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Film History & Appreciation
VFX Titans Remember Ray Harryhausen
"When we grieve Ray Harryhausen's passing, we are at least in part grieving perhaps the last living link to the earliest days of movie visual effects," says Creative COW's Debra Kaufman. She spoke to many of today's VFX giants who were inspired by Ray, including Phil Tippett, Richard Edlund, Jeffrey A. Okun and ILM Animation Director Hal Hickel, who says, "Ray Harryhausen's impact on an entire generation (several actually) of filmmakers cannot be overstated, each of them trying again and again to reproduce the wonder they first felt as a child watching Jason fight those skeletons."
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview
Debra Kaufman |
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Autodesk 3ds Max
Creating Animation for PBS - in High School
Lanier High School students work with 3D Studio Max creating a real world project thanks to a collaboration between Biscardi Creative Media Principal Walter Biscardi, Jr. and CDAT teacher Mike Reilly. Instead of just working on a class assignment, these students are creating something that will be part of a PBS documentary due to air in Fall 2013.
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview
Michael Reilly |
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Film History & Appreciation
Iron Man 3, Marvel & The Future of the Superhero
Victoria Alonso, Marvel Studios Executive Vice President of Visual Effects and Post Production, began her career in the early days of the digital visual effects industry. We had the wonderful opportunity to speak with Victoria about the Iron Man movies, post production's evolution, remote dailies and coloring on set, 4K & HFR, and keeping the modern superhero movie fresh.
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview
Debra Kaufman |
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MAYA
Iron Man 3: The Trixters Behind Tony Stark's Shiny New Armor
Seventy artists from Trixter worked an entire year to create a formidable 208 VFX shots for Marvel's Iron Man 3. Each new episode in the Iron Man saga details a slick new technology created by the ingenious Tony Stark, and the new installment does not disappoint! Combining the hard surface geometry of the Iron Man suit auto-assembly with the flexibility of the human body was one of the challenges that Trixter brought from previs to believable screen reality.
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview
Alessandro Cioffi |
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NAB Expo
NAB 2013: Autodesk Expands Its Reach
This year, Autodesk comes to NAB 2013 not simply as a successful company in the professional content creation space, but a player in the consumer market as well. SketchBook alone has 15+ million users and the use of Smoke has also now reached thousands of new customers. On the professional side, the newly debuted Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suite 2014 includes updated versions of Maya, 3ds Max, MotionBuilder, Mudbox, Softimage and Sketchbook Designer. Autodesk has also announced partnerships with Blackmagic Design and Technicolor.
Editorial, Feature
Debra Kaufman |
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NAB Expo
NAB 2013: Day Four With Ryan Salazar
Only Ryan's own words suffice, "WOW! Has this been a SPECTACULAR Show or what?!?! It was intense... I interviewed Vince Pace of the Cameron | Pace Group and Marc Hamaker of Autodesk, among many others during the Show! I feasted my eyes upon so many wonderful innovations that I can't wait for them to be released throughout the coming year! I had my own TV Crew, courtesy of NAB LIVE! 2013, and I came face-to-face with a shark! It was all I had hoped for and definitely MORE!"
Editorial, Feature
Ryan Salazar |
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NAB Expo
NAB 2013: Day Two With Ryan Salazar
Ryan Salazar fills Day Two of NAB Show with interviews. Ryan spoke with Marc Hamaker, Senior Product Marketing Manager of Creative Finishing at Autodesk, with Vince Pace, co-founder of the Cameron | Pace Group, and stopped by the Panasonic, Canon, GoPro and Camera Corps booths.
Editorial, Feature
Ryan Salazar |
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NAB Expo
Tips for Attending NAB 2013 From A Convention Veteran
Walter Biscardi tells us, "Once again, springtime is upon us, so of course, it's time for the annual National Association of Broadcasters convention. Last year y'all seemed to like the before you go tips, so may I present the 2013 edition of 'Tips from an NAB Veteran to make the best use of your time'."
Editorial, Feature
Walter Biscardi |
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Autodesk 3ds Max
Daniel Simon: Designing Fantasy Vehicles for the Movies
Daniel Simon, a native of Germany, had an intense education in automobile design at one of a handful of universities worldwide that have that specialty. Watching Star Wars Episode 1 opened Simon's eyes up to the possibility of designing fantasy vehicles. After seven years of drawing them for his book Cosmic Motors, he was picked by director Joe Kosinski to work on the vehicles in TRON: Legacy. That single job has evolved to a career designing vehicles for several Hollywood movies.
