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.

In this fxpodcast, we interview key members of the newly reorganized systems team from Autodesk in Montreal. Thanks to the fxguide listeners who submitted questions for the panel – we had a great response and hope to involve you more in the future. Click on the read more link for information on the participants as well as links to the podcast.

Directed by Mexican-born Guillermo del Toro, Pan’s Labyrinth tells the story of little Ofelia who is escapes by moving into fairy tales and magic lands in an enchanted forest, set against the backdrop of Spanish fascism. We caught up with VFX suprvisor Everett Burrell of CafeFX to discuss the film.

The Visual Effects Society (VES), the entertainment industry’s only organization of visual effects professionals, today announced the nominees for the 5th Annual VES Awards recognizing outstanding visual effects in twenty-one (21) categories of film, television, commercials, music videos and games.

John Berton, who worked on Men in Black and The Mummy, was overall visual effects supervisor for Charlotte’s Web. We talk to the teams at Digital Pictures Iloura, Rising Sun, Stan Winston Studio and FUEL about their involvement in the motion picture. UPDATE: VES nomination and detailed 3D passes.

Vue 6 was introduced at Siggraph and began shipping during the last part of 2006. The software is used for creating, animating and rendering natural 3D environments and the release brought numerous enhancements. We will soon be doing a review of the new version, but in the meantime here is an overview of what the latest release offers.

Intelligent Creatures is a Canadian effects house, part of the Candian Cartel. The company was formed by artists Raymond Gieringer, Michael Hatton, Lon Molnar and Wendy Lanning. We caught up with some of the founders to talk about some of their work on films such as Babel, Stranger Than Fiction and The Fountain.