Ian Failes reviews a few of the special effects challenges on John McClane’s latest outting. You can’t make a Die Hard film without some crazy stunts, massive explosions and, these days, incredible visual effects. We talk to overall VFX supe Everett Burrell and several of the studios behind the previs and effects for four of the biggest Read MoreRead More
The animating team at Pixar discuss the challenge of rendering and shading Merida’s hair as well as keeping preserving the performance in CG animation. https://vimeo.com/59720996Read More
Need to have a repeating sound for an animation? Rather than set up audio points for each keyframe, use this technique of telling After Effects to play a sound or animation at every marker. Animating stuff that pops on and off of the screen in After Effects can become a pain as you’ll have to Read MoreRead More
From Rhythm and Hues Studios – here is a retrospective by Kevin B. Lee of animals from Babe, Garfield, Narnia, Life of Pi and others. http://vimeo.com/59284310Read More
Here’s a Photoshop tutorial (which can easily be replicated in After Effects) for turning the interesting cracked surface of a baking tray into the surface of a distant planet. Believe it or not, this photo planet was made entirely from a shot of a grubby old roasting tin and a simple but cunning combination of Photoshop Read MoreRead More
Looking to create a cool sci-fi rocket? In this episode of “5 Minute FX” you’ll find out the best quick way to do so using After Effects.Read More
Turning this daytime scene into night was inspired by the superb effects work in Lars von Trier’s film Melancholia. Shooting landscapes at night can present all sorts of challenges – and even more so if you were shooting a moving image and couldn’t use long exposures. For this reason, it can be preferable to get the shot Read MoreRead More
Josh Lester walks through steps of creating a simple TV off effect that old timers are familiar with from our ancient CRT TVs.Read More
Ian Failes chronicles the technological hurdles of realizing Katheryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty The helicopters – avoiding the game look Two full-sized stealth helicopters were built in London for the film. Initially, these were designed to be filmed on large gimbals for shots of the SEALs traveling to the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan and for exterior Read MoreRead More
In this tutorial Dave Scotland takes a look at selection methods within a compositing environment and discuss the importance of understanding them. Although its aimed at someone just starting out in the world of compositing, the more experienced artist will also find some valuable information. After a brief overview, and in order to bring greater Read MoreRead More
Jay P Morgan and theSlantedLens travel to Concord and Lexington area of Massachusetts to shoot elements for a composite showing a Revolutionary War battle scene. As a part of this lesson they will show how to create a rig that will allow your actor to lean forward as if he is running. This rig creates the Read MoreRead More
Will we ever have completely digital actors intermingling with real ones? Will we soon have feature films where dead actors are brought back to life through the miracle of CGI and motion capture? Will computer generated images of humans ever be so good that we can’t distinguish them from the real thing in any way? Read MoreRead More
