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‘Escape to Plastic Beach’ a multi level game that takes players to the new Gorillaz headquarters Plastic Beach was released by Parlophone on Monday, March 29th. The game will also include an MP3 download of Gorillaz’s new single ‘Superfast Jellyfish’ featuring De La Soul and Gruff Rhys, from their new album ‘Plastic Beach’.

Gorillaz Bassist, Murdoc the main protagonist in ‘Escape to Plastic Beach’, will also play the game and post scores which fans can view and compete against via a global high score table.

The game has 3 chapters ?‚àö√ë‚àö¬®with the first and second chapter being available through various gaming sites and Gorillaz.com. The third chapter is available to buy for ¬¨¬®¬¨¬£1:50 from gorillaz.com and includes a MP3 download of the band new single ‘Superfast Jellyfish’.

The first chapter of ‘Escape to Plastic Beach’ recreates events from the ?‚àö√ë‚àö‚â§Stylo’s video in a free-to-play game with Murdoc, 2D and Cyborg Noodle on their journey to Plastic Beach. The second chapter picks up where Stylo ends ?‚àö√ë‚àö¬® continuing underwater as Murdoc attempts to rescue his band mates. The third and final chapter is 3D pay-to-play game set on Plastic Beach. The Soundtrack to Chapter Three ?‚àö√ë‚àö‚â§Superfast Jellyfish’s is available for MP3 download at this point in the game.

‘Escape to Plastic Beach’ is the first game of its type merging numerous levels of the Flash and Unity formats along with an MP3 download. Gorillaz fans who have the ‘Experience Edition’ of Plastic Beach have access to all three chapters.

‘Superfast Jellyfish’ is also available for digital download now and a digital bundle will be released by Parlophone on May 9th.

Click here to access Escape to Plastic Beach.

“Hey! This is fan-tastic. Some top-notch gonk gaming company have made a Gorillaz game that you can play free online. It’s all based on Plastic Beach, and it features me, 2D and my cyborg Noodle! What’s even better is that if you pay the ¬¨¬®¬¨¬£1.50 for the last part, you get our new single “Superfast Jellyfish” chucked in, and that’s got ‘Super Furry’ Gruff and the De La Soul boys on it! El Caminos, Boogiemen, ghostly pirate ships, underwater chases, mines, fat cops and gun battles all wrapped up in some snazzy new gaming technology and a great new Gorillaz track too …I mean, what more could you want? Come n’ play with with me and Gorillaz on Plastic Beach and see how far that gets you…” – M. Niccals.

ABOUT THE GAME:
Chapters One and Two (free-to-play online game).
Out-run and out-gun the Fat Cop and Boogeyman and then evade the ruthless El Camino as the band makes its way to Plastic Beach. Mixing up retro-2D and 2.5D graphics with footage from the Stylo video, Chapter One puts the fate of the band in your hands. In Chapter Two, guide Murdoc in an underwater rescue of Cyborg Noodle and 2D, avoiding mines and hostile sea-life over three challenging levels of aquatic action into the waiting submarine.

Chapter Three (pay-to-play online game).
A full 3D (Unity) game in which Murdoc floats and fights above Plastic Beach HQ on his Doom Glider to foil 2D repeated escape attempts whilst battling ghost pirate ships. Featuring six game levels.

For more information, please contact:
For Gorillaz please contact RMP 02087497999 / ku.oc.nodnolpmrnull@sserp

Popularity: 12% [?]

Continuing a long history of VFX for feature films, Click 3X Creative Director and Head of VFX Mark Szumski led the team that crafted all of the VFX for the visually stimulating thriller After.Life, directed by Agnieszka Wojtowicz Vosloo and starring Christina Ricci. Click Creative Director Steve Tozzi and Head of CG Anthony Filipakis worked closely with Szumski to create a stunning array of FX, from the creation of alternate worlds to bizarre and fantastic character transformations.

