World-renowned designer, concept artist and futurist Syd Mead will speak and sign the books OBLAGON and SENTURY (his latest) at Gnomon School of Visual Effects on Thursday, May 20 at 7:00 pm.
Kaydara announced that Ubisoft has licensed HumanIK|Middleware, an advanced in-game character animation and rigging library, for its upcoming release of TOM CLANCY'S SPLINTER CELL 3 (working title). With HumanIK|Middleware, Ubisoft will be able to easily embed the same award-winning character animation and rigging technology found in MOTIONBUILDER directly into its game engine. Ubisoft is demonstrating SPLINTER CELL 3 using HumanIK|Middleware at E3, May 12-15, 2004, booth #1046.
Discreet has purchased Unreal Pictures, developers of the advanced, award-winning character animation tool, character studio. This transaction brings in patents and core character studio technology allowing Discreet to further advance the state-of-the-art in intuitive character animation.
Rebecca Ramsey, a producer with broad experience in commercials, feature films, theatrical trailers and broadcast media, has joined Steele VFX as exec producer. Ramsey will supervise the company's production team, oversee in-house production and manage bidding. She will also assist in new business development and will support Steele VFX's expansion effort, which targets growth both in the company's core markets-commercials and music videos-and in motion picture trailers, broadcast promotions and effects work for features and television.
In creating visual effects for a new Coors Light spot, KromA conjured up the unique visions of a man bent on doubling his pleasure.
Conceived by Chicago agency Foote, Cone & Belding and directed by HSI's Joseph Kahn, the spot centers on a man who gets a new pair of glasses not to see better just to see more. The glasses cause the man to experience double vision so that when he goes to the beach he sees twice the number of beautiful women. The spot is set to the Jan & Dean tune "Surf City," which includes the refrain "two girls for every boy."
Infinium Labs Inc. will debut its Phantom Gaming Service -- the first end-to-end, on-demand game distribution service -- at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), in Los Angeles, May 12-14, 2004, at Booth 746 in the South Hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center. The new service will offer subscribers a library of titles and make them available any time, day or night. The company plans to provide the service hardware free of charge to consumers who sign a two-year contract for a basic subscription to its flagship online gaming service at $29.95 per month.
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications has announced it will deliver eleven mobile games from Sorrent on Sony Ericsson's most popular handsets. North American mobile subscribers using the T610/T616 or T630/T637 handsets will be able to purchase such single and multiplayer games as YAO MING BASKETBALL '04 PRESENTED BY FOX SPORTS, FOX SPORTS BOXING, FOX SPORTS FOOTBALL '04, FOX SPORTS HOCKEY '04, FOX SPORTS TRACK & FIELD '04, FOX SPORTS SOCCER '04, FOX SPORTS RACING, SHARK HUNT, 3D SLAM PING PONG, DURATRAX MOBILE RC and WILD 8-BALL. The games will be available in Q2 2004.
NVIDIA Corp. and Epic Games announced the first public showing of the new game engine Unreal Engine 3 at this week's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). Unreal Engine 3 is the first game engine to take full advantage of Shader Model 3.0 -- a key feature of Microsoft DirectX 9.0 -- enabled only by the NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series of graphics processing units (GPUs). Created by Epic Games, Unreal Engine 3 advances lighting and shadowing capabilities, shader effects and editing tools.
When ATI Technologies launched the latest generation of its Radeon graphics technology in April, the company wanted a visual demonstration piece that would show off the card's realtime rendering and graphics capabilities.
Softimage Co. announced that Archimation, one of Germany's leading architectural presentation firms, used SOFTIMAGE|XSI software to create 3D renderings for two of the architectural firms designing the buildings to be constructed on the World Trade Center site in New York City.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING was the big winner at the 30th annual Saturn Awards, garnering eight statuettes at the May 5, 2004 ceremonies held at the Universal Sheraton in Los Angeles. KING reigned in awards for best fantasy film, best actor (Elijah Wood), best supporting actor (Sean Astin), best director (Peter Jackson), best writing (Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens) and best music (Howard Shore), among others.
The summer movie season kicks off this Friday with the highly anticipated release of VAN HELSING, and Ellen Wolfe will have the opening day scoop on how ILM has reimagined Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man and a few other scary creatures.
