Grey’s Anatomy in space: defying gravity
TV series Defying Gravity follows the lives of eight astronauts on board international spacecraft Antares as they travel the solar system in the year 2052. The show, which unfortunately looks set to be discontinued, features hundreds of visual effects shots from Stargate Studios. Pitched as a Grey’s Anatomy in Space, fxguide talks to visual effects supervisor Sam Nicholson about the show’s extremely impressive visual effects.
fxguidetv #69: Rob Bredow
In our new episode of fxguidetv, we catch up with Rob Bredow, chief technical officer of Sony Pictures Imageworks, and discuss several topics. We touch on their open source moves, stereoscopic and its creative and technical challenges, “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs”, and the business climate. Our fxphd tip of the week takes a […]
The Mill NY vfx for a Traktor-Directed Dell Spot
A magical computer factory complete with singing workers, robots and moving parts was the creation of The Mill NY for ‘Treats,’ a Traktor-directed spot featuring Dell’s colourful range of Inspiron laptops. The Mill NY’s 3D supervisor Andrew Proctor takes fxguide through the work.
The Previsualization Society
The Previsualization Society was officially announced today to “focus on producing and publishing information and resources to promote effective previs through key activities such as promoting standards, education, workflow development and practical knowledge exchange”. Founding members of the Previsualization Society are: David Dozoretz, Founder, Director and VFX Supervisor, Persistence of Vision (POV) Previs; Chris Edwards, […]
VES Annual Meeting
This past Saturday the Visual Effects Society held their annual meeting in Hollywood. Scott Squires has written up a nice summary of the meeting on his blog. I know the words “Annual Meeting” tend to make one think of a boring affair but I think you will find the speakers brought up many of the […]
YouTube find: The Flame
Making the rounds on YouTube today is a video featuring the flame user interface as a music video. To view the video click the read more…
linear workflow discussion
In this week’s fxpodcast we discuss linear workflow. We geek out with 3D guru Master Zap of Mental Images about linear compositing workflow: separating fact from fiction, and discuss just how viable it is to set up a correct linear pipeline. Why is linear compositing valuable? Feature film compositing is nearly always ‘linear’ ironically – […]
fxguidetv: IBC 2009 Recap
Our latest fxguidetv covers news and items from IBC in Amsterdam earlier this month. We speak with the folks at Blackmagic about the daVinci acquisition, check out a tech demo of realtime Nvidia GPU processing of filters in Adobe Premiere, drop by The Foundry booth to see an interesting application of their upcoming tech in […]
Winning over Tiger Beer
For three ‘Winning over’ Tiger Beer spots, Oktobor created fully CG architectural icons of London, New York and Paris as a single drop of beer gives rise to the cities that eventually form into the Tiger bottle shape. Oktobor General Manager Patrick McAteer and director Damon Duncan tell fxguide how the spots were accomplished.
Unpaid Journey Artists Update: Partially Paid
Over the last year, we have been following the story of the group of visual effects artists who worked on the film Journey to the Center of the Earth for Meteor Studios (see here and here). These artists were not paid for their months of work when Meteor Studios folded. Over the last year, the […]
fxpodcast: Posting Your Work Online
Posting work online has become such a common and crucial part of workflow and we often take it for granted. In this fxpodcast we talk with Andreas Wacker of INTERDUBS, a company that provides hosting of clips for review and approval for over eighty post production and production companies. This large client base gives Andreas […]
Aliens in the Attic – Rhythm & Hues
For Aliens in the Attic, director John Schultz called on Rhythm & Hues to create an array of cute-but-scary aliens who take on an unlikely band of vacationing kids. Visual effects supervisor Doug Smith and co-visual effects supervisor Mike O’Neal break down Rhythm’s alien animation work for fxguide.
Back 2 back fxguidetv: Spanish & English
We have new episodes of fxguidetv English and Spanish. In fxguidetv #67, Angie and the team talk to Chris Bond and Chris Harvey of Prime Focus about GI Joe and workflow. (also see our feature written story this week) Visit the fxguidetv page for direct fxguidetv downloads and RSS feed links. To be notified automatically and […]
61st Primetime Creative Arts Emmy
Today the Primetime Creative Arts Awards were presented at a ceremony at the NOKIA Theatre in downtown Los Angeles. The show, hosted by Kathy Griffin, will be televised on September 18th at 1:00 p.m (ET/PT) on E! Entertainment Television. A list of the winners for selected categories follows the read more:
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
With G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, director Stephen Sommers delved into the world of the popular Hasbro action-figure toy line. Bringing the characters and vehicles to life was partly the role of overall visual effects supervisors Boyd Shermis and Greg McMurry and a host of effects vendors. fxguide profiles some of the key effects shots by Digital Domain, CIS Hollywood and CIS Vancouver, Prime Focus VFX, The Moving Picture Company, CafeFX and Framestore.
