Marmoset Toolbag has been a staple in the CG art world for years. They are constantly offering new, improved versions to appease even the most specific artist. They have also been a huge supporter of the Cubebrush community, sponsoring Art War each year since it began.

We got a chance to talk to Marmoset's Art and Design Director, Joe Wilson to get a behind the scenes peak at the company. 

My name is Joe Wilson. I have 16 years of experience working in the games and software development industries, and am currently the Art & Design Director at Marmoset. I like rainy days, moss, woodworking, photography, and cats.

How was Marmoset founded? Where did the idea come from?

Marmoset Toolbag was originally developed as an in-house model viewer for a proprietary game engine we used at a former game development studio. We needed a simple tool for our artists to load meshes, textures, and create materials without launching the full game engine. This process made it easy and efficient for our artists to preview how their work looked in game.

Somewhere along the line we realized that making tools was more fun than making games, and we released the alpha version of Toolbag to the public. We received positive feedback from the Polycount community, which gave us confidence that Toolbag was a product worth developing further. 

Around this time, Andres Reinot, Jeff Russell, and Mark Doeden moved on with that tech and  formed a new company, Marmoset. With the new company came the initial Toolbag 1.01 commercial release. Marmoset has been focusing on making it easy for artists to produce, visualize, and showcase their 3D artwork with Toolbag ever since.

Was there ever a point where you thought, “this isn’t going to work,” and how did you overcome it?

Whether it be art, games, or software development, I think we all have those times. Especially when we’re working on a longer project. For instance, we often don’t know how a particular feature is going to turn out until we get it into our user’s hands. It’s easy to stress about this sort of thing, but at the end of the day you have to be diligent in your work and trust the process as well as the abilities of yourself and your team.

How have your goals changed as an artist over the years and as you’ve grown the company? Or have they?

When I first joined Marmoset I was primarily creating example artwork, tutorials, and helping with community management and support. These days, I am more involved in the overall design of Toolbag. 

In practice, this means less time modeling in Modo, and more time in Google Docs and Trello. It’s been an interesting transition, while I don’t get to do as much artwork, it’s extremely rewarding seeing the combined efforts of our engineering, artwork, marketing, and support teams come together to create a useful product which empowers the fantastic artists in our community.

If an artist is perfect what is the one thing they can do that will cause you to move on to other candidates? 

Something I see frequently is artwork that is technically very good, but presented poorly. By presentation I mean lighting, composition, camera work, and staging. Creative use of lighting to highlight forms, interesting composition, and giving an asset the appropriate context by placing it a small scene or with a relevant background can really help. At the end of the day, presentation can be the difference between an average portfolio and one that really stands out.

Any special projects going on at Marmoset you can tell us about? 

We are working on some very cool, top secret stuff! Unfortunately, nothing that I can talk about publicly yet.

As the lead artist, can you explain the workflow of the entire department? What makes everything come together?

With artwork and software development we outline our goals, break the work down into phases and iterate until we feel confident the new feature or tutorial has met its mark. We tend to follow the “when it’s done” philosophy, and prioritize quality work over hitting specific milestones or deadlines. I believe what makes everything come together is solid communication and a team-wide desire to make a great product. 

Time for you to boast a little, what makes you a good leader? 

Oh boy, I’m not sure. I suppose I try to be detail oriented, by that I mean make sure that we have clear goals and everyone has the tools and information they need to do their job well.

Marmoset has been a great supporter of Cubebrush. Is there a reason why? 

We think the Cubebrush platform is a great service, providing an excellent marketplace for art and educational content. Additionally, Cubebrush’s contests like Art War tend to produce excellent results and highlight skilled artists around the globe, so we’re proud to be a sponsor.

Any advice for ambitious artists out there?

There are so many great resources available these days, whether that be online communities, tutorials, courses, software, or what have you. The best advice I can give is to soak up all that knowledge, share your work with other artists, seek out feedback, and keep grinding.

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Check out Art War 4 HERE!