“Our whole team came together for this one,” noted Click 3X owner Peter Corbett. “As we establish Click as a full-service digital studio capable of projects of any size, it’s important that we continue to work on major feature films, so we were thrilled when Agnieszka approached us to bring her terrifying and captivating visions to life.”

Click 3X’s VFX play an integral role in the film, composing important components of many grotesque and surreal scenes. Anna (played by Ricci), looks in the mirror in one scene to find herself emaciated and lifeless, a transformation wrought by Szumski. In another sequence, the CG team built, animated and lit massive tree roots that emerge from the ground to capture Anna. The same group created animated maggots that fill her mouth as the roots swallow her.

In one particularly impressive scene in which Anna removes her own heart from her split-open chest, Szumski showcases his ability to work in both the live-action and VFX realms.

Szumski directed the live-action shoot and spent hours of compositing in Flame to create blood elements on the starlet’s nude body. The Click 3X team also created an elaborate design for the open chest.

In a show of Click’s impressive range, the studio also created entire landscapes. One twisted point in the film finds Anna flung into Limbo, an alternate reality created entirely by Szumski and the CG team. Limbo is an amazing, otherworldly environment that conveys the sensation of being trapped between life and death, with surroundings that alternately appear to be dead or alive.

“After.Life was a blast to shoot,” stated Szumski. “Everyone stepped up to make this one happen, from Anthony’s CG team to Steve’s creative input to the cooperation of the director on every scene. I’m happy to be contributing to full-length feature work and hope to take more on in the very near future.”

About Click 3X:
New York-based Click 3X produces cutting-edge visual solutions for commercials, feature films, television, music videos, and broadcast clients around the globe. Founded in 1993, Click 3X has become one of the preeminent providers of innovative media content, housed in an environment led by artists, yet supported by one of the most technologically advanced digital studios in the industry.

With award-winning design, powerful visual effects, and a visionary animation team, Click 3X has worked on array of diverse highly-recognizable projects, including a series of films from academy-award winning directors like Jonathan Demme and Davis Guggenheim, a recent multimedia package for eight HD Time Warner spots, My Home 2.0, a five episode reality TV series for Verizon Fios, and a long line of recent commercials for major brands such as Sharp, Ford, and Goodyear.

CREDITS
Prod Company: Plum Productions
Director: Agnieszka Wojtowicz Vosloo
Editor: Niven Howie
Assistant Editor: Benjamin Howdeshell
Post Production Supervisor: Jonathan Ferrantelli

VFX Co: Click 3X
Head of VFX/ Creative Director: Mark Szumski
Head of CGI: Anthony Filipakis
Creative Director: Steve Tozzi
Executive Producer: Jason Mayo
Producer: Carson Hood
Head of Production: Jared Yeater
VFX Artist(s): Yoshiko Hirata, Jaime Aguirre, Peter Amante, Amanda Amalfi, John Budion
CGI Animator(s): Rob Dollase, Anderson Ko
CGI Lighting: Sung Kim
CGI Modeling & Rigging: Reeves Blakeslee
CGI Modeling & Texturing: Paul Liaw
CGI Animating: Susan Taffe
CGI Lighting: Grace Kim, Rafael Castelblanco
CGI Artist: Jongmoon Woo

Telecine: Technicolor
Colorist: Tim Stipan
Producer: Dana Bloder

RELATED LINKS

http://www.click3x.com/

Read more: http://www.trustcollective.com/portfolio/content/click3x_afterlife.php#ixzz0jeH508yO
Attribution: Written content created by TRUST: http://www.trustcollective.com
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Share Alike

Popularity: 66% [?]

For over 20 years, Barcelona-based Cromosoma has been a leader in TV programming, particularly with 2D cartoons. As a socially responsible company, Cromosoma has lead the way in children programming based on strong values and eye appealing high-quality 2D animation to become one of the top companies in the audiovisual sector in both Spain and Europe. Cromosoma is known for the quality of its productions and the rights derived from them in terms of broadcasting, publishing and merchandising.

