Meet Jeremy Ross | 3D Modeling & Lighting Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jeremy Ross and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jeremy, where are your from? We’d love to hear about how your background has played a role in who you are today?
I’m originally from a suburb near Montreal in Quebec, Canada. However I’ve grown to live a bit everywhere including the rural side of Quebec, Europe and eventually Florida. Interestingly enough, I was never too big on art growing up. In fact, I always had the choice between music and art and never once considered taking art.

I would always be playing games or watching movies in my free time, or go out hiking with my dog Norky, a sweet mix between a Samoyed and a Malamute, to explore the nature around the places I’ve lived. I once hiked 8km to go to a hidden lake on top of the mountain, past wheat fields and around a cliff just to sit there and “study” math. I can’t say it was the most effective study session. However, these outings and my travels would end up being one of my biggest inspirations for my art today.

Art which I would only start doing once I hit the age of 17. By this point, I always thought I wanted to go in astronomy, but I began to think it was way too long to study. Hence I fell back on what I always liked doing in my free time and figured: “Why not strive to work on what I like consuming?”. Hence began my quest to move towards the animation industry.

Although, the only issue is that coming out of high school I had nothing to show to apply to colleges since my art was still atrociously bad as I had just started. Luckily, my parents were always supportive and it allowed me to take a gap year to spend the entire time getting ready to apply and go to college.

I’m someone who always goes in hardcore in most things I do, and that includes truly everything. I would do gaming sessions in World of Warcraft that would last all day, from 7am to midnight just to progress as fast I could. Therefore, I set up a schedule I would stick by the entire year. Focusing on learning things including color theory, anatomy, figure drawing, composition and more. All this which eventually led me to Ringling College of Art and Design in their Computer animation, where I would eventually use my passion for nature to create my latest biggest project:

My senior thesis called “Sticking Seafarer”.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
What impassions me the most about art has always been nature, which is why I find the most excitement working on modeling, sculpting and lighting as you get to create your own worlds and assemble it all in a way to give a specific ambience and tone that helps the viewer imagine themselves being present in the scene.

I’m someone who travelled a lot, ranging from tropical areas such as the Bahamas and Costa Rica, to the dryer lands of the African Savannah, to the cliffs of the Mediterranean and the bamboo forests of Japan. Everywhere I go always gives me a spark to create a 3D scene, and I always try to remember what makes a specific place so unique, so I can replicate it when comes the time.

The only issue is always time! I never get to do any of them! So it was really important to me to have a thesis that had a a large variety of environments. My thesis was an homage to the Floridian environment I had come to love. The shoreline was always a place of solace when studying here. I always loved watching the barnacles open up with the crashing waves and seeing the tiny crabs emerge out of nowhere. A detail that struck me the most while kayaking for the first time in the mangroves recently was actually that I had never known before then that there would be SO many crabs walking up the branches and trunks of the mangroves. I mean, where do they even go?

With that small anecdote, I think the most important lesson I learned before entering the industry was honestly the most obvious. Especially when it’s up to you, you have to work on what you know, and what you feel passionate about. A lot of people in the program I just graduated in often create stories that they feel ambivalent about. Before you know it, you need to spend the next 1 and a half years on it.

In the industry you don’t really get to choose, so strive to do what you love when you can!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I definitely would shout out my family who’ve been supporting me from the very start and were always willing to help me with every endeavor. I also want to shout out my friends and my significant other who’ve always been able to lift the morale by going on some out to do some activities such as escape rooms, board game nights or kayaking, even in our hardest times as we would be dying trying to produce a full short film on our own.

Website: https://jeremyrossportfolio.weebly.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mr.jeremyross/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-ross-03505816b/