The Old Spice ads have been tickling viewers over the last year or two, and this one for me, just takes the biscuit. With some magic from our friends at the Mill LA, this musically themed minute or so is brought to life by some intrinsically timed VFX.

If a movie is a massive studio blockbuster, then the Prime Focus World visual effects team have most likely had some involvement in its making. Prime Focus was responsible for creating the stunning effects for titles such as Men in Black 3, Dredd 3D, Mirror Mirror and Total Recall…to name just a few! And of course, every new VFX project comes with its own challenges. Len Wiseman’s remake of Total Recall was one such project that allowed the team to flex their creative and technical muscle.

If you’ve not had access to the internet over the last week, (why else wouldn’t you be keeping up to date with the hottest VFX blog on the planet?) as well as some highly informative, highly entertaining, VFX related internet titbits, you’ve missed out on a few smashing success stories.

Our friends over at Chaos Group have recently released their 2012 showreels for their render software V-Ray.

Taking the leap from Storyboard Artist to Compositor is no easy feat at the best of time. Well what if I was to tell you that recent escapee, Carlos de la Sotilla, managed it in less than 2 years.

If you, like me, were the owner of a PS1 back in the late 90’s, (or as we called it back then, simply ‘the Playstation’) there’s quite a high chance you would have owned stealth action game ‘Metal Gear Solid’, the successor to Konami’s MSX2 tactical action espionage game, ‘Metal Gear’, which this week celebrated its 25^th anniversary.

Over the past six months we have been working with Michael Illingworth, founder of Vine Post Production to expand his studio. Michael has worked at The Mill and Cinesite and has been involved in post-production, compositing and visual effects supervision on some of the biggest film names in the industry including the Harry Potter franchise, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down.

For all budding Compositors out there, Alexander Swann is joining us for an exciting webinar exclusive next Wednesday. Roto Artist and escapee, Alex has spent the last couple of years mastering the art of 3D painting and rotoscoping at Framestore. Showing some examples from the very recent, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, we recommend that you check this one out.

“Big things have small beginnings”, was an idea acknowledged in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, released earlier this year. And for us, this statement couldn’t be more true. Taking the art of visual effects as a prime example, the spectacular CG you see on screens today was born from the most basic of concepts, and the people who created those effects invested significant time and energy to become the talented artists they are today. Every creative talent has to start out somewhere, and with the right levels of care and determination, it can evolve into something magnificent.

As an artist, I have a huge passion for the process of pre-production; taking an idea and iterating until you achieve the correct result.