Episodes
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For anyone looking to get into the VFX business, it’s a good idea to have a realistic picture of what the day-to-day job involves. No one knows this more than a VFX supervisor for television. The “golden age” of TV has brought bigger sets, larger casts and gigantic budgets. Handling daily problems in-house or on set is what VFX sups do best. We talk with FuseFX supervisor, Jon Massey about the practical challenges of getting the right shots to make successful shows like Turn: Washington’s Spies, Hemlock Grove and True Blood.
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Nothing’s probably more buzz-worthy in media and entertainment today than augmented and virtual reality. Companies around the world are finding creative ways to implement these new platforms into our everyday experiences. From helping cyclists to playing video games, it’s easy to see how AR and VR might quickly become the standard for consuming all types of content. Many companies are pushing the tech into surprising areas of our lives.
Toronto-based developer and content creator, AWE (Augmented World Engine) is using VR to bring uncommon experiences to familiar venues like museums and historic sites. CEO Srinivas Krishna and his team have partnered with the City of Toronto to create a virtual tour for visitors to the historic site of Fort York, an important garrison in the War of 1812. During the tour, visitors can don Nexus 6 VR gear and watch digital versions of soldiers loading and firing cannons, ships being attached and other historic dramas played out around the 9-acre site.
We talked with Srinivas about how his company created their own Unity engine-based software to power the experience, what types of VR viewers worked and didn’t, and what other applications VR and AR might have it the future.
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James Pina is a veteran VFX artist currently working for Laika Studios (Coraline, The Boxtrolls). Their newest project, Kubo and the Two Strings is set for release in August of 2016. James specializes in rotoscoping and paint, an essential part of any VFX pipeline. He is also a founding member of a unique VFX company called, Boundary. The company works like an artistic cooperative where members who are in downtimes for their regular full-time gigs can make extra money by working together on Boundary projects. The studio has recently finished work on Charlie Kaufman’s Golden Globe nominated feature, Anomalisa. James talks to us about what a career in roto and paint entails along with describing the benefits and challenges of running a cooperative company like Boundary.
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One of the most popular animated series on today is Rick and Morty. The series follows an alcoholic, time-traveling scientist named Rick and his grandson, Morty, as their adventures take them into wild areas of the galaxy and intergalactic dimensions. The show’s different locales call for some imaginative settings and characters, from the minimalist Mr. Meeseeks to large multi-headed aliens. To get some insights into what drives the show’s artistic style, we talked with its art director, James McDermott about where he draws his inspiration.
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With the holidays upon us, Dan and I thought we’d turn our attention to the Pluralsight family. We interview our two talented web design instructors, Susan Simkins and Amy Childers who’s knowledge and experience helps create some great tutorials for our library. Susan and Amy give us a behind-the-scenes look at the tutorial making process, from deciding on subjects all the way to recording. We also touch on their plans over the holiday season, their favorite board games and holiday foods.
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It’s hard to find a form of corporate advertising that’s as entertaining and exciting as live events. From Apple’s product launches to Google I/O conference, companies are looking more and more to such events to bring brand awareness. One of the shops making these complex spectacles happen is Riverview Systems Group (RSG). Evan Williams is CEO and co-founder of RSG and understands the high-end demands of corporate live events. Recently, RSG announced the building of a dedicated Creative Services division led by Franco Berardi, Riverview’s award-winning Director of Design Services. We talked with both Williams and Berardi about what it takes to produce a live event of this scale, from working with clients to previs.
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The Flash and Arrow are two popular television series. Each requires high quality, specialized VFX work to make the superhero stories believable. Graphic designer Robyn Haddow specializes in fantasy user interfaces (FUI’s) for both shows, creating realistic technology.
FUI’s are a growing trend in movies and films, and professionals like Robyn must have a strong background in graphic design and an imagination to match. Much like ads, FUI’s usually are only seen for short moments, but they must communicate the right messages. We talked to the Scarab Digital artist about what it takes to build these important visual elements.
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The products of engineering and product design are all around us. From the cars we drive to the coffee cups we drink, thousands of products are designed and built by teams all over the world. Supporting those artists and designers are software packages like Autodesk’s Fusion 360, a powerful 3D modeling app with a focus on flexibility and collaboration. Companies and teams are often spread throughout the world, but they still need to collaborate. Fusion 360 fills this need because it’s a cloud-based system that lets operating, rendering and simulations happen on external servers. This frees up your time and bandwidth. We talked with Autodesk evangelist Tanner Reid about the unique opportunities Fusion 360 provides arch/eng and product design firms.
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VFX supervisors need a good perspective on how the pipeline should work to meet the client’s needs. Nordin Rahhali is a veteran VFX sup from Method Studios whose experience has given him a broader view of the pipeline and overall process. From Iron Man 3 to San Andreas, Nordin has overseen some top Hollywood blockbusters. He’s been with Method since 2010, but before that held numerous supervisory and director roles for Digital Domain as well as freelancing work. Our discussion with the veteran supervisor illustrates what technical and personal skills it takes to be an effective leader at a studio. In addition, Nordin tells us about the technical side of creating some pretty challenging shots for San Andreas.
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Motion capture or “mocap” is a popular VFX tool used for building movies and video games today. By helping increase post production speed while giving 3D characters realistic movement, mocap has become an industry standard for these pipelines. From Ironman to Jurassic Park, teams of talented digital artists continue to push the technology to make it better. However, underpinning this workflow are the actual performers, those incredibly flexible, athletic and dedicated performance capture artists who don the funny-looking ping-pong ball suits.
