Last year, the Marvel character Ghost Rider burst onto the small screen in ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for seven episodes of the series. The fiery effects required to bring Ghost Rider (played by Gabriel Luna) to life were orchestrated by FuseFX. In this special vfxblog breakdown, FuseFX visual effects supervisor Kevin Lingenfelser dives into how the character’s fire effects and transformations were achieved. Continue reading “Forging the fiery face of Ghost Rider for ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’” →

Director Ben Hibon’s works are pieces of animation that tend to stick in your mind for months or years. From his breakthrough short Codehunters to the masterful Harry Potter ‘Tale of Three Brothers’ sequence, Hibon has brought a definitive style to the animation he’s directed.

Now he has joined Luma Pictures as their head creative director, at a time when the studio that most people know as a visual effects shop is also branching out into animation, its own features and other content.

I recently got the chance to sit down with Hibon to discuss his journey in animated content, and about the plan at Luma. Continue reading “‘Tale of Three Brothers’ director Ben Hibon on his next creative adventures at Luma Pictures” →

I’m a collector (some might say ‘hoarder’). Most people know about the Speed stuff, but over the years I’ve also amassed dozens of ‘making of’ film books. Which is why when DK asked me last year to consult on their The LEGO Batman Movie: The Making of the Movie book, I could barely contain myself.

It would involve spending time in DK’s London offices and a week at Animal Logic, the animation studio behind the film. My brief was to identify some of the main points for discussion in the book and pick out a bunch of cool imagery to show.

I have to say, the book came out even better than I imagined. It’s a neat cross between the more common ‘art of’ books now available for animated films and the classic ‘making of’ books that I collect. Every spread does an incredible job of highlighting the huge amount of work involved, especially by Animal Logic, in bringing the film to life by showcasing concept designs, storyboards, work in progress shots and final scenes.

Also, having seen the film, the book somehow does a killer job of not spoiling the movie while still revealing so much (which is rare).  So, I hope you like the book – you can buy it at Amazon. Look out for my ‘animation consultant’ credit in the back. And I can tell you the film is awesome, too.

“This isn’t like the other Oscars, or as I like to call them, ‘the dumb Oscars,’ where at the end of the night, 80 per cent of the people in the room are losers. You guys are tremendous. Those guys are sad.”

That was actor John Cho, of Star Trek and Harold & Kumar fame, presenting at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Scientific and Technical Awards, which I was lucky enough to attend last night in Los Angeles.

More on the incredible work that Cho and his presenting partner and This is 40 and How to be Single actress Leslie Mann did last night at the Sci-Techs, but first a note about how this all relates to Speed (yes, really). Continue reading “What it’s like to attend the ‘other’ Oscars or: How I learned a whole new story I hadn’t heard before about ‘Speed’” →