Hatchfx is a specialist matte painting company, although as we discovered when talking to the founders, a “matte painting” is now a hard term to define. As the line between matte painting and visual effects blurs, we explored some of their work on the film and the methodology they use to tackle shots.

In this podcast we speak with Stu Maschwitz, author of The DV Rebels’ Guide. Maschwitz is one of the founders of The Orphange and has a been a huge proponent of bringing desktop tools such as After Effects to the high end post market. We also get his thoughts about the current compositing software market.

James Bond, The Queen and Hannibal Lecter have all been through Framestore CFC’s Digital Lab. We caught up with senior Colourist Asa Shoul, and Executive Producer Jan Hogevold in London to discuss the role of DI in the London film market.

Spider-man 3 delivers on its promise with three sensational CG villains and new side to the web-slinging superhero. Bill Dawes and Kelsey Brookes go behind the scenes with the Sony Pictures Imageworks VFX and animation team of what is reported to be one of the most expensive movies ever made.

MPC was given over 750 shots to kick start the sun and bring to life the mission to save the world. As the sun is a major ‘character’ of the film, it’s visual development was a key aspect of the effects work. VFX supervisor Tom Wood headed up a team that produced some of the most stunning images of the sun ever put on film.

Just two and a half weeks ago Oscar winning director Peter Jackson shot a short film shot on the RED 4K camera in NZ, which premiered this morning on the RED booth at the NAB trade show in Las Vegas.

UPDATE: Now with our second NAB podcast, a roundtable discussion of Monday at NAB 2007.

Wrap up of Sunday’s user group and our first NAB 2007 podcast, a “Live” podcast from the Autodesk Pool Party at Caesar’s Palace. Let me tease you with these words – Standard Filesystem Volume. Not enough? How about batch in Smoke… or multilayer timeline in batch?

We have an fxguide team attending the Apple Event and plan on bringing you live updates as announcements are made.

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Having launched just one year ago, fxphd is about to start a new term. fxphd is the sister site of fxguide providing professional training for artists who want to lift their careers to the next level. Classes this term include character design/drawing, flame, Matte painting, Maya, Max, toxik AE , Photoshop – 15 different classes in total.

Based on a true story, “The Heart of the Earth” is an epic film that takes place in a late 1800´s mining town at the edge of the world’s biggest open air mine. This film didn’t come without its challenges. The first was that the town ceased to exist in 1923, the solution was of course visual effects, done in Madrid headed by Alex Ortoll.

Fox presents a new TV show “Drive” featuring visual effects by Zoic Studios. We spoke to co-founder Loni Peristere about work on this and the companies amazing run in cutting edge episodic television effects from CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Buffy to Battlestar Gallactica, 24 and now Drive.

“All the characters in this book are fictitious, and anyone finding a resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, should proceed no further…” that’s the disclaimer from the novel The Number 23, the centerpiece of the movie from Director Joel Schumacher. We talk with Raymond Gieringer at Intelligent Creatures to discuss the film.

We have all the news on the new CS3 Adobe news including: Public Betas of Premiere CS3 and After Effects CS3 at NAB, pricing, and film and production implications and improvement. John Montgomery takes a first look at CS3 Production Premium Bundle, going behind and beyond today’s Press Releases.

With the announcement of the price list and the looming release of the first RED cameras, we speak to Ted Schilowitz, Leader of the Rebellion at the RED Digital Cinema Company about NAB, RED CODE RAW, the various options you can buy for the camera as you start planning for a 4k workflow.

Far from being muddy, Mudbox 3D organic modeling software is clear crisp, and snappy to use. Released in Dec 06, Mudbox is already experiencing enormous respect from facilities worldwide for its intuitive UI and approach to organic modeling. If you’ve ever used Photoshop layers, you’ll love Mudbox and its natural way of building natural models.

In the 2nd part of our series on 300 we speak to Hydraulx co-founder Greg Strause about their amazing 3D work on 300. In the podcast we also get his first impressions of Alien vs Predator 2, having just come off set from co-directing the film. Our online article also features Grant Freckelton, Visual Effects Art Director.

fxguide has learned that The Foundry has acquired Nuke from Digital Domain. We speak exclusively to Foundry R&D Head, Bill Collis, from his home in the UK. Updated with information from The Foundry. (Story updated Mar 12 22:10 GMT)

In this podcast we talk to two of the companies behind some of the shots in Night at the Museum. When we heard that Dick Van Dyke was a not only a fan but VFX hobbyist, we could not resist asking the guys about what it was like to work with someone who started by dancing through a cartoon with Walt, and recently diced with death with a T REX, we also cover bubble gum rocks and ‘real’ miniatures !

300 is the latest Frank Miller graphical novel to be translated to the screen. In this fxpodcast we talk to Jeremy Hunt who first came to fame with the web’s first breakthrough viral short, 405. He is the founder of Screaming Death Monkey, one of the effects houses who helped those actors recreate the story of the 300 Spartans.

We spoke to two of the groups honored with Academy Awards for their technical achivements. First, ILM who are honored for developing OpenEXR and their image modeling tool. Then, the Foundry who are being honored for their Furnace tools. To win such an honor means your work significantly advances the art and science of film making.

In this week’s fxpodcast we talk to Dario Piana, the director of the upcoming film The Deaths of Ian on set. We hear first hand about his issues with the special effects film – during a break in filming. This is part of our continuing series profiling the whole film making process of The Deaths of Ian.

Congrats to all the Winners of the 2007 VES awards. We choose to profile the work of just one of the many winners, to show the detailed work that goes into winning a VES award. Zoic won for their work on the series Battlestar Galactica. Article Contains complete list of winners

This week we talk to legendary London FX artist and director Jon Hollis of Nice Shirt Films, who was a co-founder of Smoke and Mirrors. In almost all respects his career has been a statement as of the current state of the art. Hollis once lead the boutique post house movement – he now shines the light on a new path for senior artists.

The hype is over and the commercials have aired. We’re curious what you think about the spots in the Super Bowl, so we’re conducting a poll. Pick your favorite and we’ll get the details of the making of the spot straight from the vfx artists themselves. This includes a home page story and podcast about the creation here at fxguide.

We looked back at the last ten or so years and came up with our top 10 TV spots of all time from around the world..ones that involved vfx anyway. With some great spots shown during Super Bowl 2007, we ask… were any of this years spots worthy of being one of the best visual effects based spots we’ve seen in the last ten years?

MPC London has produced two campaigns for Channel 4 in the UK –the first 9 spots, the second with 7 — which have won numerous awards in the industry. They are simply some of the most engaging and brilliant station identifications in recent years. We spoke with Russell Appleford of MPC about how they were made.