• Seven years of dragons

    What the VFX teams have been able to do over six series of Game of Thrones is incredible – and there looks like some even more amazing CG dragon work to come this series. For Thrillist, I talked to BlueBolt, Pixomondo and Rhythm & Hues about their dragon VFX so far.

  • Why ‘Air Force One’ has some of the most talked about visual effects in history

    When Wolfgang Petersen’s Air Force One was released 20 years ago this week in 1997, it would be one of Boss Film Studios’ very last visual effects projects before founder Richard Edlund shut the effects company’s doors. The studio spectacularly delivered and destroyed a number of intricate miniature aircraft for the show. It also dived…

  • Planning out ‘Valerian’ used some lower-tech methods

    At FMX I got a chance to sit down with Valerian vfx supe Scott Stokdyk. We went through how the film was made, including a look at the video-vis director Luc Besson shot with his film school students. See the story at Cartoon Brew.

  • Behind the boldness of Bad Ape

    Weta Digital had to tackle a new hilarious character for War for the Planet of the Apes in Steve Zahn’s Bad Ape. Here’s how they did it, over at VFX Voice.

  • The social (VFX) lives of Hollywood

    One of the toughest things about covering visual effects can be getting great VFX imagery to display with a story. There’s often a lengthy approvals process, and sometimes film and TV distributors just want to keep certain things under wraps. That can make it hard to produce interesting stories; in visual effects, behind the scenes…

  • From capture to creature: Weta Digital

    For Cartoon Brew, I ran down how Weta Digital takes the on-set performance capture and pushes it through different departments to produce ape animation. It’s an incredible, artistic and technical process. Hope you enjoy the read.

  • Randal M. Dutra on ‘RoboCop’ and the stop-motion ED-209

    Recently on vfxblog, I was able to speak to former ILM animation supervisor Randal M. Dutra about his work on The Lost World: Jurassic Park for that’s film’s 20th anniversary. I invited Dutra back to talk about his stop-motion contributions to RoboCop, which this week celebrates 30 years since its release. On that film, Dutra…

  • Plane crazy

    Imageworks took on the visual effects for the final third act in Spider-Man: Homecoming, from the factory battle, to the plane fight and the beach confrontation. Here’s a look at how they did it, at Spark CG Society.

  • Scott Farrar on the legacy of ‘Transformers’

    I talked to ILM’s Scott Farrar about the history of the Transformers franchise, what some of the initial challenges were (their first bot designs didn’t work), and how that has changed leading up to Transformers: The Last Knight. Check it out at VFX Voice.

  • Visiting Weta Digital

    I had a chance to pop over to Wellington recently to chat to the team at Weta Digital on the new, and incredible, War for the Planet of the Apes. You’ll see some coverage coming out over the next few days, but here’s a hint at the first piece, for 3D Artist magazine. It has lots…