Bio:

It all started in 1992 when Eric Turman asked his friend Brian Shubat if he'd like to start a commercial animation business with him. After making some contacts with various 3D software companies, Eric was able to secure a Silicon Graphics workstation on loan from SGI and a temporary license of Alias power modeler/power animator. Eric and Brian worked around the clock to create three commercial end tags (30 seconds of animation total). With no prior experience and no manuals, they completed this task within 19 days, despite having been told that normal ramp up for learning the software was between 30 to 60 days with manuals.

Eric and Brian pooled what little resources they had and with that meager amount of startup capital, and met with a lawyer that Eric's friend Jeff Laugland knew, and incorporated. The Mobius Medium, inc. was formed in 1994 by good friends and business associates Eric Turman, Brian Shubat, and Jeff Laughland. While they were trying to get their company off the ground, Eric had the opportunity to use over a dozen 3D animation/modeling packages in his search for the best product for their budget. Three years later, the Mobius Medium staff was forced to proceed onward and independently due to undercapitalization.

Eric joined Brian at Evermore Entertainment in 1996, where he was introduced to Softimage|3D. He also met Michael Werckle who has remained a close friend and business associate ever since. Together the three of them animated and edited an 8-minute movie in three months.

Eric worked with Brian and Michael again at Raven Software. While at Raven, Eric found his niche in the innovation of new tools to improve production quality while reducing production time. Later when management dictated the use of motion capture for the studio, Eric was charged with making it work.

Eric believed that it was essential that animators have ultimate control of the motion, so that the animation was not influenced solely by the motion capture data. He also knew that production would be slowed by tweaking out the massive amounts of data that motion capture generates. He needed to give animators their IK ability while integrating motion capture’s FK data. After consulting with Gareth Morgan of SoftImage on possible ways to incorporate motion capture into the studio’s art pipeline, Eric developed his first reusable modular rig, CHIMAERA, in Softimage|3D. This rig had simultaneous IK/FK controls and was used on two shipped titles.

After the studio upgraded to SoftImage|XSI, Eric needed to rebuild the motion capture hand animation control rig from ground up; this rig, dubbed ISIS, also had simultaneous IK/FK controls. Eric conferred with Michael Isner and Olivier Ozoux of SoftImage Special Projects on new features of Softimage|XSI which led him to reengineer this rig, maintaining the simultaneous IK/FK controls. The revision of ISIS was renamed, appropriately enough, ISIS2, and was also used on many shipped titles.

Eric began learning Maya and Filmbox (now known as Motion Builder) when he was Animation Lead on Quake 4; Raven had adopted the Doom 3 engine for it and was adamant about using what id Software was currently using as well as the way that they were using it. With diverging ideals, Eric and Raven were no longer a good fit for each other. So, in the spring of 2002, Eric headed to Chicago.

At Midway Amusement Games, Eric furthered his knowledge of Maya while he worked with mocap from the front-end of the pipeline all the way to the end. Steve Sengele, one of Eric's former coworkers from Raven who had left two years prior, was already working on that team. Eric developed a good friendship with Steve during the six months that he was at Midway. Their lunchtime discussions ranged from philosophy to books, music, movies, games and how they tied together in culture.

Eric left Midway to become Art & Animation lead at 2015 in late 2002, where he built up a second team of artists, rounded out his knowledge of Maya and Filmbox and built powerful rigs. Upon converting 2015 to |XSI, Eric found that he had gained a new perspective, and he approached the software with new wisdom; using Maya had broadened his toolset repertoire and problem solving abilities for rigging and other aspects within |XSI.

One of the artists that Eric brought aboard at 2015 was Johan Klingler (a 10 year Disney feature animation veteran and student of Chuck Jones.) Johan became Art Director for 2015 as well as Eric’s mentor and great friend. It was Eric’s goal while working with Johan to gain as much knowledge from him as possible. In addition, on almost a daily basis, Eric would spend lunch with Johan learning and refining knowledge or even relearning what was learned improperly. This impartation of knowledge also included homework in the form of books to read and exercises to complete. In addition to rounding out his skill set and giving himself a perspective of his capabilities, many lessons helped him to understand the social impact of the product that he contributed to, while reconciling the fact that he was still involved in commercial art. Johan and Eric also shared a common ideology:

Press on

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; The world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and Determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

-Calvin Coolidge

After 2015 disintegrated, Eric freelanced at Janimation where, by working with other industry professionals from film, commercial and visual FX, he was able to further expand his knowledge beyond the scope of game art.

Most recently, Eric has been working as workbook, set dressing, lighting and compositing artist for DNA Productions on a feature film called "The Ant Bully." which hit theaters July 28th 2006.