Category: Visual Effects

On the heels of Ridley Scott's recent director's cut of ALIEN comes ALIEN QUADRILOGY, the ultimate box set of the sci-fi franchise and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment's (TCFHE) most ambitious DVD project yet. Streeting Dec. 2, 2003 and priced at $99.98, QUADRILOGY contains four films, nine discs and 45 hours of bonus materials. Plus new vfx in ALIEN and ALIEN3 supplied by TCFHE and five houses (Svengali, R!OT, Encore, Frantic and Modern Video). There are 15 new CG shots in ALIEN, including CG blood, CG fire, wire removal and star fields.

Digital Element, an Oakland-based software developer and publishing firm specializing in art tools, and Digimation Inc., a leading provider of 3D models, announced the release of the Modelshop plug-in for Photoshop, which includes 50 3D models from Digimation's Model Bank Collection.

Finalists in the nine of 12 categories of competition for the Australian Effects and Animation Festival (AEAF) Awards have been announced. Winners in each category will be announced at the AEAF Awards presentation, Dec. 9, 2003 at 7:00 pm. AEAF will be held at the Sydney Convention Center, Darling Harbor from December 7-10.

All finalists entries will be screened during the Awards ceremony in an evening of animation and vfx entertainment

X2: X-MEN UNITED (Fox Home Entertainment, $29.98) has arrived on DVD. The highly anticipated follow-up to X-MEN has director Bryan Singer and crew surer footed with both the comic book conventions and demanding vfx, supervised by Michael Fink, who recently wrote about the history of previs for VFXWORLD.

Cinesite (Europe) Ltd announced that it has moved into production on visual effects for several major feature films, which will complete throughout 2004. These include TROY (Warner Bros.), HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN (Warner Bros.), ALIEN VS. PREDATOR (Fox), AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS (Walden Media), SAHARA (Paramount), KING ARTHUR (Buena Vista) and ALFIE (Paramount).

Veteran motion picture and television animator Everett Burrell has joined Café FX as animation supervisor. Burrell comes to Café Fx from Cantina Pictures Inc. He brings 18 years experience managing teams of 3D animators, 3D digitizers, texture artists, compositors, technical directors and freelance artists, and working collaboratively with directors, producers, art directors and software engineers in defining the creative and technical direction of projects.

Moviegoers attending the special engagement of Disney's THE HAUNTED MANSION at Hollywood's historic El Capitan Theatre (Nov. 26, 2003 through Jan. 4, 2004) will have the opportunity to explore a rare behind-the-scenes attraction about the making of the movie. "The Haunted Mansion - Hollywood" features the actual sets, costumes and vfx designed and built by the film's Academy Award-winning team of artists at Sony Imageworks.

The world of integrated effects creation just got faster. Shipping immediately for an upgrade price of $199, Boris FX 7 brings high performance directly into the editing environment with new OpenGL acceleration and faster renders. Editors can now experience advanced keyframe control with more than 20 new filters and paint tools for advanced masking and compositing.