Meet Steve Johnson

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You’ve probably never heard of Houston native Steve Johnson, but I know you’ve heard of his work. Predator, The Abyss, Ghostbusters, Spider-Man 2, Where the Wild Things Are, and so on and so on. The point is that he’s had a very long and successful career in practical make-up fx. Now he’s nearing retirement but instead of writing his memoirs or shopping for a comfy rocking chair, he’s decided to start up a new channel on YouTube to share with the world a ton of never before seen behind the scenes footage of the films he worked the last 30+ years on. The coolest thing though is that he’s also bringing back the artists responsible for the work his shop did on those films to talk about it themselves!

I’m so glad to see such a seasoned and talented artist pulling back the curtain, and I want all of you who read this blog to go to his channel and subscribe to his videos. Let’s keep this ball of transparency rolling and hopefully encourage more of the greats to follow in Steve’s footsteps!

LINK: Steve Johnson (IMDB)

LINK: Steve Johnson FX (YouTube)

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Take a behind the scenes look at some of your favorite movies with the people who actually MADE them! Hosted by Hollywood special effects legend Steve Johnson, the effects artist behind Ghostbusters, Big Trouble in Little China, The Abyss, Blade II, Species, Spiderman II, Where the Wild Things Are, and hundreds more!

All the footage you see here was shot in Steve’s own studio, with his cameras, his crew and on his dime.

Christopher Horvath

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Want to read an insanely great story about how digital artist Christopher Horvath made his career in VFX? Then go over to the CGSociety and read their article! It’s really incredible. And it all started with him riding a skateboard.

LINK: Artist, Inventor, ILM’s Christopher Horvath’s career has taken him from canvas to calculus

That title is ‘digital artist,’ but mad scientist better suits this CG artist, programmer, compositor, Birkham yoga instructor, painter, and breaks/electrohouse DJ. Take, for example, the two feature films released this year that he worked on: ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’ and ‘Harry Potter: The Half-Blood Prince.’

For ‘Transformers,’ he developed a GPU-based rigid body dynamics system that churned the top of a great pyramid into flying bricks and rubble when Devastator smashed into it.

For ‘Harry Potter: The Half-Blood Prince,’ he torched bits and bytes into an amazing 100-foot-tall wall of swirling fire that surrounded Dumbledore, again using the GPU. The system was such hot stuff that SIGGRAPH accepted a technical paper that he wrote with ILM’s Willi Geiger describing the calculus that fueled the fire. It was one of 78 papers accepted from 439 submitted.

makoto yabuki

Sorry for the lack of posts over the past few days folks. Been pretty busy. But I have a few minutes free so I’m spending them with you. And to tell you, I like these videos from Japanese artist Makoto Yabuki…

LINK: Makoto Yabuki

Makoto Yabuki works as a director/ art director at Tokyo ,Japan.
He started his career as a visual designer in 1997 ,and joined TANGRAM.co.ltd at its establishment in 2003 as director. His artistic range is expansive; among his recent works are “scope” ,”MANAKAI”,and “CONFINE(S)”. His works have been presented in film festivals such as SIGGRAPH, onedotzero, artfutura, ARS Electronica.

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I’ll be posting like a machine very soon. Stay tuned!

oceanside

Check out this French 3D short film by Romain Jouandeau, Adrien Chartie, Gilles Mazieres and Fabien Thareau. And then tell me this wouldn’t make a bad ass opening to a video game.

LINK: Oceanside

marco’s civilzation

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This gave my Thursday a reason to exist. It’s a looping video mural called ‘Civilzation’ and was created by artist Marco Brambilla for the new Standard hotel in New York.

The coolest thing about this piece? It was made with 400 pieces of found footage.

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LINK: Marco Brambilla

Brambilla’s work has been exhibited internationally at such institutions as the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Kunsthalle Bern, as well as in the Sundance and Cannes film festivals. His work belongs to the permanent collections of the Guggenheim Museum, San Francisco Museum of Art and the ARCO Foundation in Madrid, amongst others. He has been awarded both the Tiffany Comfort Foundation and Colbert foundation awards for his video installations.

Brambilla’s video installations have garnered international acclaim from publications such as Artforum, frieze, Art in America, Arena, Empire, GQ and Premiere magazine. The New Yorker praised his work as: “absorbing and delicate enough to restore one’s faith in the medium.”

moon+wolf+shirt

Let the recycling begin! I found this great article last week about the design phenom that is the Three Wolf Moon Eclipses’ T-Shirt. It comes from the mind of Bulgarian artist Antonia Neschev, and it’s awesome. But I also might be slightly biased…

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Feel the power!

LINK: Three Wolf Moon Eclipses Amazon

The review, posted by Bee-Dot-Govern, was a tongue-firmly-in-cheek sideswipe at the trailer trash tee. “This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that’s when the magic happened,” wrote Bee.  The review went on. And on. “After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women.” The comments section lit up not long after, other users getting in on the joke and posting their tales of sexual conquest linked to the mystical powers of Neschev’s image.

simon schubert

I found this over at Makezine the other day and it just blew me away today. Simon Schubert uses nothing but folded paper to create these stunning architectural drawings. How incredible is this? Not only because of how much time this artist must have on his hands, but also just how incredibly talented he must be to do something like this!

