Hasta La Motion!

Feb 01

Graduate/ Junior 3D Animator

Climax is one of the leading creative lights of independent games development with a great history. It truly is an exciting and fun place to work and we are currently looking for a Graduate/ Junior 3D Animator. Based in Gunwharf Quays, Portsmouth Harbour in the UK, this is an excellent opportunity to join an award winning team.

Our ideal candidate will be:

• An exceptionally good character animator.
• A motivated individual with attention to details and respects deadlines & budgets.
• Able to supply well-presented examples or a pertinent show reel that demonstrate your knowledge and execution of timing, weight, expression, posing, etc.
• Able to showcase a wealth of different animation skills from realistic through to quadrupeds.
• Professionally conversant in Maya.
• Rigging skills are a bonus.

Please send a current CV/ resume to Stuart Godfrey on sgodfrey@climaxgroup.com

I look forward to hearing from you.

Feb 01

Tronic Studio: Esquire

Posted in: cg, Design, directing, vfx

NY based Tronic Studio was commissioned to redesign the renowned Esquire magazine logo as the centerpiece of a national augmented reality promotion for the February issue. Partners Vivian Rosenthal and Jesse Seppi and senior designer Frederico Phillips re-imagined the seven letters as towering intelligent machines, rendered digitally in 3D and placed in landmark environments around […]

Feb 01

The Vacuum: New Site + updates

Posted in: Design, illustration, Interactive

Vancouver based The Vacuum updated with a new site and lots’o new projects … The Vacuum is a digital agency. We are thinkers, designers, directors and developers. We have skills in creative strategy, identity, print, interactive, facebook, mobile, live action directing, cinematography, editing, motion graphics and 3D. We like to work in any and all […]

Feb 01

Previs Artist @ Double Negative

Posted in: The Job Lot

Double Negative is a full-service VFX facility capable of handling projects from initial design through on-set supervision and production to post-production. All key post-production technologies are available in-house to allow for maximum flexibility. Our R&D Department is constantly developing groundbreaking software to ensure we remain at the cutting edge of global VFX.
We are currently in production on John Carter Of Mars, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Paul, Captain America: The First Avenger and Attack The Block.

We are currently looking for talent previs artists to join our team!

* Job Title: Previs Artist
* Department: 3D
* Location: London
* Reports To: Head of Previs

Key Purpose of the Job

Create previs versions of sequences and shots that help support the director’s intention via appropriate use of camera lenses &movement, composition, staging, motion blocking and editing.

Needs To Do

* Previs artists are tasked with producing creative &effective visual solutions to support both the story and technical requirements of films.

Needs To Know

* A good knowledge of film-making principles especially in regards to camera choices, clear staging and continuity cutting.
* A good knowledge of cinematic language, camera terminology and visual story-telling.
* A good knowledge of Maya is required including modelling, rigging, shaders etc.
* Knowledge and experience in stereoscopic film-making a plus
* a degree or equivalent in Computer Graphics, Animation, Film-making or other related course.

Needs To Be

* Pro-active (identify possible creative/technical problems with sequences).
* Creative (come up with visual solutions to best communicate the director’s intent to the audience).
* Efficient (find the fastest, simplest way to communicate an idea for discussion).
* Able to take direction and feedback well from a supervisor.
* Team oriented.
* Adaptable and flexible (previs can take many different forms both creatively and technically depending on the needs of the production).
* Accepting of change, multiple iterations and even tossing out of ideas and starting from scratch.

Measures of Performance

* On time delivery.
* Creative, story-focussed, film-making solutions.

If you are interested please apply online at http://www.dneg.com/jobs/previs_artist_282.html

We look forward to hearing from you!

Feb 01

Interactive video soft tool

Posted in: Professional Talk

Hi everybody, we are a Russian software team Actio.tv, developed a software for interactive (clickable) video creation. Actio editor. I know it sounds like advertisements, but it is not! Any technology has to fight its way to the market and it is professionals to decide if this tech or tool worth living or not. That is why I’m writing this post. Please help us with your advices and support. It is obviously unbelievably difficult task to enter the market with a new tool for video editing, although it is very innovative like ours. So what you can do with our software?

Any object on the video can be clickable.
Put any flash programs inside your video.
Add additional info for any object or person
Make non-linear adventure video games or astonishing advertisements.
Make any objects in the video clickable.
Make non-linear video with multiple story-lines.
Upload your videos and distribute it over the web for free

Any object on the video can be clickable.

