Cafe: We’re here with the fantastic LewdFutasy! Futasy is an incredible artist whom I’ve worked extensively with; thanks for agreeing to do an interview with us here at NGP!
- Futasy: Thank you for the kind words and you are very welcome.
Cafe: Ah, you’re so polite :). We’re gonna get right into it with the first question. How long have you been doing 3D and what kind of work did you start out with?
- Futasy: I have been doing 3DX for about 2 years, which also means publishing stuff. I was at it before to get the hang of Blender. My goal initially was to make animations. A bit naively, as I was not really aware how time-consuming and difficult it is. My first published works were animations, not very good ones but I have seen much worse. Slowly, I switched to stills, first in blender and later in Daz Studio. I still do a little bit of animation but it is hard to fit it into my schedule.
Cafe: That’s really interesting. Most artists seem to start with stills and work their way up to animating, but you just jumped right into it! And 2 years?! I had no idea, I would have guessed that you’ve been doing this for much longer.
- Futasy: Yes, only two years. The first year, I did all my work in Blender. After that, I started to use Daz. That really changed my content for the better, in my opinion.
Cafe: Based on what you’re putting out now, I’m sure I agree with you. This is a pretty common question, but I’m always curious: who or what inspired you to start making 3D in the first place?
- Futasy: I was inspired by the SFM work of BlackjrXIII and the amazing animation work of Miro. Their futa content blew my mind, I wanted that too. So, I started to build my first character Alexis, who evolved a lot over time, and slowly worked on my first ever animation of her masturbating.
Cafe: Awesome! Yeah, Miro’s stuff was seriously top notch, especially for the time. Speaking of Alexis, I didn’t know she was your first OC. How did she come together?
- Futasy: I don’t remember, really. I wanted a pretty futa girl, with a full package. She didn’t even start out as a redhead, as you can see in that very first animation. Vanessa was the first actual redhead in my character collection. It was after I learned the use of particle hair, that Alexis turned into a long curly haired redhead: what she still is today.
Cafe: Nice! I love them both, nothing wrong with two redheads! Next question: Do you listen to music while you work? What helps you focus?
- Futasy: No, most of the time I work in silence. If I listen to music, it is usually Nightwish or some other female front-end symphonic metal band. Usually, I am really focused when I have a good idea of what I am going to make. That’s usually the stuff that has been on my mind for a few days, giving me awkward boners.
Cafe: Ha! I understand completely. Also, I love Nightwish and symphonic metal in general; you have great taste! Now, I remember you telling me that you work with an Apple rig. I think there’s a common misconception that only PCs seem to lend themselves to rendering, but your stuff comes out awesome. Can you tell us a little about your rig and your overall process? Go into as much or as little detail as you like.
- Futasy: Well to be honest, I am not very proud of my rig as most self-respecting artists would say I am a dumb-ass using it. I am a huge Apple fan ( yes, I know and heard all the negative points and setbacks). My rig is an I-Mac Pro 8 core, because of this I can only render with the CPU. This is a beast fortunately, so render times are still acceptable, in my opinion. The screen is super awesome, by the way.
- My overall process usually starts with loading the character(s) and scene and then posing the character. It depends a bit on the pose, if I fully do it by hand or use a pre-made pose, which I tweak. After that, the eternal struggle of lighting my scene starts. After that tweaking, doing simulations for D-Force and stuff. When I am completely content, I hit render. Usually I stop it a few more times, as I usually spot more flaws that need correcting. After the render is finished, I do some post-processing like change the saturation, brightness, contrast, add some effects and add my watermark.
Cafe: If it’s working for you, I don’t see any reason to change it. I don’t know a ton about rendering, but I do know a fair bit about hardware: there’s more to this than unnecessarily huge, overpriced GPUs!
I think it’s very encouraging to starting artists, especially, that there is more than one way to make 3D. On that note, do you have any advice for people who are interested in 3D but don’t know where/how to start?
- Futasy: My advice is don’t take the road that I took. Start with stills and not animations. Also, as a starting program Daz is way easier than Blender. Blender requires you to learn a lot, before you get decent results. Side note here, I learned the fundamental stuff in Blender, which helps me a lot in Daz to do really custom stuff for which I use Blender again.
Cafe: That’s fantastic advice! Still, I think you’ve gained a unique perspective from having started “backwards” as it were, and it’s awesome that you can take what you learned from one program and use it for another.
Last question! What sort of long term plans do you have for the future? Even if they’re not set in stone, what kind of goals or aspirations do you have with your work?
- Futasy: I would like to do more comics, like the “Bared Intensions” comic that will sell in the NGP shop. I also like to get back to animating, making like 3 to 4 minute animations. The latter will be tough, as that easily takes three months of work to do a single animation of that length. One of my other goals is to get just as high quality work as some of the top tier artists, like SMZ69, Fab3DX, Clare3DX, Forged3DX. One can dream, hehehe.
Cafe: Yes, comics are always awesome! I’d say you’re well on your way to achieving all of your goals. Shoot, if your work looks this good only two years in, I’m excited to see where you end up in another year or so!
That’s all we had for you here, anything else you’d like to add or say to your fans?
- Futasy: Thank you for the awesome compliments, you make me blush! To my fans: Thank you all very much for your support!
Cafe: And thank you for your time! We look forward to working with you in the future and best of luck to you with your goals!