Oliver Hollis-Leick is one such artist with as prolific a background and as extensive a resume as you’ll find today. Having a career spanning over 80 video games and movie titles, Oliver has given digital life to some impressive characters, including Iron Man, Master Chief, Spiderman and James Bond. He’s a training gymnast and martial arts master, which is helpful since mo-cap is one of the most physically demanding acting gigs today.
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Dan Da Rocha and Henry Hoffman are two UK-based game developers whose Fiddlesticks studios is pushing what games can be. Their latest project is Hue, a platform puzzler using color as a narrative theme and central game mechanic.
Hue’s story follows a small boy’s attempt to find his missing mother, a researcher specializing in color theory. Players control the color of the environment to reveal platforms, levels, swings, etc. in order to progress. Hue is a richly conceived world using flat designs, bold colors and an engaging storyline. We talked with Da Rocha and Hoffman about the game’s evolving development, how you use color as a major game rule and the makeup of their pipeline.
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Game designer Mark Parrish is co-designer on an entertaining, and utterly addictive, new indie title called Arena Gods. Parrish and partner, Rodrigo Costa, are currently working on getting the game ready for an eventual launch on Steam Early Access. Arena God’s is two to four-player, top-down gladiator combat game that features screen wrapping action. Throwing a weapon at an opponent can literally come back to bite you. Currently, the game is being built for Windows, Mac, XONE, and PS4 platforms. Parrish and Costa and uses the Unity game engine. We recently talked with Parrish about the game’s genesis, building its mechanics and what’s involved in building an indie title.
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Lucas Martell is an artist who’s no stranger to producing animated shorts on a budget. He just happens to also make quality, award-winning shorts while doing it. He also runs a successful boutique located in Austin, TX called Mighty Coconut. Martell is an animator and director best known for Pigeon: Impossible, which won ton’s of awards at festivals a few years back. Earlier this year, he debuted his latest short, The OceanMaker, a more somber look at a strong-willed aviator’s search for hope in an arid wasteland. What makes the film also unique is the manner of production Martell used–a kind of animation studio-gone-on-working-vacation he calls “destination production.” It’s certainly a way of working Dan and I could get on board with!
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Virtual reality is one of the most potentially disruptive technologies in the market today. VR companies like Oculus and HTC are racing to be first in the market while content providers are preparing themselves to meet the inevitable demand. In an adjoining space are a few companies who want to capture the enormous CAD and Arch/Eng markets with file readers for such VR devices. VR readers can make viewing 3D architectural or products faster for designers and more immersive for their clients. IrisVR is such an app that can read Sketchup, Revit and OBJ files. We sat down with IrisVR ‘s lead software developer, Jack Donovan to find out how the app’s beta version is going and to see why he thinks programs like these will be game changers for the industry.
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Director of the award-winning The Book of Life, Jorge Gutiérrez is a born storyteller, both on the screen and off. However, the journey to completing the award-winning animated feature was fraught with struggles only a passionate artist of Jorge’s caliber and commitment could overcome.
With a budget of only $50 million, making the director’s larger-than-life version of The Book of Life was a tough to sell to studios and producers. From pitching his idea to Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Pacific Rim) to the unprecedented accomplishment of convincing Radiohead to license their song “Creep” for the film’s score, Jorge’s stories are inspiring for any artist. Dan and I fight to contain ourselves as the director recalls some hilarious moments in the film’s production.
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Pluralsight’s acquisition of the Digital-Tutors brand has produced some exciting developments and positive changes over the previous months. With the recent announcements, we thought it would be fruitful to speak with one of the first Digital-Tutors employees and Director of Creative Content, Kyle Green, to get his perspective on what the change means to him, our courses and our customers as we continue expanding our library.
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Steve Emerson is a VFX artist at LAIKA and has worked on the Studio’s biggest hits, which include Coraline (2009), ParaNorman (2012) and The Boxtrolls (2014). Being a VFX artist on stop motion projects provides an opportunity to work with practical FX and to contribute to a hybrid studio workflow that’s unique to the feature film industry.
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Grant Wilson and Mike Richie are two enterprising board game designers who are pushing the bounds of what table tops can be. Together with their spouses, Wilson and Richie form Rather Dashing Games, a truly family-run venture that tries to bring the fun of family game night back into the table top industry by producing simple, yet entertaining, games that “take 5 mins to learn and under an hour to play.” We talk with both gentlemen about the unique challenges of creating effective board game design and what fuels their passion for what they do.
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Digital-Tutors’ in-house web design instructor, Susan Simkins talks to us about the current trends, debates and hot topics that surround the exciting world of web design. From the “hamburger button” debate to the notion that web design itself may be a dying art form, Susan gives her unique, professional and entertaining perspective on these topics.
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Patrick Lin is a director of photography and layout artist for Pixar. Lin has worked on many big name films such as Ratatouille, Brave, Moster’s University in addition to the Studio’s latest Inside Out. Dan and I talk with Lin about the role of camera structure within an animated film. He told us some pretty interesting and incredible things about the contrasting visual language structure within Inside Out. It’s a visual style that’s effective at supporting the main character’s emotional arch while helping audiences identify the two wildly different worlds of the film.
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