![]() ![]() But when my mom said it I decided that I wanted to create video games. But I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and my mom said, “Here you can do anything you want.” And just to put things in perspective, growing up in Israel I wasn't exposed to anything like that. I ended up meeting a girl and she convinced me to go to college. So instead of taking a trip abroad, which is what most young people in Israel do after their service, I came here to help my mom get settled. My parents got divorced right after my military service and my mother moved to Philadelphia. What brought you to the United States? Was it for college? Then I started making little films at home with a Panasonic video recorder with a VHS cassette. I wanted to find a way to do more stuff like that. I started making my own animated loops and I really fell in love with it. When I was seven or eight, my mom and dad got me an Etch-a-Sketch animator. My dad worked at IBM for a bit back in the 70s so I had been exposed to computers from a young age, starting with a Commodore 64. How about computers? When did you start working with them? I was also a big fan of Saturday morning cartoons like The Jetsons, Transformers, and G.I. I never got formally trained because we didn't have those kinds of opportunities like we do in the States-I mean training in fine arts and stuff like that. My mother comes from an artistic family and she always tried to encourage us to be more artistic so as a kid I did a lot of drawing and cartooning. I have an older brother who got me into Marvel and DC comics when I was pretty young. What were your influences growing up in Israel. But it is responsible for doing clothing, armor, and hero hair. At Blue Sky we have a character simulation department. I like to say it’s anything else that is not a character that moves in a dynamic way or that interacts with the character. Our responsibilities fall under natural phenomenon, whether it's water, smoke, fire-elements like that. So it's kind of like a mix of both animator and technical artist. The FX TD typically designs the effect, engineers it, and also animates it. The Credits: Would you start by defining exactly what an FX Technical Director does? The Credits spoke with Gabai, who lives in New York City with his wife Laura, a CG lighter, about the curious path that led him from Israel to Rio, his unique coffee splash effect in Epic, and the excitement of taking an effect from scratch to finish for the big screen. “Explosion of color.” No small irony there. ![]() “It’s a perfectly appealing explosion of color for a lazy summer day,” wrote Stephan Lee of Entertainment Weekly. He is particularly proud of his work on Epic, a film that received mixed reviews from critics, but raves for its animation. Since joining Blue Sky in 2010, Gabai has made waves - the animated kind - plus sand prints, tear drops, and tornadoes for the Studio’s feature films including Rio (2011), Ice Age 4 (2012), Epic (2013), and the upcoming Rio 2, starring Anne Hathaway and Jesse Eisenberg. Later, he moved to Los Angeles and worked on a number of episodic TV shows ( Lost, Eleventh Hour, Fringe) and one live action film ( Fast & Furious), before turning his talents full time to his first love, animation. “I did a lot of fire, smoke, and debris FX,” he says. from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, where his studies included 3D animation.Īfter interning as an FX artist on the FX Network’s Rescue Me, he joined the show full-time following graduation. Gabai moved to the United States after his military hitch and earned a B.F.A. “I saw what explosions really look like compared to what they looked like on TV or in the movies.” ![]() “I got to blow up a lot of things during my training,” says Gabai, who rose to the rank of first sergeant. The 33-year-old grew up in Israel and served three years in his country’s defense forces where he handled grenades, mortars, and RPGs. Ilan Gabai, an effects technical director (FX TD) with Blue Sky Studios, can claim that experience. Typically, the job of digital effects animator does not require previous experience working with live explosives. ![]()
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