L.A. How To Break Into Videogame Industry: Conference and Resume Workshop Los Angeles, California, USAMay 8, 2004
According to TRENDWATCH, 22% of all U.S. studios/facilities do 3D modeling/animation/rendering (including character set-up, enveloping/skinning, lighting, etc.).
Significantly, this number jumps up to 68% for vfx/animation studios/facilities specializing in 3D work. Also, 35% of post-production studios/facilities do this type of 3D work as well. This number is up from 31% of post houses doing this work in TRENDWATCH's summer 2003 survey.
Excerpted from the TRENDWATCH VISUAL EFFECTS/DYNAMIC MEDIA REPORT Issue #4, Winter 2003-2004.
The live-action PETER PAN, another underrated gem from 2003, comes to DVD May 4, 2004 (Universal Home Video, $26.98) showing off CGI as gorgeous eye candy. The vfx (courtesy of ILM, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Digital Domain, Riot, among others) help push the wonder and whimsy of J.M.
Melbourne Digital Media Festival has announced that it will screen STARSHIP TROOPERS 2: HERO OF THE FEDERATION, the sequel to Paul Verhoevens 1997 cult hit STARSHIP TROOPERS. The film marks the directorial debut of Academy Award-winning visual effects supervisor Phil Tippett (who worked on VFX for the original). STARSHIP TROOPERS 2: HERO OF THE FEDERATION will debut this month from Columbia TriStar Home Ent. on Special Edition DVD.
AEAF Melbourne Short Film FestivalMelbourne, Australia June 1, 2004Deadline: May 21, 2003
As part of the Digital Media Festival, Melbourne, the Australian Effects & Animation Festival Short Film Festival will screen submissions alongside renowned international work from artists at Passion Pictures (U.K.), La Maison (France), Sony Pictures Imageworks (U.S.) and Vinton Studios (U.S.). The event will take place at the Melbourne Convention Centre, corner of Spencer & Flinders Streets.
Bill Desowitz sits down with the pioneering Ray Harryhausen to discuss the continuing influence of his special effects animation on todays creature features.
Continuing a collaboration that has lasted eight years, director Joss Whedon and Zoic Studios' vfx supervisor Loni Peristere are reunited for the upcoming Universal feature SERENITY. The move marks the most ambitious feature to date for Los Angeles-based Zoic.
We conclude our April gaming focus with the Pixel Priestess' assessment of how vfx fits into the high-octane universe of games, and a discussion Mary Ann Skweres had with the Climax development team behind the upcoming Xbox role-playing title from Microsoft, SUDEKI. Meanwhile, later in the week Mark Ramshaw gives us a glimpse of what's hot in the U.K.
The Visual Effects Society (VES) will present VES 2004, its sixth annual Festival of Visual Effects, June 18-20 in San Rafael, California. The three-day event at The Rafael Film Center features presentations and panels headed by visual effects supervisors and their teams, which focus on vfx and how they enhance the storytelling process.
In response to growing demand from industry, Game Art and Design and Visual Effects have been added to broaden the mix of accredited diploma programs offered at Vancouver Institute of Media Arts. The addition of Game Art & Design in 2003 and now Visual FX allows our students the ability to focus their training in more specific areas of the industry says Alan Phillips, President of VanArts.
Starting in May, Animation World Magazine and VFXWorld will feature a monthly gallery of new content from around the world. We're looking for visual effects and animated:
* Music Videos* Shorts* Titles* IDs/Promos* Interstitials* Commercials* Webisodes* Games* Training & Presentations* Wireless Content
For 10 days, starting May 6, 2004, The El Capitan Theatre will screen an archival 70 mm print of Walt Disney Pictures' 1982 landmark computer animated feature, TRON, featuring six-track Dolby SR Stereo. As part of the salute, original costumes and memorabilia will be on display.
Two new Spacecraft Film treasures, THE MIGHTY SATURNS: SATURN V (EXTENDED COLLECTOR'S EDITION) and APOLLO 15: MAN MUST EXPLORE (EXTENDED COLLECTOR'S EDITION), are now available in separate three-disc and six-disc sets (Fox Home Ent., $49.98 and $89.98). They are the latest in the most comprehensive collection every assembled to chronicle NASA's early space missions. Developed and produced by film historian Mark Gray, they contain full-length TV transmissions and complete inventories of onboard film.