Give Actio Editor a try to see how easy it can be to edit and create clickable videos!

Thanks for your help! And I hope our software will be helpfull to you.

Feb 01

Nexus Create Unpredictable Life for Honda

Posted in: Industry News

[NEWS=”http://www.cgnews.com/wp-content/uploads/nexus_honda_thumb.jpg”]30025[/NEWS]Leading animation studio Nexus, and their directing duo Smith & Foulkes, have created another piece of animation fantasy for Wieden + Kennedy and the new Honda Jazz. ‘This Unpredictable Life’ is a breathtaking mix of volumetric lighting and magical particles bringing to life a beautiful fantasy world through which we take an amazing trip.

Cleverly playing out the central premise of the ad, that life is an unknowable journey, the film combines simplicity and sophistication with an uncomplicated but engaging central character starkly contrasted against a series of deliciously complex and abstract backgrounds. Set to a cinematic poem, we follow our hero as he swoops and wheels through life’s journey.

The film begins with a giant shoal of babies. Our camera picks out one individual and so begins our hero’s odyssey. We follow him through all the trials and tribulations of childhood and teens, right through to coming of age as an adult, falling in love and having a family of his own.

hrough frame after frame of stunning animation the film culminates in the arrival of the Honda Jazz itself. The seats fly into frame neatly catching our character’s family and all their attendant paraphernalia to showcase the car’s flexibility and the multitude of seat formations.

Ben Cowell, ‘Head of 3D’ at Nexus, said, “From my very first discussions about the ambitions for this project it was clear that it would be one of the biggest challenges we have faced at Nexus. When describing the vision for the environments the phrase ‘Painting with Particles’ was used on more than one occasion, often in conjunction with the word ‘epic’.

Every project raises the bar for the studio; in this case we would be creating 60 seconds of epic volumetric environments rendered in HD and all of which had to be believably 3D. The studio pulled together and we are really happy with the final result.

Nexus directors Smith & Foulkes added, “The team at Wieden + Kennedy asked us to visually interpret their beautifully poetic script, a fantastic opportunity of endless possibilities that doesn’t come along very often. How can you encapsulate the unpredictable randomness of growing up, falling in love and starting a family. In 60 seconds.

Our simple plan centred the story on a hero who would encounter all manner of epic silliness as he navigates his way through the different stages of his life. From a playful stream of babies, he travels through the distractions of childhood and the responsibilities of adulthood, spontaneously reacting to whatever life throws at him. The choreography of his journey was very important, the constant flow of his movement through unexpected twists and turns reflecting life’s unpredictable nature.

Visually, we wanted our hero to be a very simply designed character contrasting with a highly complex world. We used layers of particles to immerse him in a mysterious dreamlike space. Our 3D team were somewhat annoyed when they realised just how much of their painstaking background work ended up completely shrouded in a mysterious dreamlike space. But its nice to know its there.”

About Nexus
Nexus is an independent production company and animation studio based in London, with a worldwide reputation for creative storytelling across a range of media. Nexus work includes an Oscar nominated short, Grammy nominated and MTV Award winning music videos, and Cannes Grand Prix, Gold Lions, and Black D&AD pencil winning commercials.

Nexus is dedicated to the development of unique voices in filmmaking, with a roster of directing talent working with multi-disciplinary skills in animation, live-action and interactive media. The studio’s production, animation, post-production staff and facilities support them, with Nexus being a home for both the people and the technology to create some of the most innovative work in entertainment and branded content. Nexus brings together artists and technical talent to work in a collaborative atmosphere to make exciting, talked about creative content.