Cromosoma went into co-production with Pontas, Television de Catalunya and Televisionn Espanola to create Asha, a 3D TV series of 52 episodes of 13 minutes each. The series explores the multicultural world we live in through the eyes of a bright young girl name Asha and her adventures with her friends.

Cromosoma team implemented their complete 3D animated series production pipeline in Autodesk Maya and to achieve a traditional cartoon look Cromosoma did rely on Maya’s powerful shader tree. ‘After several tests, we quickly decided to use Maya ramp shaders and the toon from PaintEffects to get the 2D look, this way we could control everything we needed for this production, do a good toon setup and have full control over it.” clarify Oscar Màûrquez.

Màûrquez, coordinator of the 3D department explained: ‘We had to increase our deliverable by completing 4 episodes of 13 minutes per month. After we updated our internal tools and the efforts of our artists; it was necessary to find a tool integrated in Maya to help us with the tedious work of lip sync so we could focus our energy on acting. Voice-O-Matic was the right choice.’

Voice-O-Matic automates lip sync animations with any 3D character rig in any language and help reduce production time drastically. Voice-O-Matic from Di-O-Matic is available as plug-in for Autodesk 3ds max, Autodesk Maya as well as Autodesk Softimage.

M?¬¨‚àûrquez and his team were able to easily implement Voice-O-Matic into their existing pipeline. ‘We had already done 10 episodes manually before implementing Voice-O-Matic and it was very easy to update our pipeline with Voice-O-Matic.” Willy Nuez, IT manager reveals: “During pre-production we had a chance to meet with the Di-O-Matic team, we brought to them an idea that could improve the integration of Voice-O-Matic into our production pipeline. A few days later, our wishes became reality with exactly what we needed. Now that’s customer service!”

Màûrquez concludes: “Not only did we manage to increase our productivity, but it allowed us to focus on other aspects of the series to improve the final product. What we liked most about Voice-O-Matic is that it can be set up easily, the lip sync of several characters can be done at the same time and we barely need to modify the animation curves. If you make a good setup and integrate it properly you can have very good results. Thanks to Voice-O-Matic, we could do all the lip sync we needed in the series with just 10 mouth shapes and only one control for the most extreme poses.’

Voice-O-Matic cost only 349$ and a trial version is available for download, try Voice-O-Matic to speed up your production pipeline like Cromosoma.

RELATED LINKS
www.cromosoma.com
www.asha.cat
www.di-o-matic.com

Popularity: 4% [?]

When ad agency The Brooklyn Brothers approached New York-based design and story-driven creative engagement studio, Loyalkaspar, about collaborating on a campaign for Insight Communication, the U.S. ninth largest cable operator (serving the Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana areas), they knew it would be a test on a number of levels. Not only was the idea creatively challenging, but given the project’s budget restrictions, it would also force them to rethink how to achieve the spectacular results the concept demanded.

”Everyone knows how it is these days: clients want double the work for less than half the budget,” Guy Barnett, Writer, Brooklyn Brothers says. ”And they don’t expect any drop in standards — theirs or ours. This job was even more extreme than usual. But we knew that in partnering with Loyalkaspar we could get it done, without sacrificing the quality of the work. I’m happy to say we were right. You don’t see the struggle to get the job done. All you see is effortless and innovative animation.”

In the end, Loyalkaspar jumped on board with reckless abandon and quickly arrived at a creative solution to work around the budget without compromising the creative, which included bringing in some animation assistance.

”We have a great relationship with The Brooklyn Brothers and love working with them,” says David Herbruck, Loyalkaspar Partner and Director of the ten spot campaign. ”The creative was so good that we didn’t want to simplify it and possibly water-down the end result.”

