We recently started the RenderStreet interviews section on our blog, setting out to find unique stories inside the Blender community. Many already know Sebastian König from his work at Blender Foundation’s Tears of Steel open movie and his Blender training activities. He is one of the first Blender Foundation Certified Trainers (BFTC) in Germany, with a solid experience in teaching Blender.

I wanted to know more about what’s it like to teach Blender, and find the secret to becoming a well recognised expert. Besides his practical advice and insights, Sebastian’s authenticity and openness show he’s a man with a true calling for his work.

Marius Iatan: You have a long experience both with online tutorials and live training all over the world. What was the most inspiring training you did, and why?

Sebastian König: I would say personal training is always the most inspiring. Online training or DVDs are great to reach a lot of people, but recording tutorials can be, at least for me, rather tedious. When doing recordings it’s just too tempting to try to fix mistakes and do another take. I often find myself recording the same sentence over and over again until I get it “right”. Mostly that doesn’t even improve the first take.

That’s also why I enjoy personal teaching so much. It’s all live and it doesn’t matter if everything is perfectly pronounced, or if you do a mistake now and then. Live training has this special something. It’s exciting and that usually makes my brain work faster. Which then results in better training. :)

Recently graduated from The National Film School of Denmark, William Reynish released his bachelor film Whole, that took one year to produce. Marius Iatan got William to reveal the project’s spicy moments that were put together in the amazing interview below. This, and some of William’s views on animation, 3D and creativity.

Marius Iatan: How did your professional skills evolve up to directing animation films? What would you choose instead, if you had to pick a different path?

William Reynish: I was always into animation. I grew up drawing a lot, and I liked to act. Animation is the natural combination of those two things. I worked as a character animator on other Blender projects such as Big Buck Bunny and Sintel.

An alternate career would be in software. I am passionate about software design.

There’s a huge opportunity to be the first really well-designed 3D app, and I think Blender should be it.

Marius: What were the turning points in your career – who or what inspired your life and where you are today?

I first met Francesco last year at YABC, in Gdansk. It was my first Blender-related conference, and my first in-person contact  with the community. The second meeting was in Amsterdam at BConf, where he hosted the visit at the Blender Institute. It was then when we agreed to contribute at Caminandes, which resulted in RenderStreet’s servers crunching the Gran Dillama episode.

Francesco joined the Blender Institute in 2012 and is now one of the deepest involved people in the Blender world. He was involved in the Gooseberry campaign and also in the previous open movies done by the Institute. I asked him to answer a few questions for us, and he agreed, so read on for the good part.

Andrei Izrantcev, Developer of V-Ray for Blender

This February V-Ray was officially released for Blender, but the story of the integration started a few years ago. Our guest is Andrei Izrantcev, the man who decided to put together his favorite rendering engine and his passion for open source. What started out as a personal project, managed in his spare time, is now a fully functional part of the V-Ray product line. Now Andrei is a full-time developer at Chaos Group, focused exclusively on V-Ray for Blender.

The story comes from Andrei himself in an interview about the V-Ray for Blender project, telling us how it began and what we can look forward in the months to come.