VFXhack

I really relate to this. But then again I also find myself wishing the Ctrl-Z worked in real life.

LINK to more geek tunes at XKCD

Imagine the experimental film version of of the kids game telephone and you’ve got the the project PSST! Organized by Bran Dougherty-Johnson, PSST! is collection of 9 films each broken into 3 sections completed by different teams that pick up where the last one left off.  The result is a super spicy gumbo of animation, stop-mo, motion graphics, compositing and everything else but the kitchen sink. Nice.

LINK to PSST! 2 website

LINK to PSST! 1 website

StumbleUpon-ed Ian Hubert’s personal website Robot Soup this weekend and found a pretty wicked homage to the much loved and lamented Fox series Firefly. Ian isn’t afraid to ask the tough questions like

“What would happen of Serenity got chopped in half by a giant ninja robot?”

Maybe Whedon would have gotten around to that in season two. Unfortunately, we’ll never know. Thanks Fox!

LINK to Ian Hubert’s animation

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW_9SYaWAQg[/youtube]

I got the inside dope on this spot from a friend of mine that ran the prop department. There were a couple of these spots shot in the wee hours at MacArthur Park here in Los Angeles all directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Feris (of Little Miss Sunshine Fame). All of the VFX are in-camera and created by a team of animators using a variety of gelled flashlights shot with extra long exposures. My buddy sez that for some of the more complicated scenes (the flowers bloomming for instance) the prop dept. created wire armatures of the final shapes so that the light painters could trace over them without losing their place. However it was done, the end effect is pretty cool.

Marc Bourbonnais quit his gig of 10 years at Hybride (a vfx company in Canadia) and decided to make a go at a start-up. I can relate, I left a good job and a position as a supervisor to start a new place. Going on COBRA with a wife that’s 8 months pregers is risky business as I can tell you. The one thing that I did not do in may particular situation was Blog my guts and expose everything I did to set-up my company like Mr. Bourbonnais.

Seriously, good luck to you Marc we’ll be watching. I think your own words say it best…

“Here’s to hoping this will turn out to be a success story and not a tragic comedy…”

LINK to People, Pixels and Production

Digital Kitchen has put together a tight little parody of the “boutique” VFX facility called Designer Slash Model. There is some funny stuff here.

It’s a bit long so stick with it. I love the guy who sez “Green Screen is one of our many proprietary techniques”.

Link to designerslashmodel.com

Thanks to SK

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FFkvhoEfX8[/youtube]

Ok, so it’s a fake ad for the iPhone, and it is on YouTube but that being said the FX work shows some pretty sharp attention to detail. Check out the light wrap around the iPhone and the interactive reflections. Nicely done.