Because the spots demanded a volume of high-end 3D, Loyalkaspar partnered up with two of the best 3D boutiques out there — Magoo Studios, Soderhamnm, Sweden, and Galaxy 61, Brooklyn, NY.

”We’re worked with Galaxy 61 several times and I knew they had the chops to do this,” Herbruck adds. ”We had never worked with Magoo before but we’re great fans of their work. As luck would have it, this project coincided perfectly with their desire to break into the American market.”

Set to a beautifully hypnotic score by music house Nylon Studios, New York, all 10 of the spots use the Insight logo, which features a bundle of wires, as the catalyst to describe the different benefits their homegrown and customer-first philosophy. In each spot, wires stretch around the screen forming the visual accompaniment to the folksy voiceover — from rural farmlands to facilitating human connections at a cosmopolitan small business firm, the animation reinforces the brand’s score values of customer service, innovation and any appearance of corporate pretensions.

Click here to watch the Insight Communications spot.

About Loyalkaspar:
Recognizing that the process is just as important as the end result is just one of the ways design house Loyalkaspar (http://www.loyalkaspar.com) distinguishes itself from the creative herd. Clients return for that reason. Founded by directors David Herbruck and Beat Baudenbacher, Loyalkaspar has quickly earned a reputation among advertising creatives and network executives as a creative hub where daring creative and innovative execution intersect, resulting in engaging brand experiences.

CREDITS
Client: Insight Communications
Project: 10 spot branding campaign
SVP Brand: Pam Euler Halling
President and Chief Operating Officer: Dinni Jain

Agency: The Brooklyn Brothers, New York

Production/Design: Loyalkaspar, New York
EP / Director: David Herbruck
CD / Designer: Beat Baudenbacher
Senior Producer: Melissa August
Production: Bullet, New York
Producer: Patrick Oliver

Music/Sound Design/Audio Post: Nylon Studios, New York

RELATED LINKS
www.loyalkaspar.com
www.thebrooklynbrothers.com

Popularity: 3% [?]

Kommitted Director Nathan McGuinness, in collaboration with the VFX pros at Asylum and the Kaplan Thaler Group, lensed a recent :30 promoting the ease of travel on Continental Airlines.

The spot, which McGuinness shot in Buenos Aires, is the second he has done for the world-class airliner of late. Continental was so impressed with Features, a beautiful spot highlighting the company’s newest-in-the-industry jet fleet, that they rushed back to McGuinness to shoot their latest effort.

Seamless features the classic suit-and-tie, rolling-luggage businessman strolling down a vibrant urban street – only the street continually morphs, from New York to London to Shanghai and beyond, as the man strolls along it.

The effects – which are the masterwork of Asylum VFX Supervisor Paul O’Shea – seamlessly shift from one city and culture to the next. When the international traveler approaches a newspaper stand, the kiosk, along with the paper that he buys, the attendant he buys it from, and the currency he buys it with, fluidly morphs through a half dozen incarnations.

“Nathan is a special talent, able to impress clients in multiple ways,” notes Kommitted EP Marc Siegel. “His ability to shoot the live action with the VFX in the back of his head is almost like a sixth sense. Whatever it is, he is the rare talent who can draw clients in again and again by hitting their exact vision with perfectly orchestrated efforts.”

Production company Kommitted Films was founded in 2005 by Director Nathan McGuinness, the Academy Award and Bafta nominated Co-Founder/Creative Director of the VFX company, Asylum. Shortly after, in 2006, veteran Executive Producer Marc Siegel was brought on to expand the directorial roster, feature film slate, and music video presence. Over a short time period, Kommitted Films has numerous recent high-profile spots for Target (peterson milla hooks/MN), Nintendo (Leo Burnett/Chicago) and Blackberry (RIM) (Arc Worldwide/Chicago).

Kommitted Films is uniquely positioned to direct and produce commercials, music videos, features and emerging media content for web and mobile platforms.