Simply, stunning.

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LINK: Folded paper images draw with shadow

LINK: Simon Schubert Online Gallery

Simon Schubert arranges areas of paper, up to whole dwellings from wrapping paper. Completely with a derangierten, inhabitant only suggested in its shape and some material lamps everything consists in these areas of folded paper: the jacket on a handle at the wall, a bed, a picture. In a subtle shift of the material one Schubert contents of Vergänglichkeit, disappearance and open to attackness analyzes and translates these into a physically erfahrbare reality. Going beyond it he negotiates the conception of one in the consciousness crisis of the modern trend fragile coherency of identity and world, become. From this for instance a Portrait Samuel Becketts came out, which Schubert, likewise on paper as image carrier, drew by filigrane foldings. In the folding carries out itself a form of the physical registration, which threatens and forms the image carrier at the same time. In hardly noticeable interaction from positive and negative folding thereby, depending upon line of sight, a plastic Portrait, which is able to become again invisible however in the next moment, develops. This Portrait, schillernd between two and three-dimensionality, design and relief, object and picture draws above all out by the reduction of formative elements. It seems again and again to tilt it in the nothing, shows up variably in the change of the light or the viewer position.

steel life

This short by Mathieu Gerard, with music composed by Mathieu Alvadol, hit me like a ton of bricks today. These two artists make just an amazing combination. Breathtaking visuals, and superb orchestral music. It just gets me every time.


shane acker’s 9

When I say the name Shane Acker, it’s a good bet that you don’t know who I’m talking about. Truth be told I had never heard of him either. Till today when I came across an article about a film whose producer has a very familiar name, Tim Burton.

The film the article talked about was Shane Acker’s film,  “9″, that he completed during his attendance at UCLA’s School of Art and Architecture. Pretty typical beginnings at any art college really. But Shane’s film stood atmospheres above the rest and went on to win ‘Best in Show’ at the 2005 SIGGRAPH Electronic Theater, the gold medal at the Student Academy Awards, and premiere at Sundance. Needless to say…not so typical anymore.

The 11 minute student short was then picked up by Focus Features, caught the eye of the aforementioned Tim Burton, and is now sporting a voice cast of Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, and Jennifer Connelly to name a few.

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I for one am very excited for this film to be released on September 9th. If only to root for an underdog and fellow art school alum. So I hope you’ll join me in flocking to the theaters to see, what just might be, the new voice a visionary 3D artist.

Now what better way to end than with the full 11 minute short-film…

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LINK: Shane Acker IMDB

LINK: Shane Acker.com

loneclone vfx

This is the best student reel that I’ve EVER seen. And it belongs to an artist named Hannes Appell of Germany.

LINK: LONECLONE VFX – 2008 Reel

Hannes Appell was born in Erlangen, Bavaria on July 11th 1979. After his abitur & alternative
civilian service he worked for NBC Europe in Düsseldorf. During his 3 years at the company,
he worked as a games journalist, editor and as post-production/graphics artist for the On Air
Promotion of the company. Since 2003 he studies animation & visual effects at the Institute
for Animation of the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. He currently is working on his
diploma short, freelancing as a 3d artist and compositing guy and brooding over next-gen
video game designs.

Here are some of my favorite stills from his site…

The stuff that really blows me away is the work he’s doing using the CryENGINE2 gaming engine. He’s modeling his sets in Maya and then importing them into the CryENGINE software for real-time color, texture, and light. Streamlining a big part of the post work, and giving him the ability to experiment with the composition of each shot in real-time.

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LINK: LONECLONE – Mutter Land in Crysis

LINK: LONECLONE – Compositing Test

These demo videos were made for a Tech Talk hosted by lNTEL Corp. at Siggraph 2008. Topics included convergence of game and film technology and how games drive the graphics industry.
It is a proof of concept demo for previz, mattepaintings and set extensions rendered in CRYTEK’sCRYENGINE2. Everything in this video was captured in real-time with no additional compositing done to the image. All art and models were done in Maya and then imported into the engine’s Sandbox2 editor for shading and lighting.
The goal is to generate a bulk of the film’s backgrounds using CRYENGINE2 to achieve a faster production output, easier lighting workflow and more dynamic art & camera interaction.

LINK: Crytek – CryENGINE2

Real time editing, bump mapping, dynamic lights, network system, integrated physics system, shaders, shadows and a dynamic music system are just some of the state of-the-art features the CryENGINE® 2 offers. The CryENGINE® 2 comes complete with all of its internal tools and also includes the CryENGINE® 2 Sandbox world editing system. Licensees receive full source code and documentation for the engine and tools. Support is provided directly from the R & D Team that continuously develops the engine and can arrange teaching workshops for your team to increase the learning process.

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This really is where the VFX industry is heading. There is so much we can learn from the gaming industry, and pretty soon I believe there is going to be an almost seemless connection between these two cousins.

But not in a creepy way.