Brian Richardson

Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. After leaving school became an Engineer with Vickers Armstrong Engineering works and then moved onto lecturing in Higher Education in London. After returning to the North East of England he became a teacher of Craft design and Technology in the secondary sector. Teaching was to develop his interest in CAD/CAM software such as ProDesktop and Pro Engineer. CNC work was always going to be part of the job and 3D work came naturally. More interests developed in IT applications such as Computer Control and Graphical Manipulation software.

Brian moved from the classroom to a City Learning Centre in 2003. A City Learning Centre’s brief is to keep at the forefront of Technology for Education. He works in a variety of disciplines which included Film Production, Animation, Computer Control, Data logging, Digital Image manipulation and CAD/CAM. He is an Advanced Skills Teacher and is asked upon on many occasions to do workshops including iClone and Crazy Talk. He is an assessor and external moderator for Multi Media courses as well as an accredited trainer for CAD/CAM in the UK. His iClone workshops have involved him travelling the length of the UK to train other educators in the use of iClone at many an IT conference.

Regular visitors to the Reallusion store and forum will know him as Popeye. His content is well documented on the CCD program as well as his content at www.clones2go.org  

Experience in iClone

1. First, can you tell us more about yourself? When you are not creating awesome content, what else do you do? Where in the world are you? And, can you tell us a little about your background.

After leaving school I became an Engineer and then went on to lecture in Higher Education in London. After fours years I returned to my native North East and Newcastle upon Tyne and worked in the Industrial Design department of Northumbria University. I became a teacher in the secondary sector 1978 and eventually became Head of the Technology Department. When not creating I enjoy travel as I have a son who lives in Huntington Beach, California as well as one who lives on the south coast of England working as a Air Traffic Controller. I try to get to see them as often as I can. Most of my leisure time is working with IT applications and working out on the Wii LOL. Even when on the Wii I am thinking of education uses for it and now have introduced a concept of using the Wii in education.  I like nothing better than learning new software and passing this knowledge onto others, especially the youngster who I come across within my job.

2. What first got you interested in Reallusion software?

One of my responsibilities of my job is to look for innovations within technology for education. I visited the BETT show in London at Olympia in January 2006 looking for software that could be used in education. I came across iClone and I immediately thought this could be an excellent tool in motivating pupils in all areas of the curriculum. I recommended iClone to my manager and we bought 50 licenses for the City Learning Centre as this a training base for both students and teachers. I then set about making content that was mapped to all areas of the curriculum. To do this I first had to learn 3D Max for the making of 3D scenes. Making the characters was a little easier as I already knew Photoshop quite well.

3. When did you start using Reallusion software?

January 2006 and it was Version 1.0 I recollect. Even in those days I thought Wow! This is some product!! The learning curve was not too bad. I had never been involved this type of animation prior to this. My only animation experience before learning iClone was in Virtual Reality and that was some ten years earlier. Looking at this latest version I am glad I was with iClone from the beginning to appreciate how this fantastic product has developed.

4. What do you mainly use iClone for? Why did you decide to join
the Certified Content Developers?

My main use is within my job. Lots of people say how lucky I am to work with iClone as part of my job and I tend to agree. I also work a great deal with Crazy Talk too. Lots of schools and colleges are using these within Diploma courses. I have also spoken to the local University (Architecture) as they are interested in using iClone for first year students on their courses. However all my content development is produced working at home as no time is given at work to produce content. I do pass this content onto schools especially the content that is mapped to the curriculum. Most people now know that Shygirl, Zion4ever, Cricky and I run a store called Clones2go. We have a good customer base as well as private contracts. Nevertheless my favorite use of iClone and Crazy Talk is for my own enjoyment and learning about these amazing products.

5. What other programs do you use other than iClone and CrazyTalk? What inspires your creations?

Now that’s a question and a half. With my job I have to know numerous applications. Here are but a few that your readers may be familiar with. I use the whole of the Adobe Master Suite CS3, 3d Studio Max, CAD/CAM programs such as Pro/Desktop,Pro/Engineer and many Apple applications as we are an Apple training centre at work too.  There are also a lot of educational software packages I need to know. These can include Computer Control and Datalogging software. The list goes on I am afraid.

6.How long does it normally take for you to create your create your
content, from conception to final production?

Well my main creations have been 3D Scenes and Props. However I do Characters too but I am more of a 3D enthusiast because of my Engineering background I suppose. I have been quiet successful making animated animals too which can be seen on www.clones2go.org. These were my greatest challenge. It all depends on the complexity of the content I am working on. Some scenes that have been very popular and sold well on Reallusion’s content store have only taken a couple of hours to produce whereas some content will take days to produce. You need to be patient and you must know your own capabilities. With my knowledge of other 3D packages I try to use these to save time. What I mean by this if some component is easier to make with one package I will make it in that application and then bring it through into 3D max in other formats as I am certainly not an expert in 3D Max, who is? I then do the texturing and exporting to iClone from Max. Texturing is where I need to think carefully and spend a lot of time. This makes or breaks the content in my opinion. If you have good textures along with their bump maps it makes your content more appealing and realistic looking.

7. How did you get the name Popeye?

Well I am not an Ex Navy man and I detest Spinach. No, it all came about when I was a lad of around sixteen. Right in the middle of a tense scene of a horror movie I simply blurted out “Hey did anyone see Popeye tonight?” Everyone in the cinema laughed hysterically and the name stuck with my friends even to this day 40 years on. It has been more of a burden to past girlfriends than me as obviously they were always referred to as Olive. So what better alias to have on the forums than this?.

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A Few Packs Created by Popeye:
Oasis
Battleship
The Somme Trenches