for incorporating the whole "subprime mortgage" thing was somewhat of an after-thought in terms of pre-production.  I definitely did not set out to tell any sort of story; I just wanted to make something that looked cool.

IA : Nine, one of your latest pieces is an interesting industrial mic CG video. What was the initial idea when you started to work on it?

MW : The end result of my work on 'instrumental video nine' was actually pretty damn close to my idea of how I wanted it to look when I started it.  I wanted to make a darker, futuristic, digital-glitzy type video that featured some sort of machines making music.

IA : Can we have details about the making of the instruments in this clip?

MW : Many people ask what came first, the music or the video?  They really sort of came out of a back and forth process. I'd first model something like a mechanical arm, and then, I'd find a sound that kind of fit it. Then I'd sort of fit it into the music and finally animate it. Then I'd kind of go back and maybe tweak the sound or tweak the instrument as needed.  Other times I'd start with a sound that I really liked and would then figure out what I could model that might look like it makes that sound.

IA : What kind of techniques have you used to sync the sounds with the animation?

MW : Brute force.  When I first started out, I tried to use some of the built-in tools in Cinema 4D to sync sound and animation, but found them to be a bit too simplified for what I was looking for.  I am still too new to 3D animation to understand much of the scripting language in Cinema 4D, which I no doubt could have used to automate this process.  That combined with zero knowledge of MIDI limited my options to sort of buckling down and busting this motha out the only way I knew how... a whole lot of keyframes. :)

IA : What's for you the most important thing you keep in mind when you start to work on a new clip?

MW : Hmmm, not sure I keep much in mind when starting a new clip.  I'm usually so excited to try something new that I don't really think that much at all.  However on the other end of the project (the end), I really try to keep in mind that this is not the last thing I'm ever gonna do...so if it's not perfect, which it never is, that's ok.  There's always next time.  I find this keeps me from being too bogged down with annoyingly small details that only I will notice.

IA : How do you think we can qualify your work as art?

MW : Hmmm, I try not to think too much about stuff like that.  I just entertain myself with making little (or big) clips that I think will look cool.  It's just that simple.

IA : What are your daily sources of inspiration?

MW : I'm mostly inspired by other people's work.  I watch a lot of demo reels and short films.  There is so much awesome work out there that you are constantly inundated with on a daily basis that at times I find it can be a bit daunting. But then I kind of remember to take it one day at a time and try to do some of my own cool stuff; even those most of the time I feel like it blows.  But I think constantly about many areas where I could improve, which inspires me to keep at it.

Links : Mike Winkelmann's website // Discuss/Comment