CREDITS
Client: Continental Airlines
Spots Title: Seamless
Air Date: March 2010

Agency: Kaplan Thaler Group
CD(s): Jack Cardone, Michael Grieco
Managing Director, Integrated Broadcast Production: Lisa Bifulco
Producer: Tim LeGallo

Prod Company: Kommitted Films
Director: Nathan McGuinness
EP: Marc Siegel
Producer: Jodi Fisher

Post: Asylum Visual Effects
VFX Supervisor: Paul O’ Shea
Flame Artist(s): Paul O’ Shea, Miles Essmiller, Tim Davies
Pre-Vis Artist: Vyacheslav Anishchenko
Editor(s): Nick Lofting, Kosta Saric
Head of Design: Simon Cassels
Designer(s): Tony Meister, Aaron Benoit
Matte Painting: Shannan Burkley
Lead Roto Supervisor: Elissa Bello
Roto Artist(s): Zac Chowdhury, Midori Witsken, Kenneth Lui, Stephanie Ide, Daniel Linger
EP: Michael Pardee
VFX Producer: Mark Kurtz
VFX Coordinator: Jennie Burnett

RELATED LINKS
www.kommittedfilms.com

Read more: http://www.trustcollective.com/portfolio/content/kommitted_continental.php#ixzz0jBENH1rm
Attribution: Written content created by TRUST: http://www.trustcollective.com
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Share Alike

Popularity: 3% [?]

DETOX, a brand-new hybrid production boutique in New York, has officially launched. Headed by Founder/Creative Director Barney Miller, alongside experienced industry pros Andy Hollander, Co-Creative Director, Rachelle Way, Head of Production, and Alice Mintzer, Creative Development, DETOX features a roster of top creative and emerging talent whose professional backgrounds span the spectrum of production and post.

DETOX’s services include live-action production, graphics packaging, CGI and animation. The hybrid production company is equipped to execute integrated campaigns including commercials, viral and web, as well as music videos.

DETOX has already wrapped up production on several commercials and music videos, including a hilarious integrated campaign via Hofstetter + Partners/Agency212 for Henson Alternative’s “Stuffed and Unstrung,” the extraordinary live puppet show unleashing Henson Puppeteers for adult-only audiences. The campaign, featuring both broadcast and web spots, began airing on March 7, 2010. Directed by Barney Miller, the spots are currently making a buzz on viral charts and airwaves alike, garnering critical praise including recent honors as Creativity’s “Pick of the Day.”

Mike Rovner, Creative Director, Hofstetter + Partners/Agency212, remarks: “Working with DETOX on the [Henson Alternative] campaign was a dream. I haven’t met a better, happier EP than Rachelle Way, and Barney, who already has his share of hilarious moments as a cutter, is about to explode as a comedy director.”

“What I’m bringing to the production industry comes from a creative editorial standpoint,” says Miller, best known as a premiere commercial & music video editor and co-founder of Company X Edit. “My career in post, along with years of experience directing, informs the workflow of DETOX.”

Four directors comprise the inaugural DETOX roster: Barney Miller, Bruce Ashley and Terence Ziegler, with recently signed talent Aaron Brown rounding out the company’s core creative team. DETOX is currently ramping up its roster, with more director signings to be announced in the coming months.

DETOX’s experienced and proven core team has worked on an array of smart brands including Coke, VW, Dasani, American Express, Kohl’s, Wal-Mart, Colgate, and Ralph Lauren; feature films, including “Waitress” and “Serious Moonlight;” in the music realm, projects and music videos for Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, Lenny Kravitz, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and, most recently, the music video for the Oscar scoring theme song from “Crazy Heart.”

DETOX opens with a mission to elevate the production standard for agencies and clients, while accommodating budgets without compromising the creative. With its core creative team heavily rooted in virtually every aspect of postproduction, DETOX offers an innovative workflow with unrivaled production value, especially in light of today’s economic realities.

