I find it interesting that the VFX for this spot look as if they were done on a VIC-20. Check out the big man in all his tan on tan glory. This was a smokin’ hot machine for it’s day (a whole 5kb of RAM) and for just $299.95. Gotta love that they use GORF as one of the demos. Here’s the print add from the same campaign.

via io9

First up this tasty clip is a How-To of the Robert Abel produced spot “Brilliance”, more commonly known as Sexy Robot.

Notice the primitive tech featured in this vid. Things “switches”,”knobs”, and most shocking of all “shoulder pads” are now extinct to today’s CGI professionals. The most amazing thing about this that the “eight grueling weeks” of production mentioned in this segment has remained an industry standard for commercial projects. In some ways, all that has changed is the amount of polygons and pixels used to create a spot. Oh yeah and the amount of people in the biz has also increased 1,000 times over. And you thought you were the first kid in your cul-de-sac to take mouse in hand to try to make it in Hollywood. Hah!

LINK to more info on Robert Abel and Associates

Uraguayan (that means it’s in Uraguay) 3d animation company Animalada released a super spooky promo vid featuring the skeletal remains of some classic cartoon characters. These guys are a shoe-in for the CBS’s latest Saturday morning spin-off CSI:Toontown.

LINK to full Animalada Quicktime

The interactive website for Halo 3 lets the viewer navigate through a massive battlefield filled with tanks, explosions, aliens and all kinds of other good stuff. You’d think that a colossal marketing effort of this magnitude would be your basic CG wank, but not this time. The whole website was created using a series of Motion Control moves on an incredibly elaborate model. Everything you see on the site was crafted by hand. The main model was constructed by New Deal Studios with characters crafted by Stan Winston. The detail simply needs to be seen to be believed. Each explosion was made from a translucent plastic and lit from behind, the smoke trails from the RPGs and tank shells are cotton. They even made muzzle flashes for the guns. The expressions on the characters have enough emotional impact to stand up to the tightest close-ups.

The site allows you to take a self guided tour over the model. As you travel there are a few stop points along the way were you can see a 360° panorama of the carnage. The camera moves were achieved by the use of two separate Motion Control rigs fitted with Probe lenses placed on both ends of the model. The moves were shot in segments that could later be cut together into one continuous take. The end result is simply spectacular. Best of all, you can take snapshots at any point in your travels that you can download later.

Special thanks to Nyarlathotep for the low down on this one LINK to the Halo 3 Believe Site

LINK to stills of the diorama

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=hlczxXqez-Y[/youtube]

Pretty seemless if you ask me. Anyone know of a high rez version so we can really take a look at it?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C93MfjMu7PI&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Egoogle%2Ecom%2Freader%2Fview%2F[/youtube]

Love the eye-blasts in the opening sequence.