Month: April 2017

  • Ice, cars, fire and a submarine: just another day on ‘The Fate of the Furious’

    When the first trailers for F. Gary Gray’s The Fate of the Furious surfaced, they showcased a stunt sequence involving a submarine and vehicles driving along a frozen lake that seemed outlandish even for what has become a franchise that seems to up the ante with every new film. Mixing real photography, practical effects and…

  • Zombies!

    …of the car variety. That’s what this scene involves in The Fate of the Furious, and to make it possible an incredible combo of practical and digital vfx work was done, including by Double Negative. Here’s my chat with them for Cartoon Brew.

  • David O’Reilly’s Everything game is wicked

    I got a chance to play Everything on Steam, and to interview David. Very cool guy, and honest about the tough life of making animated shorts and content (although his concept game for the movie Her is one that I reckon millions of people would buy, if it was real). Check out the interview at…

  • The book I wish was around when I got into VFX

    ‘Visual effects’ is so many things. It’s art and it’s science, and it covers an incredible range of disciplines, including illustration, photography, lighting, modeling, animation, rendering, compositing, coding…in fact, the list goes on and on. I think it can be hard as a new filmmaker or film enthusiast to just get your head around VFX…

  • The household characters of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ – a conversation with Framestore

    Bill Condon’s Beauty and the Beast is a major, major hit. The film has won over audiences by staying true to the classic Disney tale but also bringing something new to the world. Helping to make the ‘live action’ film possible was, of course, an incredible amount of visual effects work, including the household characters.…

  • VR is here, but what have animators in VR learnt so far?

    It still feels like a nascent technology, but already animators have racked up significant time working in VR. So I asked some of them about what they’d learnt so far – people from ILM, Framestore, Wevr, ReelFX and an incredible artist behind some of the work on Dear Angelica. Check it out at Cartoon Brew.

  • Behind the scenes of the Smurf critters in ‘The Lost Village’

    In this video exclusive to vfxblog, Sony Pictures Imageworks visual effects supervisor Mike Ford narrates a behind the scenes look at the creatures and critters in Smurfs: The Lost Village. For more of the film, check out my coverage over at Cartoon Brew.

  • Director interview: Rupert Sanders on ‘Ghost in the Shell’

    For the premiere issue of the Visual Effects Society’s new print magazine, VFX Voice, I set out to cover the effects of Ghost in the Shell. I was lucky enough to speak to visual effects supervisors Guillaume Rocheron and John Dykstra, and a whole bunch of artists from Weta Workshop. I was also able to…

  • Sony’s Smurfs are back

    Sony Imageworks and Sony Animation are very familiar with CG Smurfs, but in the newest Lost Village fully animated feature, they had to go back to the Peyo roots. Here’s a look at Cartoon Brew.

  • The VFX industry is always changing

    Nothing really ever stays the same, but one of the fun things about visual effects is how much the technology, artistry and the business changes. There’s also often new ways of hearing or learning about VFX – over the years I’ve got my information from books, magazines, online articles, podcasts, DVD featurettes, tutorials, seminars and of…