Editorial, Feature
Debra Kaufman |
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Art of the Edit
Unique VFX Challenges for Live One-take Shooting on Les Miz
Les Misérables, based on Victor Hugo's novel of crime and redemption in 19th Century France, has been a huge hit in theatres. Though it's gained acclaim for director Tom Hooper's technique of one-take shots of actors singing the songs, digital visual effects have provided many key elements. Les Miz represents a unique combination of in-camera effects, 2D and 3D compositing, adding elements, removing elements -- and not a single green screen shot.
Editorial, Feature
Debra Kaufman |
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Cinematography
The Hobbit & The Dawn of High Frame Rate Cinema
The technology wizards of the film/TV industry have been talking about High Frame Rate cinema for a long time; indeed, Douglas Trumbull's Showscan at 60 fps presaged the current interest over 30 years ago. But it took director Peter Jackson to take the plunge for mainstream cinema, declaring he would shoot The Hobbit in 48 fps to get momentum going. In about a year's time, manufacturers made the gear, theater exhibitors updated their movie theaters, and the studios prepared for one of the most audacious technology debuts that cinema has seen. Creative COW goes behind the scenes to see what it took for you to see The Hobbit in 48 fps.
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview
Debra Kaufman |
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Autodesk Smoke
IBC 2012: Autodesk
Autodesk is celebrating the 20th anniversary of Flame by launching Flame 2013, a totally re-architected and re-designed version of the groundbreaking platform. What's new? A new Creative Work Space, full timeline integration and a GPU/CPU model for improved performance. Autodesk is also showing its latest iteration of Smoke for Mac, which has been part of a massive public trial.
Editorial, Feature
Debra Kaufman |
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Cinematography
Behind the Lens: Paul Cameron ASC on Total Recall
Paul Cameron, ASC, just finished work on the remake of Total Recall, directed by Len Wiseman and starring Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel with Bill Nighy, Bryan Cranston, and John Cho. Cameron was last featured in Creative COW for his work on Henry's Crime. His previous credits include director Michael Mann's Collateral and Tony Scott's Man on Fire.
Feature
Paul Cameron, ASC |
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Autodesk 3ds Max
Autodesk 3ds max & Di-O-Matic's Facial Studio
Play Video
In this tutorial, Andrew Devis shows how easy it is to create, add materials to, animate and lip-sync a head in Autodesk 3ds max using the plug-ins from Di-O-Matic called 'Facial Studio' and 'Voice-O-Matic'. Andrew goes through the basics of this plug-in just to show how easy and quick it is to use and how powerful it can be - not to mention just how much time it can save you!
Tutorial, Video Tutorial
Andrew Devis |
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Autodesk 3ds Max
Create & Control Simple Eyes in 3ds Max: 4 - Manipulators
Play Video
In the fourth and final part of his tutorial series on creating and controlling simple eyes in 3ds Max, Andrew Devis shows how to use manipulators to control the upper and lower eyelids of the eyes we have created. To do this, Andrew demonstrates how to use wire parameters to link specific manipulators to more than one object such that the eye lids of both eyes are controlled by one set of manipulators to ensure that they are synchronised. In addition, Andrew also shows how to lock transforms to limit possible mistakes while animating.
Tutorial, Video Tutorial
Andrew Devis |
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Autodesk 3ds Max
Create & Control Simple Eyes in 3ds Max: 3-Control the Eyes
Play Video
In the third part of his first 3ds Max tutorial series for Creative Cow, Andrew Devis continues with the project by showing how to control both eyes with one controller. He demonstrates two methods to do this including one method that uses a object created and repositioned in the scene using constraints and with added depth for better visual feedback and selection. Andrew also demonstrates how to reset the transforms of the repositioned item so that it can be moved.
Tutorial, Video Tutorial
Andrew Devis |
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Autodesk 3ds Max
Create & Control Simple Eyes in 3ds Max: 2 - Create Controls
Play Video
In the second part of his first 3ds Max tutorial series for Creative Cow, Andrew Devis continues with the project by showing how to create point helpers to control the movement of the eyeball. In this lesson, Andrew covers issues such as using different layers to place mesh and controllers on, creating copies of items and, importantly, learning to use constraints to constrain the movement of an item.
Tutorial, Video Tutorial
Andrew Devis |
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Autodesk 3ds Max
Create & Control Simple Eyes in 3ds Max: 1 - Create the Eyes
Play Video
In this first 3ds Max tutorial in his new series, Andrew Devis shows how to create simple eyes in 3ds Max and then create the controllers needed to animate them simply and quickly. In this first part Andrew shows how to create a simple eye, make simple materials for the eye, how to apply those materials to specific parts of the eye and then how to create a simple solution for eye lids.
Tutorial, Video Tutorial
Andrew Devis |
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