Ask the Artists – Jorge Enueve

Jorge Enueve is a graphic design expert and visual artist who might be best known in the Ventuz world for his work with holographic projections. His many projects have brought him all around the globe, but he has recently built a home in London. We spoke to Jorge about his wild youth, art and the power of experimenting.

Ventuz:
Art has always played an important role in your life. When did you first start to make art?

Jorge:
I was probably 12 or 13 years old when I started drawing and sketching. Back then, I did not consider this art or graphic design, it was just a pastime. My brother had a computer, and I would sneak into his room and do designs in Photoshop. But I always kept the analogue process as well. My friends came to me to airbrush their helmets, we did graffiti, and I kept on drawing.

Ventuz:
Airbrushing helmets? Graffiti? Were you a skater?

Jorge:
I was in a team until I was about 18 or 19. By that time, I also sang in a punk rock band for which I designed logos, posters, and merchandise in your typical punk rock style.

Ventuz:
How has this early influence shaped your work?

Jorge:
It certainly taught me to be versatile. When I was airbrushing helmets, everyone wanted something different, and in a different style. Skulls, dragons, robots … I had to adapt to my customers’ requirements early on. And I still believe that every customer should be able to communicate their tone of voice through my graphic design work. I can introduce my own elements, and people who know me might recognize my work, but my job is not to fulfill my own creative desires, but instead to help my customers fulfill theirs. I always have my personal paintings and graphic design as an outlet for my twisted creativity.

Ventuz:
And how did you develop your skills?

Jorge:
To perfect everything that I had taught myself, I got my masters degree in Motion Graphics at CES in Madrid, one of the finest addresses for multimedia in Spain. After that, I worked as an editor/director at Viacom and as a designer for smaller studios all over the world.

Ventuz:
Your CV shows that you started travelling and working abroad very early. What was the drive behind your cosmopolitan lifestyle?

Jorge:
I went to New York in 2000 because I wanted to experience other people’s art. I collaborated with some Sarah Lawrence’s artists, for example, creating posters and flyers for their exhibitions. That’s how I came in contact with curators and clubs, like the famous SOB’s Club. This was great for a while and very inspiring. Then, out of the blue, I was offered a job at a winery in California. Not quite in line with my career path, but I took the chance to move to the west coast. It gave me the opportunity to get closer to some designers I admired, such as David Carson, one of my big idols at the time. I was in love with his work with fonts.

Ventuz:
Did you continue to work in 3D during that time?

Jorge:
During those years I didn’t do that much 3D work. I made a name for myself as an editor/director at Paramount Comedy, MTV and the like. Graphics were more on the side then. Although there is one opening credit which I created together with Joaquin Reyes and Enrique Borrajeros for a show called “La Hora Chanante”, a Spanish comedy show from which many Spanish comedians rose to fame, and basically everyone knows that opening sequence.

Entering Real-Time

Ventuz:
How did Ventuz come into your world?

Jorge:
Through Peter Specht, CEO of Pictures that Move. I was recommended to him over an editing job of some Arri digital raw footage that nobody knew how to handle. He basically called me on a late evening and I went straight over there and worked overnight. It was a tricky job, too. No audio, lots of greenscreen – one of those jobs. But I must have done well enough, because we continued to work together. When he found out that I also was a designer, he told me about this strange new software that some of his friends were developing. He mentioned the agency Second Unit Services, who was already working with it, and I was all ears. Second Unit was a big name in the industry, their work was astonishing. So I started learning it.

Ventuz:
Were you familiar with real-time technologies at all?

Jorge:
Not in the slightest. Also, that was one of the first version of Ventuz, the pre-commercial one with the blue logo that crashed every ten minutes. I took a crash course at Second Unit – who was already Stereolize then – which was amazing. I met all these people whose work I loved so much, and I learned more than you can imagine. Especially in terms of combining technology with graphic design, this opened new doors for me. I was there for a month and really hoped I would have some time to practice when I got back to Madrid, but Peter had other plans. Only a few weeks after my return we created an installation for Madrid’s exhibition booth at the biggest tourism fair in Madrid. I was really lost, but it turned out well, surprisingly, and was even covered in some news outlets. I will admit that I had a lot of help from Second Unit and also from Stereolize and also Oliver Grimm, who stayed on the phone with me for hours explaining how to organize my scenes. To this day, I am very grateful for that.

Ventuz:
What was it different to work in real-time?

Jorge:
It was a new world. What I love about Ventuz – and I suppose that is what everyone else coming from non-real-time tools loves as well – is that you can instantly see the results of your work. In classic motion graphic tools, you only work with a proxy version of your content. The final outcome is only revealed to you after rendering. Real-time tools are much closer to a brush. I make a stroke and I see the result right there on the canvas.

