Meet Aurelie Badin, our awesome Lead Texture Artist! Apart from her brilliant texturing skills, she's also got a great eye for photography, taking pictures of all the places she travels to! We caught her for a few minutes to chat about how she got into animation.

How did you get into animation?

I’ve always been passionate about movies and video games, and I was in Law School, not really considering animation as a career path. Suddenly, it hit me: I was going to be bored every day of my life if I did not change course quickly. I saw an interview of a 3d artist on the bonus features of a dvd and I realized I could do that as a job. That was an epiphany! My parents were a lot less thrilled, though…

How long have you worked in the animation industry?

I started eight years ago as an intern in a Belgian company that was producing its first CG feature film. It was real luck to get this internship because I had no experience whatsoever and that’s usually the main problem when you’re job hunting for the first time, you basically need experience to get experience. I had an awesome supervisor who taught me a lot and quickly got me hired as a junior.

What’s your current role and what does it involve?

I’m currently working as Lead Texture Artist. That involves colour keys, texturing and shading.

For those not familiar with these terms, I receive either a drawing or a model, and I put colour and material on them to try to make them look as close as possible to the original concept or to the creator/artistic director's idea.

What are your biggest influences/inspirations?

I remember watching in complete awe, the intro cinematics of Final Fantasy 7 and 8, so often that both first discs are now completely unreadable. Yes, at the time, they were uber-cool.

Any kind of game cinematic always fascinated me, and they still do, the latest being the Warlords of Draenor’s one. But inspiration comes from a lot of different ways to me, real life is the first source. I keep looking at the details of every object, building, tree, how the dust covers things, how the rust is distributed on a metallic object, how and where a wall can be dirty, the patterns in a leaf and how the light shines through it, anything really.

All those details can be reused to make things not necessarily photorealistic but believable.

What’s your favourite tool to use and why?

That’s a tricky one. I get to use a few different software applications, but no matter the renderer or the product, it’s almost always linked to Maya. So I could say Mari, which is the epitome of awesomeness – no exaggeration at all – but without Maya it would be useless to me.

What is great about Maya is that you can do everything, and if the task gets tedious, you can script it, add an interface, even rebuild part of the software, given you can code well enough. Which I can’t. But I still can change the colour of the interface and that’s pretty grand!

What advice would you give someone considering getting into animation?

Yes, go! No hesitation if that’s what you want. It’s probably going to be hard to land a job and you have to be prepared to move every now and then, work for another company and/or in another country, but that’s what’s exciting about it too.

Also, you’re going to have to work for it, a lot. And accept that people will criticize your work, so you can improve and frankly, sometimes it hits your confidence pretty hard, but you have to use it constructively.

What do you like most about working in animation?

Hmm, what’s not to like? Apart from when my computer crashes inadvertently – which is always the case. But the best feeling in the world is when a job is finally approved.

What’s been the most challenging thing about working in animation?

Getting to work in animation. The hardest part is to get one foot in there, once it’s done, try to grip firmly and don’t let go, no matter what. I’d say be ready to get any kind of job, a lot of people started by being interns, runners, receptionists, anything.

Outside of animation what are you most passionate about?

I’m interested in video games. With a particular love for World of Warcraft and a crush on Arthas, but I also play a lot of different things. Apart from that, I love travelling and taking pictures, with no artistic value whatsoever, then trying to convince myself that the photoshop edits I did made them worth anything.

Oh, and I love eating frogs legs, as all French people do.

Are you interested in getting into animation? Keep an eye on our Behind-the-Scenes and Tutorials pages for more interviews, #TopTips and #AMAs!