meeting mr. ståhlberg
From where I was living in Hong Kong, I had to travel by the subway for about 10 minutes, and then by ferry for 30 minutes to get to Ståhlbergs island. I had no idea how Ståhlberg looked like, so I strolled in the center for 10 minutes before I heard someone shouting "Patrick!" a bit away. A tall, vigorous Swede stood staring right at me. We had found each other (don't interpret it wrong!).

showing off
That day was really hot and the air humid. The fact that Ståhlberg is living on top of a mountain didn't help at all. From the apartment we had a beautiful view (the picture to the right is done by Ståhlberg, inspired by the view). I was presented to his wife and two kids, and offered lunch which I gladly accepted. Almost immediately we sat down by Ståhlberg's SG Iris box where he was working on a new model. It was the wireframe of a really hot chick which stood on all four, viewed from behind (which will probably be released some time soon). He showed me a lot of old work and work in progress, textures he used etc. He even showed me an awesome animation of a talking robot-chick. The voice was really cute, it belonged to a Chinese girl he knew, and the animation truly amazing. The hair, the mouth and head movement was like a professional animation, which of course it actually is, just not finished yet.

the person
So what kind of person is Ståhlberg? He's really nice and very talkative. He did most of the talking really. At the same time he's quite calm. He would yell at his kids now and then, but otherwise he was really calm. Ståhlberg is 39 years old, and originally from Bollnäs, Sweden. He moved to Hong Kong a couple of years ago to work. In highschool he studied languages and social skills. At first he wanted to become a programmer but he wasn't very good at maths, so he gave up that dream. He also wanted to become an arts teacher, but discovered that they had lousy salary, so that dream was crushed too. After civil service he went to Australia one year to study arts, and then 2 years at Bergs in Sweden. There he studied illustration, design, typography and general artdirecting subjects. He worked for a company for 6 months before it went down because of bankruptcy.

Ståhlberg is actually self-taught in modeling and rendering. The only program he has really used is Alias Poweranimator.

work
Nowadays he lives entirely on freelance jobs. Mostly he gets to do boring and uninspiring commercial jobs. He'd like work in the film industry, like special effects, animation and directing. (ILM would be ideal for him!) Just before I left Hong Kong I met Ståhlberg once again. He told me then that he had a greencard and a job in the US. So in three months Ståhlberg and family will be moving to the States. I'm not sure where they are going, though.

interests
Ståhlberg's main interest is of course 3D-art. He's on some big mailinglists, and gets mentioned in magazines now and then. Just recently he was the feature artist in a Brazilian magazine called "Digital Designer". He gave me a copy of the magazine, even though I can't read Brazilian and neither can he, and a huge poster with one of his pics (the half naked chick sitting in a Gigerish chair, released in iCE a while ago). While his jobs often are boring (last job last Xmas in Beijing animating a communist-like guy in front of the great wall), his own creations are often very exciting. He draws mostly hot chicks, and some other science fiction stuff. Other interests involves his family, working out to keep fit, movies and reading about movie making. How did Ståhlberg get involved in iCE and the artscene then? It was simply Slothmeister's work. He tricked.. er.. talked Ståhlberg into joining iCE.

wisdom
We discussed a lot of things on both our meetings (some things I won't mention here ;). A lot of people have asked Ståhlberg about applications and education. Since Ståhlberg only know Alias really well he hasn't been able to answer the first question. Considering education, he thinks the main use you have of that is getting contacts. What they teach you, you can often learn yourself if you are really interested. So kids, go to college to get contacts!

I asked Ståhlberg what he thought about applications such as Poser and Bryce. His opinion is that the intention of the programs is good, i.e. making good pics without any effort, it's just that they aren't good enough. By having the application do the hard, boring, difficult tasks, you can concentrate more on the whole image/animation, design, layout and storytelling. On the level Ståhlberg is working, they don't even think of "abusing" the applications as a lot of people on the artscene does. A follow up question is if this kind of application will need less artists? Leading to unemployment in that field. His answer to that is a straight no. He thinks that in the future the technology is so widely use, they will need even more 3D-artists. Completely digitally animated/rendered soap-operas, TV-series and feature films will be common in the near future.

So, they will need a lot of artists for the huge market that will come, and Mr. Steven Ståhlberg doesn't worry at all.

 

HIREZ.ORG EXCLUSIVE SHOT! His latest character in progress "Rebecca".

Screenshot from animation in progress