VFX402 – Through The Looking Glass to Underland
Submissions Start: April 1st 2010
Submissions End: May 1st 2010
Through The Looking Glass to Underland
There is a place, like no place on earth. A land full of wonder, mystery and danger. Some say to survive it you need to be as mad as a hatter ….. Others say all you need is to gain ownership of Underlands ruling crown …..
Your best friend Alice Kingsley has disappeared during a garden party being held in the honour of her engagement to Hamish Ascot. A message has reached you via the White Rabbit that Alice has been spirited away to the magical underground world of Wonderland, or Underland as it is also known.
The White Rabbit has informed you that to assist Alice’s return to the real world you will need to follow her to Wonderland and help her to steal back the White Queens ruling crown from the Red Queen . Luckily a portal exists to the mysterious Underland through a large ornate looking glass, which leans against a wall in the dusty attic of Alice’s childhood home.
VFXTalk challenge you to create the character of Alice’s childhood friend, using the supplied footage, and take her through the looking glass in search of the White Queens ruling crown.
You can introduce 2D or 3D elements, modify the video footage we supply and use your matte painting skills if you so wish. The only necessities are that you must show a world in reverse beyond the mirror; and you must ensure that your character enters the mirror and returns through it with the ruling crown.
Source Material
Guidelines
You will be judged on the integration of all elements, from appropriate shadow casting, grain, reflections, and originality. The necessary skills you will need to learn to succeed the Series 4 challenges are: Matte Painting, Modelling, Lighting, Compositing, Onset Photography, Planning Ahead, Originality. Particle and volumetric FX generation, Animation, Projection and 3D Texturing and HDRI are all optional.
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Everything must be created from scratch, save textures or photographs, of course. The complete shot should be 720 frames long at 24fps (minimum of 15 seconds long) at low HD, res 852×480. No prior work will be accepted. If we find that you are using existing libraries of cities or building models, you will be disqualified.
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You get extra points from a active WIP! Begin your WIP thread by painting up this image to show us what you’d like to accomplish. From there, hit the visual effects supervisors mark by bringing that concept to life. It is not necessary to create other shots that lead up to this one, and you won’t get higher marks for it. Focus your time on creating this 30 second shot the best that you can! You can find the WIP forums here: http://www.vfxtalk.com/forum/vfxchal…orum-f109.html
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Voting:
Moderators will judge all entries and will choose a shortlist of ten, these entries will be judged from the Work In Progress threads and the final result. The final ten submissions will then be voted on by the community in order to select the top 3 winners. We do not want to see a final shot turn up out of nowhere and have no clue as to how it was created. Since you are starting this from scratch, having a WIP thread showing your progress will be vital in swaying the judges to vote you into the top 10. Users will then vote on the top 3.
If you have any questions regarding this challenge please post them into this thread. Please start your WIP threads in the VFXChallenge WIP Forum, as always. Because of the complexity of this challenge, team entries will be permitted, provided that all members of the team are members of VFXTalk however teams can be no larger than 2-3 members!
As always, all the help you will ever need can be found in the relevant Software Forums for your software of choice or the WIP Forum. We are trying to encourage an environment for peer/team learning! The more we help each other, the further we can push each other, and the better our VFX skills will become!
The prize’s for this month:
1st Place: The 1st Place winner of each monthly VFX challenge will be taking home a hot Intel based Mac Mini! This fantastic prize has been sponsored by the cool people at online independent film site Sputnik7. They will also receive a Taskwise Small Business account, use this innovative software to easily create and share projects and information between a team of up to 10 people.
2nd Place: The runner up will receive a subscription to the eyeon SWAT program and a free copy of SWAT Edition of Fusion! eyeon’s new SWAT Membership program offers SWAT members the opportunity to learn Fusion in several different ways from introductory to advanced online training resources and webinars, extensive facility training, 3-day to 6-week courses, SWAT authorized curriculums, including universities and colleges and One-on-one seminars. Members also have access to great SWAT Edition pricing and upgrade models!
Third place: Third place winner is sponsored by CMIvfx, the leading provider of technological training for visual effects artists! You will take home your choice of one CMIvfx training video, take advantage of greate online visual effects training to hone your skills! You can also buy training videos from their site this month at a added discount using the VFX401 promo code!
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Judges Prize: The challenges now featre a judges prize that will be awarded to the entry that has the most advanced and seamless usage of visual effects. The judges prize is sponsored by Ribbit Films and consists of a Ribbit Films video compilation worth thousands of dollars!
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The Grand Prize:
Series Grand Prize: The coveted grand prize, awarded to the winner of the series, is sponsored by Sputnik7, Eyeon and The Foundry! It consists of an Apple Mac Pro workstation loaded with the latest complete versions of both Eyeon Fusion 6 plus Generation and a copy of Nuke from The Foundry!
The Sponsors
The VFXChallenges are supported by our very generous sponsors; without their help we would not be able to offer such fantastic prizes. These companies have been incredibly supportive of VFXTalk.com and we are extremely grateful to them for their continued involvement in the VFXChallenge Series.
Sputnik7 – www.sputnik7.com
eyeon – http://www.eyeonline.com
The Foundry – http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/
Ribbit Films – http://www.ribbitfilms.com
Silversoft – http://www.taskwise.com
cmiVFX – http://www.cmivfx.com
Feedback
We welcome all your input for the VFXChallenges…please let us know of any cool ideas, footage, elements that you would like to have featured in a future VFXChallenge by letting us know HERE
