stardust vfx

I came across these really beautiful car commercials today that the New York based VFX studio Stardust turned out for Shell. I really love the organic feel of these spots, and also the simplicity. But you really have to marvel at the technical skill that went into this too, because ink blot effects are surprisingly hard to achieve well.

Anyways, check them out below and then give their 2009 showreel a gander. Some really great work, from a really great studio.

Performance:

Fuel Economy:

Stardust’s 2009 Showreel:

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LINK: Stardust.tv

Stardust experimented with 2D and 3D CG solutions, particles, CGI cloth, the goal of keeping the feeling real and organic led them to shoot real footage on location and combine it with footage of ink spreading across paper. Artists in Stardust’s NYC studio then tracked the selected live-action footage in 3D software, and rotoscoped out each element. From there, a master camera was created for blocking in After Effects, and each shot was composited with the ink elements acting both as texture and as mattes to reveal the footage.

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.”

pigeon impossible

This week I’ve been watching a great podcast from a very talented 3D artist/Compositor named Lucas Martell. In it he takes you through the entire 5 year process, from concept to final dvd, of creating his animated CG short film, ‘Pigeon: Impossible’.

Now that alone would be really cool, but the short he did also looks really freaking good! I really wanted to share this with you guys, so I compiled all of his episodes to date in a nice little YouTube playlist for everyone to watch and learn from. Myself included!

What I love the most is that Lucas didn’t start off the film as an animator. This film was a total learning process for him! Which is also why the film took almost 5 years to complete, ha. But we get to reap the benefits because this lack of experience really gives him a special raw insight into the whole process. And he then shares it with all of us. Really cool.

Anyways, if you want to know more about the film itself check out the link below as well.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=95370CC516861851

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LINK: Lucas Martell

LINK: ‘Pigeon – Impossible’

‘Pigeon: Impossible’ is the tale of Walter, a rookie secret agent faced with a problem seldom covered in basic training: what to do when a curious pigeon gets trapped inside your multi-million dollar, government-issued nuclear briefcase.

The film took nearly 5 years to complete and is the first attempt at animation by writer/director Lucas Martell: “When the project started, it was mostly an excuse to learn 3D animation, but by the end of the project I had spent so much time reworking and polishing the story that I just wanted people to laugh.”

The end-result is a hilarious 6-minute romp through the streets of Washington D.C. as our hero fights to save himself, and the world from the chaos reigned down by a hungry pigeon. Breathtaking visuals and a sweeping soundtrack showcase the work of nearly one-hundred talented artists and musicians, and the film stands as a testament to what can be accomplished by a team of dedicated volunteers working for the love of their craft.

scad’s deadline

This is why I’m proud when someone asks me where I went to school for Visual Effects. Some really great student work and filmed in my old home away from home, Montgomery Hall! Check it out…

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imaginary chrome

Check out this lovely short for Google’s Chrome from the artists over at Imaginary Forces. I love the art gallery concept, and the almost zeotropic interior of the Chrome logo. It’s such a simple idea, and extremely well executed.

I think I just loved this right off the bat too because it reminds me of some of the first 3D projects I did back at SCAD when I was learning how to Matchmove. Hell I’ll go out on a limb and say I’m pretty sure there are some other VFX artists out there who have been guilty of filming a coffee table, tracking, and putting a monster or something on it too.

Enjoy!

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LINK: Imaginary Forces

Imaginary Forces was invited to participate in the Google Chrome Shorts project. The resulting short film answers the question: What would the internet look like if represented as a 3-Dimensional object? Observed as if in a museum, the object comes to life revealing the ins and outs of what Google Chrome has to offer.

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.

world builder

The short film ‘World Builder’ by Bruce Branit, starring Bruce Branit, written by Bruce Branit. Oh and all the VFX done by, you guessed it, Bruce Branit…has quickly been making it around the net. And you can really see why. Shot in 1 day and then baked for 2 years in post, the result is a visually stunning film. It’s no surprise either, since this isn’t Bruce’s first time around the block. He was also a co-creator of the widely known ‘405‘.

(via VFXHack, Gizmodo)

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.

old timey stereoscopic

Stereoscopic is all the buzz now a days. From Nuke‘s stereoscopic workflow, to PFTrack 5‘s brand spankin’ new stereo matchmoving capability. Fancy new stuff huh? Well sure…but those cool new techniques have their roots in the past.

This afternoon I found this great blog called Cursive Buildings, and it’s full of these awesome old stereoscope photographs. I’m just fascinated by these!

I’m so used to old photos being dead and static. But I’m not used to being able to look around those old photos and feel like I’m in that world with these frozen people. I can’t stop staring! Probably why my head is killing me right now too, ha.

So enjoy, but beware…might cause seizures, ha.

LINK: Cursive Buildings

(Here are a few samples…)

rene almanza

I really can’t place my finger on why, but I love Rene Almanza‘s drawing style. So loose and chaotic. But somehow he’s able to pull forms out of seemingly random lines. And then he treats your eye by adding beautifully rich splashes of color. Pretty incredible.

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LINK: Rene Almanza Portfolio

(translated from spanish) It is born in the city of Monterrey Nuevo Leo’n in 1979. Withdrawn of the Faculty of Visual Arts of the UANL. Its work in the visual arts began during its adolescence; first in the historietismo, fanzines undergrownd and newspapers of Monterrey. Later in average forms realising posters, mainly. In the 2000 enter the Reformation group (periodic the Mty North. The Reformation of the city of Mexico, Mural of Guadalajara, and Word of Forecastle) in the department of illustration of the publishing house area, illustrating diverse journalistic articles. Position had to his illustrations of sections cultural of newspaper North by two years, where, by his work, it received 6 prizes in publishing Illustration granted by the SND (for Society the news to paper design) with soothes in New York, that is in charge to award every year but the outstanding thing at international level in the design areas, photographs and publishing illustration. After three years with the Reformation group, it was integrated to the publishing project “Shinseken” in Tokyo, Japan, that picked up histories of folklor worldwide to be condensed in an informed book collection that I publish myself in 5 languages. When finalizing the project transfer to Oaxaca.

For some reason his style kind of reminds me of “Aeon Flux“…