ARTICLE - TECHNOLOGY

How’d They Do That? A Brief Visual History of Motion-Capture Performance on Film

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The use of motion-capture technology to create some of the most fantastical creatures and effects has become revolutionary in recent years, and Andy Serkis has been at the forefront. From acting as a consultant on films through his performance-capture studio, The Imaginarium, to actually portraying these digitally rendered characters, the actor has essentially become the face of this cinematic movement. He returned to the world of the ‘Apes’ this past weekend to continue the story of one of his most famous characters: Caesar.

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ARTICLE - MAKING OF - MOVIES

Guardians of the Galaxy – Framestore

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“Much of the movie’s scene-stealing is left to Rocket, a CGI character impressively crafted by the Guardians’ crack VFX team and voiced with panache by Cooper.” – The Hollywood Reporter

Rocketing to a record-breaking opening weekend success and being labelled as one of the best Marvel films yet, James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy wrenches the comic book world into deep space with the universe’s most unlikely bunch of heroes.

Framestore created one of those heroes in the form of Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper) and animated both him and his arboreal companion Groot (Vin Diesel) in the middle act of the movie that spans more than 40 minutes and 633 final shots. We also created the cavernous expanse of Knowhere – a giant mined out skull that’s home to a whole city – the most complicated environment we’ve ever built.

Our work was overseen by VFX Supervisors Jonathan Fawkner and Kyle McCulloch, with the latter on set at Shepperton and Longcross studios in the UK.

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ARTICLE - MAKING OF - MOVIES

Legend or truth: the VFX of Hercules

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Brett Ratner’s Hercules tells the myth – and the truths – behind the demigod son of Zeus. Visual effects supervisor John Bruno had to walk the line between the man and the myth in both helping to craft the film’s gritty battle action and bringing to life the Hercules’ legendary Twelve Labors in which he encounters a series of fantastical beasts. Despite these daunting effects tasks, Bruno still saw a need to de-emphasize the effects and maintain realism. “The most fantastical effects were Hercules’ Labors,” says Bruno, “but we still wanted to base those on reality. Although the creatures became quite large we still wanted to set them up in an environment that was quite real.”

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ARTICLE - TECHNOLOGY

Voodoo magic

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Think back to some of the most outstanding creatures in recent films, and Rhythm & Hues will come up as one of the key visual effects studios behind that work – Richard Parker in Life of Pi or perhaps Aslan in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Hundreds of talented artists worked on these complicated creatures, a feat that was aided by Voodoo – Rhythm’s proprietary extensible toolset for rigging, animation, camera tracking, matchmoving, fur, crowds, and 2.5D work.

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ANNOUNCEMENT

Lost Boys will be at Siggraph 2014 – Birds of a Feather

SIGGRAPH

VFX Student Showcase – The Anatomy of a Digital Matte Painting Production
TUESDAY, 12 AUGUST 2:00 PM – 2:30 PM | Vancouver Convention Centre, East Building, Room 9

VFX veterans and instructors present, break down, and explain techniques and lessons learned from their recent student project with a focus on digital matte painting, effects animation, and compositing.

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