It’s Jonathan here, over the past year I have had the pleasure of working closely with Wes Burke on a number of projects. Wes is the brains behind CG Cookie, Mavenseed and Blender Cookie. It has been an excellent experience and a blast of a time. Wes has proven to be a great business partner and a lot of fun to work with. Since he spends much of his time behind the scenes maintaining and managing the sites, I thought now would be a good time to give him a break and let him talk a bit about who he is and what he does. Besides, everyone needs a little ego-trip from time to time 
As is usual with interviews, would you care to introduce yourself to those that may be reading this?
Eh, I came from a super small town south of Chicago called Bourbonnais here in the States. I did a stint of 4 years in the military right out of high-school. I was a sailor in the U.S. Coast Guard on the Coast Guard Cutter “never come home” I was stationed in San Fransisco and then in Boston (Gloucester to be specific) for the remainder of my duty.
Towards the tail end of this is when I made my first website. It was a motorcycle website with those flaming skull .gifs, spinning text and whatever animation .gif I could fit on the site. Because it was awesome! I have probably had my head buried in code and html manuals since then. I always laugh because at night by wife will be reading a book, and my arse is reading, “Learning CSS2″.
After I picked up my piece of paper from The Illinois Institute of Art – Schaumburg for 3D Animation, and heading off to the work force. Spent 6 years or so in the Game industry as an Object Modeler, Environment Artist, and ended up as a Senior 3D UI Artist (mouth-full) at Midway Games. Midway was pretty sweet and got to create the 3D UI work done for Stranglehold with Matt Secrist and Bill Fox. Mainly working with the Unreal Editor.
After my daughter was born, I decided to give the life of “contract artist” a shot so I could be at home more with my family. The past two years have been crazy, filled with extreme lows and ups, but all in all hanging in there.
At present time I work from home in on contract work, watch over my daughter when my wife works, and crank away on CG Cookie, Blender Cookie and new sites that I haven’t had time to implement yet.
*I was the 3D Modeler and animator for this short intro for the DVD menu system that was included when the PC game was purchased. AE done by Colin Post, Conception by Bruno Werneck
You have been a 3D artist for some time now, what got you started and what keeps you going? What did you do before jumping into 3D?
Out of college I landed my first Game Industry gig as an audio intern cleaning up audio tracks to Leisure Suit Larry. Heh, it was sort of weird sitting there with headphones on scrubbing .wavs of girls screaming out fake orgasms at work.
From there I became more involved in environment modeling, and started down that path of darkness. I will admit it has been difficult to stay up to date with 3D with the amount of web work lately, mainly for my cognitive stress/capacity. It is hard to retain all the latest and greatest knowledge of both industries at the same time. My brain just says, “Hell no, there isn’t room up here, besides House comes on shortly“. But once I get back into it, the fingers remember the key-maps and I am off to modeling.
I understand you are a 3DS Max artist, what, if I may ask, are you doing running a Blender site?!
Because I met this bloke named “Jonathan Williamson” back in October of 2008 that wouldn’t leave me alone! Jonathan actually introduced me to Blender and I agreed to toss up his first tutorial on CG Cookie back in November 2008. Since then we kept increasing the frequency of Blender education on the site until it was accounting for more then 50% of the traffic! (insert high-five here)
That is when I felt it was time to birth Blender Cookie and give the community it’s own stomping grounds. Blender Cookie has been an amazing adventure thus far, and it has felt great to bath myself in Blender. Seriously, watching the collaboration and communication take place daily on Blender Cookie is so inspiring and makes me want to maybe check this software out one of these days.. Hah
By now, you have quite a few different websites under your belt, can you tell us a bit about the different sites you run (ran)?
