The Making Of Ralph Bakshi And Frank Frazetta's 'Fire And Ice'

Illustrator and author James Gurney has posted a collection of articles about the making of 'Fire And Ice' over on his blog Gurney Journey. 

// Art Of Fire And Ice via James Gurney

Check out the full movie here

// Fire And Ice [Full Movie]

Dick Van Dyke Talks About His VFX Hobby

Dick Van Dyke talks about his hobby as a VFX artist! Ha! [starts at the 00:16:32 mark]

Gollum Mocap Project by Fabrice Visserot

Here's a really nice face mocap test by Fabrice Visserot.

'This video shows a personal retargeting experiment of facial motion capture. The animation is pure motion capture with no keyframe animation added.' via Vimeo

Sea of Monster Animatronic Head by Amalgamated Dynamics

The artists over at Amalgamated Dynamics are just rock stars! The detail and fidelity of the face motion is fantastic!





'Before we take an animatronic on set, we give it as much testing as possible. In the case of Polyphemus from PERCY JACKSON: SEA OF MONSTERS, we recorded our own in-house dialog from the script and pre-programmed the lip sync. By the time we shot, the script had changed. Much of the character's dialogue and action would not be settled on until post-production. The result is a heavily digital character. Here's our version.' 
via Amalgamated Dynamics

Aardman Studio Tour

Interview with Animation Director & Aardman Co-founder Peter Lord

Podcast Featuring Background Artist Extraordinaire Maurice Noble

Here's a great podcast and article about background painter/designer extraordinaire Maurice Noble. Also check out this new book featuring his work called The Noble Approach: Maurice Noble and the Zen of Animation Design (out Oct 1st)

// Noble Effort via 99percentinvisible

Reference of the day: The Serengeti Lions

Here's some amazing footage of lions on the Serengeti. Really gorgeous closeup shots. Beautiful to watch! Great reference!




// The Serengeti Lion via National Geographic 

The Art Of Deciphering Facial Expression

'Psychologist Paul Ekman is reputedly the best human lie detector in the world. He has been researching facial expressions for more than forty years. He has learned to move every single muscle in his face at will. Over the years he has created an 'atlas of emotions' with more than ten thousand facial expressions. Ekman's biggest discovery is the 'micro-expression', which shows up on our faces for fractions of a second as an indicator that we're lying and which reveals our true feelings.'

More great info on facial expression here:

// "The Mni Expression" by Mark Walsh and Bobby Podesta

// 'The Human Face' from the BBC (2001)

// The Face: Emotions Revealed

UFCECÊ - Smelly genius!

This had us laughing at work this morning! Genius!



by Techno Image and Meindbender

Faceshift: Markerless Motion Capture

// Faceshift

Paranorman B-Roll Footage Of Awesomeness

I know these vids have been around for a while but sheesh! they're so mesmerizing to watch!  I was blown away by the Zombie face rig armature that's in B-Roll #4... just wow!

Also checkout these director and producer interviews

// Paranorman Interviews 

Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan (Special screening with Dennis Muren and Craig Barron)

// RAY HARRYHAUSEN: SPECIAL EFFECTS TITAN

Special Screening at the Rafael Theater

Sunday, August 18, 7:00, Introduced by Dennis Muren

Sunday, August 25, 7:00, Introduced by Craig Barron

'Produced by the Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation, this is the definitive documentary on the visual effects and stop-motion pioneer whose imagination thrilled millions. Special Effects Titan traces the productions of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts and other Harryhausen classics, with archival footage, on-camera commentary by the master himself and interviews with many who knew or learned from him, including: Ray Bradbury, Peter Jackson, James Cameron, Nick Park, Phil Tippett, Joe Dante, John Landis, Dennis Muren, John Lassiter, Tim Burton, Henry Selick, Guillermo del Toro, Terry Gilliam and others. Producers: Alexandre Poncet, Tony Dalton. Writer/Director: Gilles Penso. (France/UK 2012) 92 min.

We are happy that two of Ray Harryhausen's friends will introduce our screenings. Dennis Muren has received nine Academy Awards for his visual effects on Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park and others. Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Craig Barron (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) serves on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.' via Rafael Theater

Filmmaking 'Master Class': Interview with Alfred Hitchcock (1976)

In this fantastic interview with Alfred Hitchcock from a 1976 press conference for his last film 'The Family Plot'. During this interview (1.5hr) Hitchcock responds to a range of serious and comical questions about his career, his filmmaking style, story, and directing.

Kickstarter Project: Pose Drawing SparkBook by Cedric Hohnstadt

Here's a cool Kickstarter project by concept artist and designer Cedric Hohnstadt.

// Cedric Hohnstadt Website

SculptGL: zBrush Style Sculpting On The Web!

Just discovered this app today via fellow FS animator Max Adams. Check it out!

//SculptGL by Stéphane GINIER

'SculptGL is tiny sculpting application, powered by WebGL. Source code on github here.
It features dynamic subdivision, decimation, uniformisation and adaptive sculpting.

Uniformisation is simply a call to subdivision followed by a decimation.
Adaptive sculpting lies on the uniformisation and enables changes in the topological genus (holes and merges).
Inflate and deflate are the best tools to trigger topological changes :D.
Adaptive sculpting is a little buggy... (for example you shouldn't use it with a mesh that already contains self-intersection).
Well, I don't think you can create anything that doesn't look weird... but who knows?

Right now, best performance are reached on Chrome.
On Firefox 22, the number of vertices is limited to 65536, on version 24 the limitation will be gone.'

Pacific Rim - Interview with ILM Animation Supervisor Hal Hickel

More great behind the scenes footage and info here:
// fxguide: Monster mayhem Pacific Rim

//fxguidetv: Pacific Rim Pipeline Special

Interview with Hal Hickel via 'Animation Fascination' (interview starts at 1:01:00)
// Pacific Rim: Hal Hickel Interview