The Toll News
Growing your own.
By Ann Fisher - February 2006
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -The aptly-named Hatchling Studios is a hotbed of new development, particularly of its own personnel.
Founder Marc Dole says they work with 18 colleges and high schools in developing their animation programs. Several interns did
modeling for Hatchling’s new short The Toll.
“Because we’re one of the few animation studios in New England, we get students who have driven from hours away to
set up apartments and intern here for three to six months. Schools are pushing the digital arts – we do Web, DVD, TV,
commercials, film – and they connect with us.” says Dole, adding “We try to recruit people getting out of
college.” Founded in 1999, Hatchling now has 17 employees. “Our working method has turned into being like a 30/70
rule where 30 percent of the people on the project are extremely experienced and 70 percent have experience and are good
learners. The great thing about this is you’re able to teach somebody who has the basic skills to come in and learn from
these other people, and after six months we end up with at least a 50/50 mix of people with five years of experience or somebody
with one year of experience but has an amazing portfolio,” he says.
Dole sees a huge demand for talent – LA studios have outsourced projects to Hatchling – but also a need for
training,. When Hatchling advertises with openings, most of the applicants need more experience.
“It’s very similar to the early ‘90s when I started getting into this – if you knew how to operate a
computer, you were pulled into CG. Modeling is one of the first steps into the industry, and I’ve seen resumes and
portfolios, and they’re working in the industry, and they should start taking some classes. But there’s such a huge
need that a lot of these people will be brought into companies just because every body is needed.”
Hatchling’s idea is to train them from the start – and get some interesting jobs done along the way.
Marc Dole founder of Hatchling Studios (www.hatchlingstudios.com) in Portsmouth NH, agrees that beginners can’t shy away
from studying, especially if they must create hard body, non-organic models. “Painters always paint a bowl of fruit. A
modeler will do something like that but they always miss the tiny little curve details. Some of the better modelers we’ve
had have architectural degrees because they know CAD [Computer Aided Design], they know that the 1/8 inch round on the corner
of something is going to make the light reflect off it that much better and it’s going to look that much more realistic.
And that is something that is lost on a ton of people – studying real life.”
BUILD IT RIGHT FOR RIGGERS
“Can the rigger go in and put the correct weight maps on the model so it functions properly? Study real life and
technically learn how to build something better,” says Hatchling’s Marc Dole. “Do a 10-minute model test
online – test not just speed but a model’s functional accuracy. Are you concentrating on the right polygons?
“A good modeler has to know the other steps. In LA, you can be just a modeler. Outside LA, you can be just a modeler.
Outside LA, you have to wear two to three other hats,” he says. “You always need to know what the other people need
to do with this – I’m going to make a corner round this size so the light reflects this way or I’m going to
make a corner round this size so the light reflects this way or I’m going to make the body or face of this character this
way because the next person has to UV texture it and it needs to be laid out the proper way for that.”
This mockumentary has a college student interviewing one of the last toll takers, a troll under a bridge. The original models
for everything except the main characters were done in LightWave. The main characters were modeled, as well as textured and
animated, in Softimage|XSI 5, which the studio has since switched over to. Hardware is Windows-based 1 Beyond workstations.
Render boxes are dual boot because Eyeon Digital Fusion is used for compositing, and Hatchling is switching to Opterons running
Linux for rendering supplied by Angstrom.
Dole was initially concerned about the LightWave to Softimage switchover. “We were originally figuring on a little bit of
reluctance to change the modeling. Yes, we knew the character animation and lighting and all the other stuff was better but we
were all so quick in modeling,” he says. “Within a week everyone had switched. Actually Softimage works a lot like
LightWave in our studio because our TD has added all the same keyboard controls and some of these plug-ins are very similar to
what everybody knew in LightWave.”
Seven of the modelers on The Toll were interns. Dole was executive producer, producer and is doing all the compositing and
editing. To view it, see the behind the scenes link at:
www.hatchlingstudios.com/movies/mpeg/LooseChangeSm_mp1.mpg
