They were 18 people, trapped against the odds, with little or no hope of reinforcement. For five months they laboured, with minimal resources, and that’s just the visual effects team! FXG caught up with Visual Effects Supervisor Eric Leven about the new Starship Troopers 2.

We are sad to report that Donald Trumbull, a true pioneer and visual effects legend has passed away.

Cars don’t tend to be small enough to race around the inside of watch faces, but Jonathan Dearing puts them there anyway. Dearing is a visual effects artist at Digital Pictures Sydney, and he recently road tested boujou bullet.

While fxguide is primarily aimed at practicing VFX professionals, even the most senior supervisor occassionally wants to get up to speed with another piece of software. As most of us never have time to read the manual, Fxguide has selected 4 of the best training sources for DVDs, CD_ROMs and quicktimes covering Shake, Painter, Concept Art/photoshop, Digital Fusion

Van Helsing, directed by Stephen Sommers, spins an amazing tale of adventure and suspense. With help from Vicon motion capture, ILM delivers a stunning set of familiar horror figures and a universe of rich, imaginative visuals including Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolf Man.

The Fire/Smoke part of the NAB users group showed a lot of cool new features. Similar in flow to the effects demonstration, the editing part of the show was hosted by Discreet’s Stephane Labrie and Brian Reid from TOYBOX Toronto. Find out what’s coming up in the next releases of the discreet editing products.

At fxguide live2 in Las Vegas this year, we announced the first half winners of the Tips and Tricks Giveway. Congratulations to the three winners, as well as a big thank you to the many users who have submitted tips. There is still a month left to submit your tips to be eligible for the second half giveaway. For the list of winners and official contest rules, read o

The Sunday before NAB was a busy one, with fxguide live2 starting out early in the afternoon and followed up by the discreet users group meeting. The fxguide live event was once again a big success and based upon what was shown afterwards at the discreet event, fxguide live3 will be packed with new features to cover. A special thanks goes out to discreet and sgi, who kindly sponsored the event. Without their support, the event would not have been possible.

The Visual Effects Society (VES) will present VES 2004, its sixth annual Festival of Visual Effects, June 18-20 in San Rafael, California…

Maximum Throughput Inc, in an exclusive interview with fxguide, confirm that they have just bought Xstoner. Both Xstoner and Max-T are companies we follow closely at fxguide, for their outstanding high end products, so we sat down and talked to Mike Hughes at Max-T, and asked what this means for both Max-T and Xstoner customers, and what this will opens up for the future.

Following last years highly successful Live training session in Las Vegas, fxguide will again be hosting advanced user training at NAB, – just prior to the discreet users group meeting.
Sponsored by discreet and sgi

12.30 – 3.30 Sunday, April 18th at the Venetian Hotel

Registration is now closed due to space considerations — all slots have been taken.

Winner of 2004 Academy Award for Visual Effects Joe Letteri sat down to talk to Fxguide just prior to heading over from NZ to this year’s Oscars, to discuss his work on Lord of the Rings.

FXGuide recently road tested the latest major release of Combustion on the Mac. Peter Webb a Melbourne visual effects supervisor put Combustions new features through their paces, and examined each in depth.

Fxguide was started as way to bring together professional visual effects artists and designers in an online community. One of the main reasons Jeff, Mike and I started the site was to serve as a clearinghouse for cool tips and tricks for artists to share with other artists. For this reason, we’re starting our 2004 Tips and Tricks drive with a giveway for those artists whose tips are accepted for publication. Thanks to the generous support of Digital Fusion

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King Receives Top Prize.
Complete list of winners…

Deb Ristic is a Flame designer & storyboard artist at Modern Digital in Seattle, Washington. She joinned from BB&J, Los Angeles, where she was working on visual effects for such television series as Third Watch. Ristic works extensively with both Painter software for concept art and storyboarding, and follows projects through to Flame compositing.