There definitely have been a few. Few of them I count and few of them I chalk up as lessons learned. Either way they were all good adventures.
x4artists.com
While in college is probably where I had my first real stab at a world wide CG website. It was called X4ARTISTS. It was crazy cool, and was actually launched when CGSociety was just CG Talk as a new forum on the web. We had a gallery, one of those forum thingys as well. It was really doing well, but my arse got distracted by life and chose to step away from the site right after I graduated.
cgunderground.com
This was my Rocky come back website and it was another one that started to do pretty well. The only bummer was that it was all completely done “manually” I didn’t know of CMS’s or Wordpress, so each morning before I went to work I would crop images, copy html, write text and manually move news around the site. After a year of doing this I was running out of steam and wasn’t able to pair up with a programmer.
I tend to think if you aren’t failing then you aren’t trying hard enough, or putting yourself out there. I have been able to build off of each of these adventures to put me on my new projects.
The current sites I am keeping an eye on are cgcookie.com, blendercookie.com and mavenseed.com. With the GREAT help of Wordpress I am able to do quite a bit more then the past. Though I tend to hunt and peck and the web side of things, so far these are doing not too shabby. CG Cookie by far as been the longest running and most successfully web adventure of mine, and Jonathan and I laugh because Blender Cookie is already beating it’s parent site.
*Modeling, animation, and rendering of objects by Wes Burke. UI was done by Ernesto Perez, Audio by Chase Ashbaker, Producer: Bill Muehl http://freethecity.com
Where do you see the Cookie sites going in the near future? Or maybe I should rephrase that as, where would you ideally like the sites to go?
I really don’t have a set-in-stone plan for the sites, but I do try to set up bumper pads and help guide them along. With how quickly things change, or with the pace new tech and software is released, you need to proactively react to what is thrown at you.
CG Cookie is positioning itself to be a reliable education network for CG Artists and that is simply at the foundation what I am striving for. It has already grown past what I had originally envisioned back in 2008, and I am extremely anxious to see what 2010 will bring.
While managing multiple sites, obviously your day-to-day to-do list fills up quick, what does your average daily work flow look like?
The morning usually starts out with going through 40 or so e-mails that came in over night, sucking down some strong coffee and thinking I should have gone to the gym.
The day consists of bouncing around from project, to e-mail, to skype, to CGC web work, to 3D work, answering support e-mails and thinking I should go to the fraking gym.
I usually will stop working around dinner time for a bit, play with daughter and spend time with the family. I usually get back to the computer after wards until 11pm or so, then I call it a night and pack the gym bag for the following day. Granted that is not every night, but it is most nights.
In our industry, there is a lot of work involved but it can also be very gratifying. What bit of your work do you find the most gratifying?
I have found I love the shorter projects that turn around quickly. I just finished a project for a client that only lasted for just over a week, but it was awesome to hunker down, crank through it and then see the end result.
Are there any near-term plans for the Cookie sites that you would like to talk about? Are there any new features or even whole sites in the pipeline?
For Blender Cookie, the near-term plan is for content, content and polishing. These past few months have been a marathon of feature additions, new site, training series, addition of David Ward to our instructor ranks and the addition of citizen, I am really looking forward to just working on refining these existing areas with more focused education and the frequency of release.
Outside of Blender Cookie, I do have two new sites that are in various stages in the pipeline that will focus on other software. These can be expected a bit after the new year along with some house cleaning will be had at the mother site (cgcookie.com).
19 Comments
I like the last sentence of the interview
I’m glad that you finally interviewed Wes Burke, I sure hope that Blender Cookie can grow into a great tutorial site – an even better one than it is now!
If I remember correctly, I know the Cookie since January 09. I don’t quite remember what exactly I liked about it at that time, must have been a certain head modelling series and the possibility to download high quality video. Versus the YouTube faction, the Cookie always stood out. And there was that guy who said “thanks and how’s it going” for my first online payments ever. Well, that guy was Wes, and whenever I had a question or problem he was right on top of it, shoving around downloads just for me, sending extra links, getting back to me even when he was sick, before moving the Cookie into the advanced shape with everything working. I had never experienced service that good, so the Dude is doing something right!
And as the Cookie grows, he hopefully will not be able to do so anymore at some point, so I thought I’d add a bit to the history being written here!