“We have the know-how and talent to materialize client ideas, and the foresight to eliminate hiccups in production, which ultimately saves our clients money,” comments Miller. “Too often, with the traditional production model, waste and compartmentalization restrict creative capabilities. We have the antidote.”

Reflecting on Henson Alternative, Rovner attests to the DETOX production model: “Whenever I have a tough challenge, or just want to have a blast working on really great creative content — with no headaches — there’s probably only one place to go now. Everyone at DETOX takes incredible care of your concept from the moment they get on board: they coddle it, caress it, and make it sing by the time you’re in color correct.”

Miller proudly adds, “We shot the [Henson] broadcast spot and all the virals in one day without having to rush. We knew exactly how to shoot, making the transition to post seamless and free of technical challenges.”

Additionally, DETOX bolsters its “under-one-roof” model via strategic partnerships with NYC-based allies Company X Edit, Sugarbox Studios and Shout It Out Loud Music. The combination of these creative forces offers clients the incentive of an ultra-tailored approach to the entire scope of content creation: from shooting to post, color correction, CGI & effects, finishing, music, sound design and mixing.

Miller concludes: “Having worked with some of the industry’s best directors as an editor and, through the years, directing numerous projects, DETOX is truly a natural evolution of my experience on both sides of the spectrum. When production works in tandem with post, everything goes smoother and, ultimately, the creative works.”

Meet the Principals of DETOX:
Barney Miller, Founder/Creative Director, DETOX: As co-founder of Company X Edit, Barney has been editing award-winning spots for close to twenty years. Some of the brands he has worked on include VW, American Express, Coca-Cola, Sprite, McDonald’s, Avon, and AT&T. His directing experience includes major label music videos, commercials, shorts films, and various animation projects.

Andy Hollander, Co-Creative Director, DETOX: Andy has been composing scores for feature films for the last 10 years, including the hit film “Waitress” and, most recently, the Meg Ryan film “Serious Moonlight.” He has written and/or produced tracks for Your Vegas, David Johansen, and White Rabbits among others. He opened Sugarbox Studios in 2006 and is now a partner/composer with Shout It Out Loud Music, where he’s worked on numerous national campaigns including American Express, Quaker, Verizon, and the 2008 You Vote Campaign.

Rachelle Way, Head of Production, DETOX: Rachelle served as Executive Producer for Company X Edit from 2003 to 2009, where she helped build a small boutique shop into one of New York’s most robust editorial houses. Rachelle previously worked at RhinoEdit and Plum Productions in Los Angeles. Additionally, Rachelle is active in the commercial production community, serving as President of the NY Chapter of AICE and Treasurer of the International AICE Board.

Alice Mintzer, Creative Development, DETOX: Alice spent 10 years as an Executive Producer at Ogilvy where she was in charge of the American Express account, before becoming a freelance consultant. Prior to that, Alice was a Senior Producer at Lowe & Partners. In addition to DETOX, Alice is currently developing a TV series.

DETOX Director Reels:
Barney Miller

Bruce Ashley

Terence Ziegler

Aaron Brown

Popularity: 3% [?]

Custom Film Effects, a long-time provider of visual effects services for feature films, handled all of the visual effects and animation work for “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” a mostly live-action adaptation of the first book in Jeff Kinney’s illustrated kids’ novel series. 20th Century Fox released the film, which opened March 19th.

To create the movie’s 200 visual effects and animation shots, CFE Visual Effects Supervisor Mark Dornfeld (also the company’s founder) supervised on set in Vancouver, and brought the film’s Animation Supervisor, Mike Murphy, in-house to CFE for the six-month shot production period. There, Murphy and the CFE team worked closely with director Thor Freudenthal to develop and execute a unique technique for animating Kinney’s beloved illustrations.

While the characters are live action for the majority of the movie, they appear as animated versions of themselves as lifted from Kinney’s original drawings, against live-action sets in several sequences, and against animated pages of the book’s diary format in opening title and end-credit sequences.