fxpodcast: Taking Woodstock Acid Trip
In this week’s fxpodcast we trip out with Mr X – and their visual effects for Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock. This comedy required the visual effects team to visualize an acid trip, make the world become a rolling ocean and show the centre of the universe. In a fun and technical discussion Mike Seymour talks […]
fxguidetv: new flame/smoke 2010×1 releases
ibc begins on Friday in Amsterdam and we’ll be covering the conference via fxguidetv as we have for the last several years. To start out the show, our first episode covers the new extension releases from Autodesk for flame and smoke. We traveled up to Montreal before this week to get the scoop on the […]
District 9
For District 9, writer/director Neill Blomkamp turned to a host of Vancouver-based studios, along with Weta Workshop and Weta Digital in New Zealand, to provide alien creatures and other effects for the film. fxguide profiles the work of Image Engine, The Embassy Visual Effects, Zoic Studios and Goldtooth Creative in bringing Blomkamp’s vision to life.
More transitions – Avid acquired Max-T
Maximum Throughput was founded in 1998 and is probably best known in visual effects for their Sledgehammer line which provides storage and IO solutions to complement workstations and provide conform capability. A little over a year ago they introduced MAXedit™ which offers a scalable, multi-seat HD/SD editing solution and also has a web component that […]
Tech & Sci Oscar short list
The Scientific and Technical Awards Committee of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today that 11 scientific and technical achievements have been selected for further awards consideration.
BlackMagic Design Buys daVinci – Confirmed
Black Magic Design (BMD) has bought daVinci color grading systems. Black Magic known for it world class signal convertors and hardware boxes. daVinci, makes of Resolve and Revival, has been based out of Florida, but interestingly, software R&D for some time has been based in Singapore – also home to Black Magic’s head office.With this […]
Pixar on Stereo Production: fxguidetv
In this week’s Episode #65 of fxguidetv we speak to the team at Pixar about their latest blockbuster and stereoscopic production in general. We speak to Pete Sohn about directing his short film “Partly Cloudy” and Bob Whitehill talks about creating the Stereoscopic version of “Up” and the upcoming Stereo versions of “Toy Story 1, […]
Peter Doyle on Complex Feature Film Grading
In this week’s fxpodcast we have an amazing show – we speak in depth to Peter Doyle about his role as supervising digital colourist on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. This continues our trend with the fxpodcast of digging beneath the hype and really exploring serious film making in conversations with some of the […]
Smoke and Mirrors for a Denver museum
Smoke & Mirrors New York (SMNY) moved into the animation realm with ‘Dinosaur’, a Denver Museum of Nature & Science spot featuring a playful brontosaurus skating around a frozen pond. fxguide talked to key SMNY artists Sean Broughton (Director/CD/Editor), Mike Donovan (Lead Sr. CG Artist), Steve Parish (Lead Sr. CG Artist/Lighting/Live Action Director) and Nic Seresin (Sr. Flame Artist) about the work.
MAXON Releases New Versions of Cinema4D
Maxon announced today that they are shipping a new release of their 3D software, along with a new Broadcast Edition. The software fully supports the recently released Snow Leopard, including access of up to 64GB of virtual memory. Cinema4D has become the most popular 3D package that After Effects artists are using for motion graphics […]
new fxguidetv & red centre podcasts
fxguidetv In this week’s fxguidetv we talk to Stereo Supervisor Enrique Criado on the different aspects, – both technical and narrative, of stereoscopic production. Visit the fxguidetv page for direct fxguidetv downloads and RSS feed links. To be notified automatically and have the episodes downloaded in iTunes, subscribe via this link. Red Centre Our Digital […]
The Foundry releases Nuke 5.2
The Foundry released the latest update to Nuke today taking it to version 5.2v1. Pre-comp tools, Python improvements, GPU support for 3D LUTs, video monitor preview support and support for reading RED R3D files are among the improvements. At IBC Nuke 6.0 and NukeX 6.0 will be previewed, they are due for release in Q4 […]
G Force: the building of digital guinea pigs
Imageworks visual effects supervisor Scott Stokdyk gives Ian Failes a run down of his work for G-Force, a Hoyt Yeatman-directed feature about an elite troupe of guinea pigs who must save the world from an evil billionaire.
Stardust provides watercolor beauty for shell
The new UK Shell Campaign uses a truly beautiful technical painterly technique. Key artists from Stardust Studios tell fxguide about the painterly ‘Get the most out of every drop’ spots created for Shell in conjunction with JWT London.
fxguidetv en espa
We are really excited to announce the premiere episode of fxguidetv in spanish: fxguidetv en espanol.