Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeff Nichols
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Well everything for me starts in the small town of Willis, TX. Looking back I’d like to think I was a pretty good kid but I really was a menace. Just always into something. Art was one of those positive somethings though. My great grandmother was a self taught painter. I never got to meet her but her paintings were all over my childhood home. I would sit in front of them and try my best to recreate them with whatever tools I had. She did the most beautiful landscapes. Looking back it’s really cool to think about how those landscapes she painted are what helped inspire me to become an artist in my own right and now her paintings are in my home.
I got pretty lucky in the way of family really. My parents were always supportive of whatever I was doing as long as it kept me out of trouble. I think I get a lot of my curiousity and creative spirit from them. My mom is the kind of mom that is EVERYONE’s mom. She’s super feisty. I remember when I was a kid, when we were in little league baseball, my mom was sick of the mistreatment and sexism by a lot of the male coaches. So, she rallied a gang of other moms who ran the concession stand and who had sons in the league and they coached a team to a championship in the 11-12yr old boys league just to spite the men. If anyone is wondering where I get all my energy, look no further than Babs (that’s my mom). It’s a cool thing to be proud of your parents at a young age. My dad is where I get my creative energy. Growing up he was always making or fixing something. He’s like a savant when it comes to making. When he was 18 or so he bought this old 1955 Chevy that was basically just a skeleton of a car and I watched him build that car from the ground up for my entire life. He finished it during Covid. It’s a beautiful car. It’s one of those things made more beautiful when you know how much effort and love went into it. Now that I’m a bit older I spend a lot more time looking back at those influences and all the energy and creativity that surrounded me that I didn’t really recognize as a kid and feel pretty damn grateful.
With all of that influence, I got more serious about art in high school and was always trying to figure out what I could do with it to avoid having to have a more normal job. Initially I was headed toward architecture at Texas A&M. I had this dream that I would make sports stadiums one day. But as it goes, one day when I was checking my college applications I accidentally found myself on Texas A&M’s Visualization webpage. It was this new program focused on art and computer graphics. The projects on the page and all the crazy art just blew my mind. I had no idea you could just go to school for stuff like this. Without a word to anyone I called my advisor and changed my degree plan. Things turned out pretty well considering I made one of my biggest life choices based on a whim.
4 years later I got my bachelors in Visualization Science and then continued on to get a masters degree. It was in my masters program that I got connected with alums working at DreamWorks. For two years I was kinda working on my thesis but also working on my demo reel. One day, I got the call. DreamWorks asked if I could be there in 2 weeks. So I called my buddy who was also an artist trying to get a job at the time and asked him if he wanted to move to California. 2 weeks and 1 horrible drive later I was in LA starting my career.
These days I work as a Lead Look Development Artist at DreamWorks Animation. I’ve worked on some really cool films like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, Croods: A New Age, Trolls: Band Together and most recently our upcoming film, The Wild Robot. Outside of DreamWorks I am also a guest lecturer in the Visualization Dept at Texas A&M where I’ve had the great pleasure of helping guide many students to their careers in the industry alongside my incredible teaching counterpart, Caleb Kicklighter. Shout out to the Viz kids!
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Nah, a smooth road is no fun. I had a lot of ups and downs. Years of doubt about my ability as an artist, feelings of imposter syndrome or failing time and again to land a job when I was a student. Just all the mental anguish that comes with chasing your dreams and trying to figure your life out. My whole life I always felt a bit like a black sheep. I had a lot of friends and ‘fit in’ but mentally that never really was what I felt. It’s one of those things where you feel like you’re always on the outside looking in. And given how blessed I am in life that can be hard to come to terms with. When you have everything but feel like you don’t, what do you do with that? Where do you go? I think a lot of people probably feel this in some ways or another. Life is hard man, you get kicked around, and you have all these highs and lows it can be exhausting. The lesson I’ve learned is you get what you give. The energy, effort, and attitude we invest in our pursuits and interactions with others will ultimately determine the quality and nature of what we receive in return. If we can approach life with generosity, kindness, and a positive mindset, you’ll recieve that in kind. That being said I stress out plenty, lose my cool and find myself a general mess of a person on the average day, but you know we’re just trying our best.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
So I’m what’s known in the VFX industry as a Look Development artist. We create the color, texture, and define the physically correct material properties for every single object in the 3D worlds we make. We do detailed sculpting with displacement mapping, creating sophisticated geometric details in objects like cracks, rocks, bricks, cobblestones, and wrinkles on a character’s face. Human hair, animal fur, and even the grass in a field is created by LookDev artists in a process called grooming. Our Department supplies enormous amounts of detail in environments through a process called Microdressing where we create highly efficient models of rocks, plants, mushrooms, sticks, and other kinds of set dressing, and artistically distribute high volumes of them in an environment. This results in incredible, lush details for the worlds we create.
It’s a really multi disciplinary role that requires high level technical and artistic ability. It’s very much in the name, Look Development. We develop nearly every aspect for the way things look in our films.
I’d say what I’m most proud of is my fellow artists in my department. These folks are TALENTED. DreamWorks kinda gets slept on in comparison to the Pixars and Disneys. But in my biased opinion, the look of our work is unmatched.
I have other creative pursuits outside of work as well. My friends and I started our own art collective that’s just this awesome wholesome group of homies and we’re also working towards launching our own creative studio of sorts. There’s just so much more to explore in the way of art and technology and these days you can do anything. The world really is at your fingertips if you just have the audacity to go for it.
What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
DO THE THING. Life is so short and weird. Start that project, tell that person you like them, tell your friends you love them. There’s so much that I’m doing now that I wish I had done sooner. I wish I could’ve believed in myself before the way I do now. And finally, it’s who you surround yourself with. My Dad used to tell me, “You are the average of everyone you hang around most.” And it’s so true. Your community of people dictates a lot of what you’ll accomplish in life. I’m really lucky to have found myself surrounded by so many great humans. They motivate, inspire and love me and in a world that constantly seems like it’s imploding on itself, that is one of the most important resources I have.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.jeffnicholscg.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeffniichols/
Image Credits
Jeff Nichols
DreamWorks Animation
