185vfx | projects

Lighting Roundtable

By Rob ⋅ August 14, 2008 ⋅ 5 comments

If you’re planning to be at Siggraph this afternoon, stop by the lighting roundtable from 1:45 to 3:30pm today in Room 411. I’ll be part of the panel discussing lighting techniques for computer animated films and I’ve gotten permission to show some early production images from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. See you there.

Great Failed Ideas in Production

By Rob ⋅ August 6, 2008 ⋅ One comment

Planning to attend Siggraph next week? I’m organizing an interesting panel to discuss some great ideas that just didn’t work out in production, presented by some of the best in the business:

The stories behind the award-winning pictures that almost didn’t make it to the big screen. It’s often said that we learn more from our failures than our successes, yet we generally only share our success stories in the context of SIGGRAPH. This session gathers respected industry veterans to discuss great ideas that “failed” during the stress of real-world production.

The panelists include

John Dykstra (”Star Wars,” “Batman Forever,” “Spiderman”)
John Knoll (”Star Wars,” Pirates of the Caribbean”) — Industrial Light & Magic
Apurva Shah (”Ratatouille,” “Nemo,” “Toy Story 3″) — Pixar Animation Studios
Bill Westenhofer (”Golden Compass,” “Narnia”) — Rhythm & Hues

Official Siggraph listing here.

Conspiracy?

By Rob ⋅ March 14, 2008 ⋅ One comment

Pink Floyd released the “Take in Back” music video in 1994. I worked long hours on one shot in the video for two weeks, laying it off to tape only minutes before our producer had to board a red-eye flight to Florida for the editing session the next morning.

12 years later I received this email with this image and the following message:

(more…)

Annie Award Wins

By Rob ⋅ February 9, 2008 ⋅ One comment

Congratulations to our two Annie award winners for Surf’s Up. Deborah Carlson won the category of “Best Individual Achievement in Animated Effects” for her wave work and John Clark took the award for “Best Animation Production Artist” for his wave animation contributions. Well deserved!

VES Sneak Peek

By Rob ⋅ February 8, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

Tomorrow, Saturday, February 9 from 2-5pm, the Visual Effects Society will offer a sneak peek at some of this year’s nominated work. I’ll be involved in the Surf’s Up presentation.

Come join some of our Nominees as they present their submissions and answer questions. The categories presented include Outstanding Visual Effects in a Broadcast Series, Best Single Visual Effect of the Year, Outstanding Pre-Rendered Visuals in a Video Game and Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Motion Picture.

This is a free event and I understand it’s open to the public if you’d like to attend. You can download this flyer for more information.

A couple of Variety mentions

By Rob ⋅ February 6, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

Surf’s Up got a couple of nice mentions in Variety today. In the article “CGI Lighting get transformed“, David Cohen speaks to our documentary lighting look while highlighting the Academy award nominated Transformers. Thomas Mclean talks about our animated water in his article, “Digital water sends vfx sparks flying.”

More press

By Rob ⋅ February 1, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

Cnet’s Daniel Terdiman writes, “Why Sony Imageworks got an Oscar Nomination for Surf’s Up“. A detailed read about how we made the waves and camera in the film.

If you live in Los Angeles, we also might be on KTLA news at 10:00pm tonight. If it doesn’t air tonight, it will air early next week.