On Wednesday we were at the Apollo cinema in Picadilly, for our CG Workflows event with Framestore, looking at some of the extremely difficult shots they were asked to tackle on Avatar.
As well as the guys from Framestore, we had presentations from Al Mooney of Adobe, Lawrence Windley and Deepraj Sandhar from Avid, The Foundry’s Simon Robinson, Stuart Pitcher of Fugitive, Gary Meyer at Iridas, and our very own Dan Young.
It was a fascinating session, scratching the surface on all things stereoscopic and how apps like NUKE are finding ways to address the issues faced. Many questions were fired out including the ‘big debate’ of shooting in parallel versus convergence.
The highlight for many, though, was Framestore’s case study of Avatar. Tim Keene, Executive Producer – VFX and Christian Kaestner, Compositioning Supervisor, took us through working both on and off-set on this century’s biggest film, breaking down key scenes and showing how many of the elements were put together. As you can see from the images of Christian below, there were some incredible shots.
From our feedback, it’s clear we need to dive in deeper into the whole stereoscopy debate as it’s obvious this is one piece of next gen tech that’s not going to go away in a hurry!
Many thanks to all our presenters, sponsors HP, and also to everyone who attended.
Over the last few months we’ve spent a lot of time meeting various people from the CG world on Twitter, and have been discussing everything from the latest Autodesk upgrades or Softimage updates, to Nick’s doodles and even elephant clocks (this conversation really did happen). After all of this interaction, we thought it was about time that we got to meet some of you face to face, so on Friday we invited three of the more vocal Twitterers to a beer and CG evening at Escape Studios.
Armed with their latest pieces of work, Kevin Richter (@KevinRichter), Alex Amelines (@onehugeeye) and Charlotte Wills (@TimelordTotty) arrived at the studios for a quick tour followed by some one on one time with our tutors. A bit of face time with a Pixar veteran is always a bonus, so we sat the guys down to show their work off to Jeff Pratt, followed by some quality advice from Nick Savy (Batman Begins), and finished with advice from Maya Master Lee Danskin.
We’ll feature some of the work shown later on this week, but it was great to see the level of quality being produced. Once we’d finished with the question time section, we all headed off to the bar for some food, beer and CG banter. A great way to finish the evening.
A big thanks to Alex, Kevin and Charlotte for coming to see us, and we hope they had as much fun as we did. Take a look at their sites:
www.onehugeeye.com Alex’s superb character animation news and review site. Drop over and see what you think
www.kevinrichter.com Kevin’s personal portfolio. Kevin’s new book looks impressive
www.charlottes-animated-web.co.uk Charlottes personal portfolio. Some good work here, so take your time and browse around
We’d love to run another event like this sometime soon, so let us know if you’d be interested in coming along.
Congratulations to all the finalists of our CG Whiz competition. We had a great time at the Reveal Event last night, meeting the future stars of the CG industry. As we’ve said before, we were overwhelmed by the sheer number and quality of the entries we’ve received.
It’s clear that there’s a lot of talent out there, but there could only be one winner – Adam Droy (spikeycactus)!
Adam excelled across the board. His showreel highlighted his creative flair whilst demonstrating a sound understanding of the techniques involved. We’re very much looking forward to Adam studying with us at Escape next year, and wish him the best of luck during his work placement at The Mill.
The two runners up should also be commended, having fought off stiff competition from over 130 entrants.
Ronan McMeel’s (MrMeel) showreel earned him the runners up position, impressing the judges with his creativity and incorporating a storyline throughout his work.
Marco Baratto (smileandwave1987) also wowed the judges with a technically sound showreel – inspired by the “HP Hand” commercial.
Ronan and Marco – we hope you enjoy Escape Studios’ online courses and exclusive tour of The Mill.
For those of you that missed out this year, or didn’t get around to entering, don’t forget to keep your eyes peeled for information on next year’s competition. You’ll hear about it here first.
Today marks the beginning of Autodesk’s 3December – an annual event, celebrating 3D computer graphics and the artists who create them.
Traditionally a live event, this year’s event takes place virtually online and features a master class from Liquid Development’s creative team on developing assets for “Rock Band: The Beatles”. By registering you can see top industry talent, learn from the pros and network with other professionals as well as have access to tutorials, Autodesk Masters and masterclasses. On-line activities run from Dec. 1-10, uniting thousands of artists across three continents – check out more info here http://area.autodesk.com/3dec.
