VES Awards – The Winners List
The 7th Annual Visual Effects Society Awards were held tonight at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles. In addition to the award categories a VES Lifetime Achievement award was presented to Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall and the George Méliès Award for Pioneering was presented to Phil Tippett. The winners in individual categories […]
HPA Technology Retreat 2009
The Hollywood Post Alliance describes their 15th annual technology retreat on their web site with the heading “Now more than ever! Arm your Brain”. In these challenging economic times it is important to be thinking in new directions and looking for all opportunities. We take a trip to the desert for some inspiration and to see what the HPA Technology Retreat has to offer.
Gridiron Flow Beta for Mac Released
One of the more interesting products in development over the last year has been Gridiron Software’s Flow — an asset, versioning, and time tracking package for artists. It works behind the scenes to track what you’re working on and what files were used to create the end result. Just drag a render to the Flow […]
The Foundry: Looking for Showreel Material
It’s that time of year again, when manufacturers are looking for material to add to their tradeshow reels. The Foundry is prepping their reel for NAB and looking for cool stuff that features work done in their products: Nuke, Furnace, Keylight, Ocula, Tinder, and Tinderbox. If you have work that you’d like to have featured […]
And the BAFTA Award goes to…
Starting the award season the British Academy of Film and Television Arts held the BAFTA Awards tonight. The winner for the category Special Visual Effects is: The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button Eric Barba, Craig Barron, Nathan McGuinness, Edson Williams Full list of BAFTA winners can be found here. The VES Awards are next on […]
The Orphanage suspends operations
Late yesterday we got word that The Orphanage in San Francisco was suspending operations. The confirmation came quickly on Orphanage co-founder Stu Maschwitz’s ProLost blog. The company was founded in 1999 by Stu and co-founders Scott Stewart and Jonathan Rothbart and according to The Orphanage website had a staff of more than 160 artists with […]
Imagineer Announces Plans for 2009
We haven’t heard much from the folks at Imagineer since some big changes at the company in the second half of last year. Today they announced that the first half of the year will see significant upgrades to their mocha and mocha for After Effects tracking products. They also plan to announce details on upgrades […]
The Foundry’s 2009 Nuke Roadmap
The first ever Nuke master class in London was held in Soho today and over 200 artists from all around Europe attended the event. The session was definitely geared towards artist-types and started with the Foundry’s Jon Waddleton covering python scripting for artists. There were also a ton of cool tips and tricks shown by […]
fxguidetv – Episode #51 is on the Air
A new episode of fxguidetv is available for your viewing pleasure. It features an interview with vfx supervisor Eric Durst, who chats with Mike Seymour about the craft of turning elements of a script into visual effects which help tell the story. Also, we have a look at a fun Levi’s 501 spec spot helmed by […]
All is Forgiven: Sale Ends
The Foundry and Autodesk have rebuilt the arrangement we reported on earlier this month and the Foundry will once again fully develop Sparks for the Autodesk Systems products. We had reported earlier in the month on the complex issues leading to the Foundry slashing prices to just 10% of their normal price, and the loss […]
Nominees announced for 2008 Oscars
The three films nominated for the Visual Effects category for the 2008 Academy Awards are: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Eric Barba, Steve Preeg, Burt Dalton and Craig Barron The Dark Knight Nick Davis, Chris Corbould, Tim Webber and Paul Franklin Iron Man John Nelson, Ben Snow, Dan Sudick and Shane Mahan The Academy […]
GenArts buys SpeedSix
Today GenArts made good on recent talk of expansion and announced the acquisition of SpeedSix. We speak to Steve Bannerman, Chief Marketing Officer of GenArts about the new expansion. He talks exclusively with fxguide and discusses the possible move to market custom plugins.
Valkyrie: Serious Drama from SPI
SPI has produced some spectacularly seamless visual effects for the period drama of Valkyrie from director Bryan Singer (Usual Suspects, Superman Returns) and staring a serious dramatic performance from Tom Cruise (War of the Worlds. Rich Hoover, vfx supervisor on Valkyrie spoke to us about the complexity of doing such a powerful historical film.
VES Announces Nominees
The Visual Effects Society (VES) today announced the nominees for the 7th Annual VES Awards ceremony recognizing outstanding visual effects in over a dozen categories of film, animation, television, commercials and video games. Nominees were chosen Saturday, January 17, 2009, by numerous panels of VES members who viewed submissions at the FotoKem screening facilities in […]
A list ups and downs
Autodesk: cuts 750 jobs We spoke to Autodesk overnight. They confirmed that 10% of jobs across the board had gone. Some friends from M&E division have gone, from offices around the world not just in Montreal. All of the final people have not even been decided, in some cases areas they have been told there […]
fxguidetv 50th episode + 10 years of fxguide.com!