“Our goal was to ground the movie visuals in the book,” said Dornfeld.
“Jeff created iconic images and this was the first time he had let them out of his own hands. We needed to respect and preserve them, and we were really pleased that both Jeff and Thor were so present in the animation process. It was a great collaboration.”

Murphy explained, “Jeff’s characters are drawn so particularly, with very clean vector art lines. If anything was off it looked completely wrong. We found that if we just brought those lines to life, as soon as a character paused, it would die.”

To keep that from happening, Murphy and Dornfeld came up with a technique they called the ‘living line,’ where they would draw lines on paper and capture them with an old-school down shooter still camera, then take the shots through a proprietary software renderer developed at CFE to make computer-based lines that looked like they had been drawn in pencil.

Characters were then animated and composited digitally using Autodesk Maya, Eyeon Fusion, Adobe After Effects and Illustrator – a faster, more efficient process that resulted in more subtle nuances in characters’ actions.

Rather than working from storyboards to block out each of the movie’s 17 animated sequences, Freudenthal and Murphy, former CalArts roommates, designed the sequences collaboratively, figuring out how each character would come to life. Said Murphy, “We know each other so well that we were able to work in shorthand, lobbing ideas back and forth – What could happen here? What’s the right acting gag that works with these characters, but doesn’t move them too much or break the model? Thor would approve the idea and we’d take it right into animation.”

In addition to creating animation sequences (including one with new characters, hand drawn by Kinney specifically for the movie and animated by CFE), CFE also created ‘invisible’ visual effects to extend sets and replace backgrounds, turn sequences shot in summer into winter, and to establish a moldy piece of cheese as a key storytelling element.

Dornfeld said, “The cheese actually plays a fairly important role. It’s woven in and out of the story to mark the passage of time and highlight important events. We applied a pseudo-time lapse technique with stop motion and motion control to transition the cheese and its surroundings into different states – from growing mold to weathering snow, rain and summer heat.”

Custom Film Effects’ team of 18 animators and artists worked on “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” for six months in the company’s Los Angeles studio.

About Custom Film Effects
Custom Film Effects is a leading feature film visual effects and animation company located in Burbank, CA. Founded in 1999 by Visual Effects Supervisor Mark Dornfeld, the company has established a reputation for its artistry, consistent execution, and flexibility in approaching projects.

Custom Film Effects’ body of work encompasses more than 300 feature films including “3:10 to Yuma,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotted Mind,” “Gangs of New York,” and other top features that showcase its artful’ invisible effects,’ designed to transform environments, time periods, characters and elements in subtle ways.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Winter can be tough – snow, ice and perpetual darkness are an invitation to stay safe and warm indoors. But recreating the winter elements is an awesome challenge for a post house, as Absolute shows in a recent spot promoting the NHL Mobile feature for Verizon Wireless.

Tarmac, finished in collaboration with McCann Erikson and Believe Media, starts with a panoramic shot of a snowbound airport and then switches to an interior view of the terminal, where crowds of weary travellers prepare to hunker down for the evening after their flights are cancelled.

?‚àö√ë‚àö‚â§It a solid sheet of ice out there’s, the airline announces. Two marooned and opposing NHL teams ?‚àö√ë‚àö¬®the Washington Capitals and the Philadelphia Flyers ?‚àö√ë‚àö¬® are hardly content to simply sit out the storm, however, and they soon lace up their skates for an impromptu outdoor hockey match, skating ferociously beneath the wings of an immobile airliner while passing the puck around a mobile obstacle course of airport vehicles.

Absolute, led by CG Artist Minh Nguyen Ba, brought this winter wonderland to life by creating the icy tarmac, the zooming hockey puck, and the players skates in CG. Lead Flame ops Dirk Greene and Daniel Morris led a team that created the snow FX populating the outdoor environment. Additional FX included the creation of a stack of errant suitcases for one daring hockey player to leap in his pursuit of the puck.