Ventuz:
When you started working with Pictures that Move, that was really your first encounter with the events industry. Many people say that it is very different from broadcast. What is your experience?

Jorge:
To be honest, I don’t find it that different. Yes, the pressure is high at an event, but I can stay cool, and I think that is due to my time in the broadcast studio. If you are live, the pressure is much higher than at an event. Also, if you have created and tested your project thoroughly, nothing can really happen to you at the event. So no, in terms of pressure I don’t find it much different. What is different is the exposure of my work. How reliable it is, especially when it runs on hardware that I haven’t seen until two days before the show.

Graphic Design for Holographic Projections – The Negative Space

Ventuz:
What are some milestones in your work with Ventuz that you like to think back on?

Jorge:
You always remember your first one, I suppose, the installation I spoke about before. I also enjoyed the holographic presentation we did for LG. They were touring Europe with a new industrial air-conditioning system in 2009 or 2010 and were hiring different agencies in each country to do their presentations. We decided that we wanted to use holographic foil. When Peter and I showed them our concept, it felt like we had landed there in a UFO. But they liked the idea, and so we went to work. Creating graphic design for holo is very different, you have to consider the negative space the entire time. And we also made it interactive, which was another bonus. The client really liked it.

Ventuz:
I remember that project, I think it was the first holo project ever done with Ventuz. Did you do more holographic work after that?

Jorge:
We did. One day, we received a call from Andres Vicente Gomez, a man who has produced more than 120 films in Spain. He was looking for holography for a musical he was producing for some Saudi Arabian investors about the wonder of Arabian horses. It was incidentally called “The Last Horseman”. Turned out they didn’t only want holography, they wanted a whole projection setup on stage and they were very open to our suggestions. So, we used all kinds of things: fog screens, side projectors and other props. There I developed the idea of layering graphics, combining backdrop with holo images. It was the largest project I had directed, and I had the chance to work with some amazing people: Yvonne Blake, who designed the original superman costume, the composer John Cameron, Barry Mason, who wrote many Whitney Houston and Tom Jones hits. It was a humbling experience being among all these great artists, but they were really generous with me and interested in my work. To them, what I did was a box of 21^st century magic tricks.

Ventuz:
Although you have worked a lot for Pictures that Move, you were never an official employee and always continued to freelance. Why is that?

Jorge:
I always wanted to have enough time and space to do my graphic design work. When you work in broadcast or installations, you don’t get to experiment often. Freelancing is about that, not losing touch with my experimental side. Studios are sometimes a bit narrow in their focus and the markets they target. But I also want to work for the arts and galleries, I don’t want to give that up, it is where I belong.

Experimenting on Realities

Ventuz:
What do you experiment on at the moment and how does Ventuz help you with that?

Jorge:
I am very interested in VR and AR, although I position them in very different markets. VR, I believe, is very well suited for private use and individual experiences. Nobody wants to stand blindly in front of a group of strangers and potentially make a fool of themselves. I was the same way. But now that I have a VR set at home, I am much more comfortable with using it, and I have noticed the same thing with my friends. I see the future of VR in immersive cinema or interactive documentaries, games or virtual social. AR, on the other hand, is active, it connects to the real world, it needs the real world. Users are not isolated, they share the same experience. That is why it is a better fit for professional applications. But despite the differences, when I experiment with AR or VR, I use Ventuz on both.

Ventuz:
How does Ventuz help you with being creative?

Jorge:
I use Ventuz as an authoring tool. It allows me to see my assets in a different way and get new ideas. Ventuz is like a thin brush when you are painting – it is the tool for details. The small things that will really make a difference, those come out in Ventuz for me. Even though my assets already exist, Ventuz shows me ways to visualize that I haven’t thought about, especially now in Ventuz 5 with the new layer structure and the effects. It is the perfect tool to experiment. And that is when people can get creative, when they try out something, discard it and go another way. There are still serendipity moments here. Things I wasn’t looking for, I find them in Ventuz.

Ventuz:
You live in London now and work as Creative Director for the company Four Partners, but you have also recently founded your own company, Enueve. What are your plans right now?

Jorge:
I am busy in Europe and especially the UK with Enueve, creating interactive presentations and installations. But I have also tapped into the Spanish speaking market for a while now. Ventuz is not very present in Latin America, but the need for good visualization tools is high. me and Guillermo Plazzola, my partner in most projects, have a customer in Mexico who turned out to be very active in this area. Luckily, I have the support of the Ventuz team, which is great. So that is the new Spanish adventure. I hope that I will soon be able to show you the fruits of that work.

 

Visit Enueve.com.