Also Mavenseed is a dream come true, even though I haven’t had the chance yet to use up all of Jonathan that belongs to me yet
So whatever you guys did was and is great and a little piece of philosopher’s stone every time.
Hail the Cookie!
Thanks, Wes, and go to the effin’ gym.
Thanks buddy, appreciate it and no I haven’t gone to the gym yet.
My bag is packed though!
I already know that Wes is the great guy behind CGcookie.com and BlenderCookie.com, big thanks for our unsung hero Wes Burke.
An excellent interview!
Wes I think it would be great if you could experiment with Blender, then maybe offer some tutorials on transferable modeling skills for others who move from one package to another.
From the work shown just in this interview I think you would have a lot to share. The second to last image (with the stairs) would make a nice tutorial series.
Great to see Blender is getting so popular!
hey Darth Gimp!
where have you been hiding?
There is a lot more to Wes than I imagined! Its great to learn about your success and understand all the hard work that is put forth.
P.S. You could use your own site to train yourself on Blender! Brilliant!
As a budding 3D modeler myself, it’s great to read about the successes of other modelers. It’s now a daily stop for me to see what’s new. Thanks for creating this website.
I have to echo what Wehrdo said… this site (and cgcookie) have become part of my daily routine.
Great Job Wes and thanks a million, and of course great work by all the contributors.
Very interesting stream of ideas and experiences. Glad you guys took the time to do this interview. Looking forward to see the Cookies bake, the Blender ones especially crispy. Mmmmm
Thanks guys for the comments and support! High fives all around, and I have vowed to be the first student to Jonathans 2.5 training, so I be able to hang with the best of them.
Catch you guys soon.
Ok Wes, we’ll watch your progress closely B-) We give you, as an experienced 3d artist, let’s say, 2 months to blend up and show us a “Tribute to Blender” assignment the result of which must be made public as proof it is possible for a pro to work with “the most terrible, hard to learn, badly interfaced, unprofessional and laughable piece of software out there”
That would be cool. But Wes won’t have time due to COD4 and the GYM, dammit…
That is a groovy idea actually, sort of a “Check up on Wes to make sure he does go to the gym and learn blender”. I dig it.
Damn you and your ideas!
Still haven’t picked up COD4 yet though as I may disappear for bit, I have C&C Red Alert to vent stress and turn off the brain a bit now. Any one play?
cool interview! Was interesting to see how the things started and its great to hear that u can be creative and stay with your family at the same time! Nothing beats time with ones u love and care about! Its impressive how you find the time to manage all of this and still create so much content etc. no wonder theres no time for gym
….u deserve some extensive holiday!!!
The works on city-development and architectural stuff really rock, I came to 3d stuff from using CAD software for work aswell and I often wished that there was more room to make cool visualization of ideas, so blender was just my cup of tea and cookies!
great interview, good questions that Jonathan asked!
Best regards and have a great weekend everyone!
It’s cool to learn more about the people teaching me Blender and helping me support myself with 3D. I’m actually from Schaumburg, and my friend graduated from IIAS. Crazy.
Anyway, even though I don’t say it after every video, Wes and Jonathan, thank you for all your hard work. It does not go unnoticed.
@Nixon – I am super jazzed you enjoyed the interview, and I don’t know how I find the time either. Though my wife gives me the look and then I know times up.
The city works was tons of fun, and wish I could go in and really dive into the detail of the skyline. I walked it for a whole day taking photos, etc that I was thinking of bundling here for free stuff if there is interest.
@Tim, I spent a bit of time in Schaumburg and had some good times there. Now just a bit west outside of the city but pass through there often. Jonathan and I are humbled by your last comment and have a great weekend guys.
Inspiring interview, thanks for sharing
Excellent review! Thank you very much.
I very much look forward to working with you in the future, when I am a BFCT! Cheers, God bless, and have a very Merry, Merry Christmas, sir! 
Amazing Dude, I never knew that, much appreciated.