CREDITS
Client: Honda
Title: This Unpredictable Life
Length: 60”, (30” & 20” cutdowns)

Agency: Wieden and Kennedy London
Creative Directors: Sam Heath, Chris Groom
Agency Producer: James Guy

Production Company: Nexus
Directors: Smith & Foulkes
Nexus ECD: Chris O Reilly
Exec Producer: Julia Parfitt
Producer: Tracey Cooper
CG Supervisor: Ben Cowell
Animation: Nexus
Production Manager: Jo Bierton

Compositing: Time Based Arts

Sound Design: Aaron Reynolds @ Wave
Music: Bruno Coulais

3D Animation
Michael Greenwood
Mark Davies
Eoin Coughlan
Keith Ribbon
Alberto Lara
Stuart Doig
Reece Millidge
Antoine Bourruel
Welles Bussett

Concept Artist: Ronald Kurniwan
Further Design: Blind Salida, Chris Martin

3D Modelling:
Matt Clark
James Hardingham
Dan Crossland
Ben Merrick
Andrew Hickinbottom
Dara Cazamea

Matte Painting:
Geoffroi Ridel
Florian Casper

Lighting and Rendering:
Michael Greenwood
Mark Davies
Matt Clark
Jay Harwood
Jerome Haupert
Richard Moss
Wayne Kresil
Anthony Arnoux
Ben Blundell

VFX TD
Ludovik Boden
Rodi Kaya
Michal Firkowski
Richard Moss
Mattias Muller
Hristo Velev

Rigging: Iker J de los Mozos
Pipeline TD: Mark Tsang
Studio Systems Support: Patrick Hearn
Render Support: Callum Welsh

RELATED LINKS
www.nexusproductions.com

Feb 01

Alexander Chen: “Conductor”

Posted in: Alexander Chen, automation, Conductor, flash, General, HTML5, Javascript, MTA, MTA.me, New York subway system, nyc, stringed instrument, train

Interactive Designer and Google Creative Lab’s own Alexander Chen reinvented the subway map of New York City into an interactive, real-time instrument at mta.me. By utilizing the MTA’s actual subway schedule, each departing train is graphically represented — beginning its journey independently and assuming a place in the symphony at large. The piece extracts data from the MTA’s public API and visualizes every motion of the New York City transit system, while steadily continuing in a 24 hour loop. In his own words:

“The piece follows some rules. Every minute, it checks for new trains launched from their end stations. The train then moves towards the end of the line, with its speed set by the schedule’s estimated trip duration. Some decisions were made for musical, aesthetic, and technical reasons, such as fading out routes over time, the gradual time acceleration, and limiting the number of concurrent trains. Also, I used the weekday schedule. Some of these limitations result in subtle variations, as different trains are chosen during each 24-hour loop.”

However, according to Chen, the map is not entirely accurate and while the train departing time is on par with reality, the map is mostly an exercise in creativity. Moreover, the visuals are based on Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 diagram.

Posted on Motionographer

Feb 01

Planets on the Sky with Breakdown

Posted in: Demo Reels!

Hi@ all,
here my 2 new videos! Give me some Feedback please!
Canon EOS 500D, After Effects, Photoshop

After Effects, Trapcode Form, Optical Flares, Apologize Piano Edit! Watch it HD:cool:

Feb 01

Fubar Platoon meets Animal Farm A Motion Comic Animation

Posted in: Industry News

[NEWS=”http://www.cgnews.com/wp-content/uploads/fubar_dog_chief_thumb.jpg”]30023[/NEWS]Fubar is a short film best described as Platoon meets Animal Farm. An epic socio-political drama driven with a visual narrative, Fubar is a motion comic animated film and is the creation of visual effects supervisor and Director Hasraf HaZ Dulull. Fubar is sponsored by London based technology innovator The Foundry and has been created completely using The Foundrys Nuke compositing tool, and still photography with camera projections.

Hasraf HaZ Dulull approached The Foundry last year about creating a short film entirely inside nuke; utilising the powerful 3d compositing environment to create a sandbox film making environment.

Nuke product managers Richard Shakleton and Matt Plec supported the idea and provided support with licenses and the supply of all latest nuke builds to facilitate the production of the film. This process allowed the film to develop alongside the development of Nuke and its tools, ensuring Fubar became a testing tool as well as a short film.

The visual narrative itself was inspired by the short film La-Je-Tee by Chris Marker; which later became the Hollywood film 12 Monkeys. It was this idea of having still photography to drive a visual narrative for a film, to keep the audience engrossed throughout, is how the idea for Fubar was born.

Here director HaZ explains the process behind the making of this unusual short film:

I said to myself if I was to make a film with a visual narrative device like La-Je Tee today how would I do it with the vfx tools available? says HaZ. Todays generation wants to see things in the Z space and not just X and Y like a traditional image or comic book, they want to see form and feel like they can touch it!

using VFX technology such as Nuke allowed me to push this visual narrative device to another level, I was able to dimentionalise what was usually 2D into a 3D feel and introduce a new up to date version of the visual narrative device used in La-Ja-Tee and motion comic films.