The new year brings a new episode of fxguidetv and it’s a milestone for us: our 50th episode. We decided to have some fun at take a look back at some of our favorite moments from the past year and a half. What an 18 months it was! We also take a look ahead at […]
British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) nominees
The British Academy Film Awards nominations were announced today. Nominees for the category Special Visual Effects are: The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button – Eric Barba, Craig Barron, Nathan McGuinness, Edson Williams The Dark Knight– Chris Corbould, Nick Davis, Paul Franklin, Tim Webber Indiana Jones and The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull– Pablo Helman Iron […]
Passing of a Friend: Richard Spöhrer
We learned with great sadness that The Pixel Farm’s Richard Spöhrer suddenly passed away on the last day of 2008. We reflect on what he added to our industry and how he touched many of us not only with the many products he was involved with, but with his kindness and generosity as a person.
Australia fxpodcast
With the Bake off for the Oscar Nominations this Thursday in LA, we speak to Iloura’s Peter Webb about the film Australia. One of seven films in the running for the Oscar’s three nominations for best visual effects. Peter was part of the team at iloura that handled much of the end of the film, including much of the bombing of Darwin.
64-bit OS X Version of SynthEyes now Available
The powerful but affordable SynthEyes camera tracking application is now available in a 64-bit version for OS X Leopard. The new version provides a bit of a speed increase, but the main benefit with a 64-bit app is the ability to use more than 4 GB of RAM. This is useful for maintaining longer and […]
Autodesk Shows a bit of OS X Love
As foreshadowed in the rumor mill yesterday, Autodesk today announced 3 new OS X versions of their products: Toxik, Mudbox, and ImageModeler. The most interesting development is probably the release of Toxik, which brings a new high end compositing package to the Apple platform. The rumor of on OS X Toxik version has existed for […]
Bakeoff list for 2009 Oscars
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced that seven films remain in the running in the Visual Effects category for the 81st Academy Awards®. The films are listed below in alphabetical order: “Australia” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” “The Dark Knight” “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” “Iron Man” “Journey to the […]
Macworld Rumor: OSX Versions of Toxik & Mudbox
No — it’s not a new iPhone Nano. Or a Mac Mini with media software. Or a 17″ MacBook Pro with a non-removable battery (who thought that would be a great idea?). But rumors have come our way via the prep for MacWorld in San Francisco that Autodesk will be showing off new OSX versions […]
The Foundry Slashes Prices on Sparks
The Foundry today announced that it was slashing the prices of its Sparks by approximately 90% in response to no longer being a part of the Autodesk Spark program. While it may still find a full solution, this is a complex issue that we have been tracking for a month. To get the full implication of what is happening, fxguide spoke directly to the Foundry’s co-founder Simon Robinson.
fxguidetv: Harrision Ellenshaw & Green Screen with RED
This week we start by interviewing Industry legend Harrison Ellenshaw. Harrision is a Oscar Nominated matte painter who went on to run Buena Vista Visual Effects (BVVE). He has worked on films from Star Wars to Tron. BBVE credits include Dave, Honey I Blew Up the Kid, The Santa Clause, James and the Giant Peach, The Phantom, Escape […]
The Curious Case of Aging Visual Effects
Audiences are reeling in amazement at the artistry & technical polish of David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
The Spirit fxpodcast
This week’s fxpodcast we speak to Stu Maschwitz, director, author, accidental technologist and vfx supervisor of the Spirit. Stu supervised over 1900 shots, many done at the Orphanage in San Fran. The film follows in a similar, but not identical vein to the blockbusters 300 and Sin City. It is first feature directed solo by Frank Miller. We speak […]
Yet Another List of Cool Things from 2008
It is that time of year when all media organizations like to produce lists. Lists of top 10, lists of best of the year, a look back with a Year in Review, or 2008: The Year That Just Was. So not to be out done – and just for fun – we jumped on the bandwagon and compiled our own special ‘fxguide Completely Unscientific List of Cool Things from 2008’.
fxguidetv ep #48: George Miller
It is our great pleasure for the holiday season to bring you an incredible fxguidetv episode. We are joined by film maker and Oscar winner George Miller. Coupled with this exclusive interview is a walk through of work done by Digital Domain artist Justin Van Der Lek for Mummy 3 : Tomb of the Dragon […]
Fin Has a Hand in Making Award Winning Spots
This week in our fxpodcast, we speak to Richard Lambert principle at Fin Design. Fin recently won a host of Awards for their amazing Herringbone TVC. We speak about this spot and some of their other work. Ironically while the TV ad was winning awards, fashion label Herringbone itself has fallen victim to the global slowdown by going into voluntary administration.