neill bloomkamp…student

Check out “District 9” Director Neil Bloomkamp‘s 1998 VFS student reel. It has a big time Michael Bay, a’la “Armageddon” vibe to it. But you can really see this Director’s love and, more importantly, understanding of a strong visual language and cinematography.

I really can’t help but wonder what student reels from my graduating class at SCAD will be dusted off in 10 years.

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My favorite thing about this reel though has to be the “special thanks” to the now defunct Silicon Graphics Computer Systems. SGI will always hold a special place in not only my heart, but also every VFX artist past and present.

I vividly remember watching a special behind the scenes video tour of the server room at ILM during “Jurassic Park”. And that room was just packed to the gills with those beasts. And it wasn’t just at ILM! Any self respecting VFX studio back then had at least one system from SGI. Those machines were Cadillacs to visual effects artists back then, and I really miss that.

“Oh memories…out the corner of my mindddddd…such precious memories……of the way…we werrrreeeee…”

moray’s praxinoscopes

Check out this amazing music video using old school Praxinoscopes that production company Blinkink did for musician Moray McLaren. 2D Animation done by director David Wilson.

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Using both praxinoscopes and the technique of matching up the frame rate of the spinning record to that of the camera, no computer super-imposing was used; what you see is what rolled off the camera. The transitions between each section of animation was created by simply cutting or wiping between the bits of footage.

Praxinoscopes were the forerunner of the more well known Zoetropes. Both of which are the proud parents of modern animation.

LINK: Blinkink

LINK: Moray McLaren

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Moray McLaren is a Scottish singer-songwriter, born and raised in Edinburgh. When a disk of Moray’s rough recordings fell into the hands of producer Jonathan Shakhovskoy (U2, Patrick Wolf), he suggested they make an album together. The pair are currently in the studio recording. Moray’s debut album will be released on Lash Records this summer.

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.

nuformer

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The stunning 3D building projects you just sawwere made by a company called NuFormer in the Netherlands. The process of how they create such amazing animations isn’t widely known for obvious reasons. But if I had to guess they start out by talking a series of photogrammetric images, allowing them to them model a fairly exact copy of the building facade inside the computer. They then can test real world projection camera placement, and refine the animation in this digital sandbox. Now I could be totally wrong and they could just be using magic or something, but that’s at least how I would do it.

You might have actually caught a still from one of their projections in last weeks Photo Dump #4. Which honestly was a totally unintentional. It was just an image that I came across and I thought had some clever photoshopping done to it. I had no idea that it was a still from a real art installation! But once Jess sent me this video I just had to write a quick post about it! Because I’ve honestly never seen anything like the work that NuFormer is doing. Sans the goofy pop music of course, ha.

What do you all think of it? Anyone in the Netherlands actually seen this in real life? Let me know in the comments section below!

LINK: NuFormer

xperienced, innovative (always busy with the newest technological developments which are directly being applied in our projects) and especially creative.

Out-of-the-box thinkers with a good eye for customer orientation. Each time again the empathic capacity is being used to provide a tailor-made job. And of course the creativity is housed in a professional organisation for the businesslike sides of the projects.

Our teams’ motto is quality to be primary to professionalism, creation to be distinctive and always in balance with technique and objective.

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!

real is better

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An article over at VizWorld talks about last night’s “Science of the Movies” interview with New Deal Studios. Who made the crazy choice to use REAL models instead of CG ones for “Night at the Museum 2″. Crazy, I know. But true!

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The work they did was stellar, and I hope this oldie but goodie approach starts to trend in the industry. Though it doesn’t look likely with even ILM switching to an all digital approach for model making and environment creation.

But only time will tell. Becauce maybe, just maybe, audiences will voice their opinions and demand more old school movie magic, rather than all digital.

What do you guys think? Let the world know in the comments below!

LINK: New Deal Studios chooses Real Models over CGI Models

The Science Channel’s “Science of the Movies” is visiting New Deal Studios tonight.  In the recent movie Night at the Museum 2, New Deal Studios helped build the sequence of Amelia Earhart’s escape flight through the museum.  Rather than go the obvious route of CGI modeling and blue-screening, they instead opted for physical models.

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.

a wonderful wonderland

USA Today posted a bunch of new pictures from Tim Burton’s next project, “Alice in Wonderland”. And they’re both creepy and beautiful. Can’t wait to see more!

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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.”