THINKFORWARD: What gave you the idea to write this book, and how did you go about putting it together?

JohnPark: The idea for writing a book came out of teaching, really. I was teaching a course at Friedman 3D to a group of people who were trying to make the transition from 2-D Cell Animation to full 3-D, pretty much because 2-D work was drying up. Anyway, I started looking around for good introductory material to teach them, but there was very little out there. I think at the time, there was only one Maya book out for beginners, and I didn’t really like the way it was laid out.

TF: Maya is the 3-D software package you were teaching?

JP: Yes. Maya is the standard animation package that is used by most of the studios out there. There are other popular ones, such as Studio MAX, SoftImage, and LightWave, to name a few. They all have very similar capabilities, but in terms of character animation, Maya is the most popular. If you know a package like Maya, or any of the other ones, you can make the transition to another one fairly easily.

TF: Okay, so you found an introductory Maya book, but you didn’t like it.

JP: Right. Most books out there, beginner or not, break up the information into discrete chunks. In each book, you’ll find the Modeling Chapter, followed by the Rigging Chapter, followed by the Animation Chapter, followed by the Effects Chapter, and so on. Well, that’s a fine approach when you have some idea about what a 3-D animation package does in the first place. But remember that I was going to teach students—professionals really—who had no previous exposure to 3-D. My goal was to give these students a fairly comprehensive exposure to 3-D without making them think that they had to master any one thing before they got to move to another “major’ topic. So my idea was to break up my course into increasingly advanced tutorials that would give them a little bit of exposure to things like modeling, texturing, lighting, animation. You kind of have to know a little bit of everything when you dive into 3-D anyway. My hope was that at the end of the day, they got a really good idea for what they could do inside a package like Maya. Having this knowledge, then they could focus on honing in a particular skill, but that comes further down the road.

TF: So how did you approach writing your book?

JP: Well, the six-week course I taught at Friedman turned into more like a 6 month course by the time all was said and done. So I developed a lot of material just for the course itself. What I did is I collected all this material, organized it, and wrote an outline that would become the basis for my book. I took this outline with me to Siggraph—

TF: Siggraph is a computer graphics conference?

JP: Exactly. It’s the biggest one for computer graphics. So I took my outline to a couple of publishers that were attending the conference, and they in turn put me in touch with a few acquisition editors. Things started officially happening from that point on.

TF: Did you have an agent at this point?

JP: No. It kind of worked out to my advantage, though; because I ended up using the offer I had gotten from my publisher to attract an agent.

TF: Great. So you have an outline, lots of handouts from the class you taught, you have an offer from a publisher. What next? How did you go from outline to book?

JP: I started making lots of lists that helped me organize all the information I wanted to put in the book. Basically I wrote out each chapter in long-hand from the standpoint of: Okay, so I’m standing in front of a class of students. How do I explain, let's say animating a bouncing ball? I put myself back into instructor mode, and wrote the book using that voice.

TF: You said that from the outset, you wanted to write a book for beginners. What guidelines, if any, did you use to keep the more “advanced” material out of the book?

JP: There was only one guideline, really. My book would teach only the kinds of things that someone might need to do a character-driven cartoon short. That meant advanced topics like particle dynamics, clothing simulation, hair, fluids—all of that stuff would be excluded. They’re good things to know, but not essential when you’re a beginner. I’ve been teaching for roughly six years and I have found that once people are comfortable with problem-solving, if they have the basic tools to get them around a piece of software with reasonable ease, they can attack the more advanced topics on their own.

TF: What was the next step?

JP: I created a huge spreadsheet with all of my chapters, and all the types of information I wanted to include in each chapter. This method ensured that for each tutorial in each chapter I would cover these topics I had targeted, which were interface, modeling, animation, shading, lighting and rendering. You have to be very organized when you write a book, especially a how-to book, like the one I was writing. I mean, the whole thing could have become a real nightmare in terms of asset management. From early on, though, I adopted a pretty strict way of organizing and naming documents, screenshots, 3-D files, and so on.

TF: What would you say was the hardest part of writing this book?

JP: Definitely the never-ending nature of it. It took me a full two years to write this thing. I tend to be a very impatient person. I’m definitely a friend of instant gratification, so having this huge project hanging over my head for so long was definitely hard to deal with. But I was very lucky and had lots of encouragement along the way. My wife was a huge help in completing the book. In some ways I feel bad, because she was pregnant with our first child at the time, and I’m sure I robbed her of lots of attention and pampering because I was working on my stupid book all the time.

TF: Did you work on it full-time for two years?

JP: Oh no. I had a full-time job. I would work on it in the mornings before I went to work, after work, and on weekends. I had no life whatsoever for a full to years!

TF: What was the most rewarding part of writing this book?

JP: I guess hitting each milestone along the way. Pitching the book and getting signed by the publisher was pretty exciting. Seeing it in print for the first time was just awesome. Getting feedback from the user community and hearing good things about the book is also very rewarding. There are lots of rewards I can think of.

TF: How do you deal with stress and deadlines? Did you worry about these things as you were writing the book?

JP: The interesting thing about this book is that I know there could have been an overwhelming amount of stress associated with having this huge project looming over me. But you can’t really worry about it too much. It doesn’t help. It’s counterproductive, and you can’t do anything about it! I just broke it down into manageable bits, and made sure that I completed each thing at a steady pace. That’s how the whole project went once I knew what I had to do. There were no peaks or valleys. I set my own deadline for the project, which was some time before my wife was due with baby. That’s what I aimed for, and luckily, I finished a month or two before our son was born.

TF: What’s next for you?

JP: I’d be interested in authoring some instruction DVD’s. I’m working on setting that up at the moment. I’m teaching a course at Studio Arts once a week. Also, I’m doing a huge renovation to my home. We’re going to have another baby in May. All those things keep me pretty busy, as you can imagine.

TF: Well, good luck with all your projects, and do keep us informed!

JP: Certainly!