Month: January 2017

You’re a wonderful human being: re-visiting CG Jabba 20 years later

You might have seen former ILM visual effects and animation supervisor Steve ‘Spaz’ Williams pop up on vfxblog quite a lot recently. That’s because he was involved in a number of seminal VFX films celebrating their various anniversaries of late, including Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park. Williams was also involved in another landmark…

January 31, 2017
Woh, that’s a lot of powerhouse VFX presentations in one room

Rogue One. The Jungle Book. Fantastic Beasts. Game of Thrones. Plus all the major Vancouver facilities at the careers fair. And an innovative Women in VFX session looking at how to get more women working in the industry. That’s what you can see this year at Spark FX in Vancouver, which is happening Saturday 4th…

January 26, 2017
Image Engine, over the years

For 3D Artist magazine, I got to profile the Vancouver studio Image Engine. I’ve been in touch with them ever since their incredible breakthrough work on District 9 – so great to see what they’ve produced over the years.

January 25, 2017
It’s simple. We need more women in vfx

Check out what some people are doing to help in this portrait and video series called Women in Visual Effects.

January 25, 2017
What a list of artists. Seriously, just look at these names

And all the names behind the VFX work in those films. Congrats to all the nominees.

January 25, 2017
Looking for a new animated series to watch? You can’t go past Trollhunters

Doing some research for an interview with Trollhunters showrunner Rodrigo Blaas, I started watching the show on Netflix, and basically didn’t stop. It’s like a feature film, in fact, it was originally a feature film. But it also feels very serialised and totally suits the new binge-watch culture. Check out my eventual interview here, at…

January 22, 2017
Rogue One’s Random Cam, and other previs fun

Now that we’ve all seen Rogue One five times and deconstructed the storyline, the characters and the visual effects, it’s fun to also consider how some of the iconic shots came to be. Of course, ILM and Lucasfilm’s art department crafted many of the incredible concepts, but some of the first shot designs were done by…

January 19, 2017
Chris Wedge on Monster Trucks

I interviewed director Chris Wedge (the co-founder of Blue Sky Studios) about making Monster Trucks, his first live-action feature. Check it out at Cartoon Brew.

January 12, 2017
When miniatures and CGI met in the sky: the vfx of Turbulence

Remember Turbulence? It was a much-hyped disaster flick set on a passenger 747 starring Lauren Holly and Ray Liotta, and released 20 years ago. The film may not by one for the history books, but its visual effects – a hybrid of miniatures and digital techniques – came right at a time where film VFX…

January 9, 2017
The three big challenges behind Passengers’ spaceship shots

Recently I wrote about MPC’s visual effects for the anti-gravity swimming pool scene in Passengers after talking to overall VFX supervisor Eric Nordby. MPC had plenty of other challenges to solve in the film, too, including how to realize scenes of the spacecraft, the Avalon. Here Nordby runs down three things he and the team…

January 7, 2017