Attachment 11337

The film started off as previz produced roughly by using photography of miniature models and placed on cards in nukes 3d space, with a camera to block out the scenes, to start the foundation of sandbox idea.

The previz turned into postviz, where the look started to get fleshed out and animated elements were added and animation inside Nuke generated. (eg: using warp and displacement tools to create animated explosions and fire).

Since this was all done with compositing tools and a compositors mindset the postviz evolved into a visual style, a style which takes motion comics ( e.g: the cobal story segment on the inception DVD) to the next level and dimentionalising a 2d style into a style with depth and energy.

A teaser with the postvis shots was shown at IBC 2010 in Amsterdam as part of a show and tell presentation with The Foundry. The teaser was received really well and many thought what was shown was the final shots.

From the post-vis the final look and feel of the film was found and not a single CG render required and was done really fast, allowing different things to be tried out in 3d space with a camera.

The workflow was very simple take as much photography using a canon slr camera on a white background and then use nukes Roto and paint tools to extract and place on cards. Nukes keying tools made it possible to extract details from the photo shoots of the cats and dogs as well as researched images.

Then the rest is in creating the world and the imagination of the film inside nuke. It was like being a director, DOP, focus puller, set designer and vfx artist all in one go inside one sandbox environment. There really isnt any limit on what went into the shots to create an epic grand feel to the film.. If there was a need for 20 helicopters and 30 marines I just went and shot loads of angles and poses of the marines and helicopters and then straight into nuke.

For certain things I was able to get some low polygon models made from a freelancer artist and he would export objs and I would project the photography back on top Nuke was able to handle geometry with projections, vfx elements like smoke, fire, rain, dust with warp distort operations and tons of cards and camera with motion blur and lens effects all in one compositing environment and a single render pass generated at the end the final shot.

Attachment 11338

At the end of the day I am using the most popular compositing tool in the industry to not just paint pretty pictures but to create a visual narrative device to tell a story, and use Nukes 3D compositing tool as a film makers sandbox to make ideas happen fast, efficiently and most of all in a fun creative way with the tools and features right out of the nuke box.. the only limit is my imagination.

Fubar is sponsored by The Foundry with the remit that the whole film is created inside Nukes 3D compositing space. All elements were shot on a Canon 450D using still photography of miniature models and locations which later became digital matte paintings for environments projected onto geometry. Additional sponsorship includes Frishlluft the makers of the Lens Care plugin which was used heavily inside of nuke to support the cinematography.

Fubar the short film will be released in July 2011.

CREDITS 
Director: Hasraf HaZ Dulull 
Producers: Hasraf HaZ Dulull and Dan Dixon
 Executive Producers: Simon Jones, Philipp Spöth (Frishluft), Richard Shakleton and Matt Plec (The Foundry) 
Voice Over : Dean Jagger
 VFX Support Artist: Martin Woodburn and Janice Plec 
Digital Photography: May Ngo, Hasraf HaZ Dulull, Geof Wolfenden and Steve Moulsher
 Digital Matte Painter: Francesca Bini 
Digital Scanning of Miniatures: Duncan Lees (4DMax) 
VFX, Animation and Compositing: Hasraf HaZ Dulull 
Editor : Deelan Sital Music / Score: Luis Almau

Attached Thumbnails

Feb 01

ShapeShifting with Charlex

Posted in: 1

ShapeShifting with Charlex

A dark car speeding through the night bursts suddenly into a thousand pieces, forming brilliant metallic creatures on the surface of an alien planet. Such is the action in ShapeShifter, a short film entirely conceived and created by New York studio Charlex. Here’s my article at fxguide about how the film, directed by Charlex founder Alex Weil and narrated by Gabriel Byrne, came to be.

Graduate/ Junior 3D Animator

Tronic Studio: Esquire

The Vacuum: New Site + updates

Previs Artist @ Double Negative

Interactive video soft tool

Nexus Create Unpredictable Life for Honda

Alexander Chen: “Conductor”

Planets on the Sky with Breakdown

Fubar Platoon meets Animal Farm A Motion Comic Animation

ShapeShifting with Charlex

Who's in charge here?

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