Scott Benson: Rendezvous’ “The Murf”


Scott Benson can’t seem to stop putting out creative work, whether it’s light-hearted (Opposites, Future Trends in Motion Graphics) or helping himself and others ponder more serious themes (Rebranding, On the Subject of Depression). His music video for Rendezvous’ “The Murf” pairs a cosmic story with beautiful, stylized design that will both make you make you smile and wonder about the future.

Read on for production stills, storyboards and a Q&A with Scott here.

Posted on Motionographer

Scott Squires: Visual effects service – The Big Picture

Another response to the issues that the VFX Townhall have brought up, Scott Squires writes a long post on what he sees as the big picture of the visual effects industry. This is required reading, folks, there will be a test.

When I think of a service I think of a dentist, a car shop where they work on your car or a plumber that comes to your house. In these cases they do work but don’t tend to produce anything. The costs are based on time and materials.

Custom manufacturing?
Should vfx be considered as custom manufacturing? We actually create something when we finish our work, whether it’s from scratch or a montage of material provided. That’s what the studios want, not the actual service part.

Here is where things get crazier. Each shot is unique like a snowflake. It’s own little world of issues, handwork and tweaks. You try like anything to make shots as consistent as possible and to be able to run them through the exact same process but it’s never full automated. For all the talk about computers in our business it’s still a very labor-intensive process. The number of people and the time required to do a shot from start to finish would astound most outsiders.

If you go to most manufactures and request custom work you will be required to make specific requirements in writing. (I.e. you want cabinet style 32 but in this specific color of blue. You want a custom cake that says Happy Birthday. It will be yellow cake with vanilla ice cream and chocolate frosting.) And that is what you will get. They seldom show you the work in progress or have your input at every single stage. The other thing is a custom manufacture will tell you when it will be done. They dictate the schedule. In the film business it’s the opposite of all of this. The studio specifies when the delivery will be. It’s almost always less than the time that would have been arrived at by a normal scheduling process for the facility.

Scott wrote another article tonight which is equally worth your attention: Unions

I know some people are concerned a union will cause studios to leave the area and go elsewhere. Hey, it’s already happening without being a union and if you’re working under poor conditions or getting substandard pay it does it really matter if they leave?

Posted on Motionographer

Retro-Hack – The Gallerie Abominate

Nowadays aspiring your visual effects artists have a lot a resources that weren’t available in the old days (like 1990-2000) Fancy modeling,animation and rendering tools had yet to hit the market in large affordable numbers not to mention the lack of decent CG training on-line or otherwise. One side effect of all this is that the bar is set so high that something that was once a staple of the industry is near extinction.

I’m talking about truly awful imagery created on a computer.

There was once a digital shrine created to hold those works that had transcended from just bad to sublime. It was called The Gallerie Abominate an offshoot of Richard Morris’ Maya resource site.

It was a place you could always count on for a laugh and to gain small comfort in the fact that there was always something out there worse than what you you were doing. The archive hasn’t been updated since 2001 but it’s still worth more than a few chuckles.

LINK to The Gallerie Abominate Archive


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Five reasons why Japanese Spider-Man is better than regular Spider-man

  1. Japanese Spider-man fights giant half-dinosaur-half-robots from space
  2. Japanese Spider-man’s “Eyes sparkle with a flash of anger” (according to the theme song)
  3. Japanese Spider-man rides a kick-ass dirt bike
  4. Japanese Spider-man can summon a giant robot Spider-Man from it’s underground hangar using his web shooter
  5. Japanese Spider-man’s giant robot shoots out an awesome Spider-Man race car from it’s chest for Japanese Spider-Man to ride around in

’nuff Said

(via io9)


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Goodbye Capt. Cosmic

bob6.jpg

Any self respecting Bay Area nerd knew Bob Wilkins from his days as the host of “Creature Features” and “Captain Cosmic” (my secret crypto-code fan club card is number 08236 in case you are interested) on Channel 2 (KTVU) during that bygone age of the mid to late 70’s. Bob passed away on January 7, 2009 due to complications from Alzheimers. Both of his shows had a profound effect on my life and Bob’s enthusiasm for all things Horror and Sci-Fi has fueled my passion for VFX for as long as I can remember. This is the man (along with his faithful side-kick 2T2) that single handedly introduced me to Ultraman, Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robots, Starblazers and who could forget Bambi vs Godzilla. I don’t know if he set out to do anything more than capitalize on the Star Wars craze that was sweeping the nation at the time, but whatever the reason Wilkins ended up bringing a lot of joy to the kids of the Bay Area. So long Bob, thanks, and remember “Truth Prevails”.

LINK to memorial slide show on Bob’s site

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VFX School Now Open – Tuition? Free!


VFXHack fan and all around great guy Agrapha, has compiled a plethora of VFX links(266 to be exact) on YouTube. There is some fantastic stuff here, how-tos and interviews from projects old and new covering a variety of subject ranging from stop motion and animatronics to compositing and miniatures. You kill a few hours on the Dark Crystal stuff alone! Another highlight is Walt himself walking us through the construction of Pirates Of The Caribbean. Check this video out and please post any ideas you may having explaining the babe with the riding crop.

LINK to Argapha’s VFX library on YouTube

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RetroHack: 1980s Zgrass Demo

Two vids detailing the the super sweet Zgrass realtime raster graphics system. Be sure to check out the Tom Defanti’s geek regalia in the first clip. It takes a lot of guts to pull off a tie that wide with a denim jacket.

Thanks to Agrapha for the link

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