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