Founded in 2004 Absolute is a high-end VFX studio working within the commercial, emerging media, music video, and film communities. With offices in New York and London, Absolute over the years has collected numerous industry accolades including two BTAA awards, a D&AD pencil, a Cannes Lion, an APA Collection Diamond, three Andy wins and an MTV video statue.

CREDITS
Client: Verizon
Spot Title: Tarmac, Encore
Airdate: January 2010

Agency: McCann Erikson, NY
ECD: George Dewey
Group CD(s): Chris Quillen, Mike Joiner
CD: Yana Goodstein
AD: Yana Goodstein
Copywriter: Mike Joiner
Director Verizon Production: Michele Ferone
Producer: Eric Tao

Production Company: Believe Media/LA
Director: Gerard De Thame
Producer: Fabyan Daw

Editorial: jumP/NY
Editor: Michael Saia
Managing Director: Dee Tagert

Telecine: Nice Shoes

Post VFX: Absolute NY
Lead Flame: Dirk Greene, Daniel Morris
Additional Flame: Nathan Kane, Krispy Cornwell
Lead CG: Minh Nguyen Ba

Audio Post: Blast NY
Mixer(s): Gerard Collins, Joe O’Connell

RELATED LINKS
www.absolutepost.com

Read more: http://www.trustcollective.com/portfolio/content/absolute_verizon.php#ixzz0idAyVb53
Attribution: Written content created by Absolute & TRUST: http://www.trustcollective.com
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Share Alike

additional source: Absolute website

Popularity: 3% [?]

Shotgun Software and Tweak Software today released an integration package for seamless interoperation of their VFX and animation production tools, Shotgun and RV. The combined solutions make it fast and easy for studios to track, organize, play, and review their work.

This integration provides one-click viewing of media in RV right out of Shotgun, and provides Shotgun-aware tools inside of the RV player. “I was an early adopter of both Shotgun and RV and used them successfully on a feature animation project. I always thought it would be great to have the tools work together, but now that they are integrated, the result is even better than I imagined. Once you can easily compare versions of a shot in RV directly from Shotgun, or automatically launch a shot in context of its neighboring shots, you can’t go back and work the old way,” said Stephane Deverly, C.T.O, Duran Duboi.

Tweak Software is the developer of RV, the next generation image and sequence viewer for VFX and animation artists. Shotgun Software develops Shotgun, a flexible and scalable web-based project management system designed for digital production studios. Both products have been adopted by leading studios around the world.

‘The big shops have invested millions of dollars to build seamless pipelines. Tweak and Shotgun are working together to bring the same level of polished integration to everyone else.’ said Seth Rosenthal, Co-founder of Tweak.

‘When you study the daily workflow of artists, supervisors and production staff, it becomes clear there should be no discernable separation between production tracking and review’, said Don Parker, Co-Founder and CEO of Shotgun Software. ‘We teamed up with Tweak to solve this issue for our clients, and we are thrilled with the results.’

‘Shotgun is the backbone of our production tracking system. Together with RV integration, our artists will now be able to play back media from within the Shotgun interface giving faster and easier access to clips than ever before,’ said Mike Romey, Pipeline Supervisor, Zoic Studios.

Key features of Shotgun+RV integration include:
?Ä¢ Move quickly from navigating tracking data in Shotgun to viewing or comparing one or more clips in RV.
?Ä¢ Launch Shotgun-aware playback from anywhere in the pipeline (from within Shotgun, via links in email, IM/Chat, todo lists, web pages, etc.)
?Ä¢ Deep link into Shotgun from RV to view metadata or create notes
?Ä¢ Update playlists in RV to use the latest cut data from editorial
?Ä¢ Load neighboring shots to see shots in context of the cut
?Ä¢ Display Shotgun metadata from right in the RV player
?Ä¢ Swap in high-res frames, QuickTime movies, or alternate media
?Ä¢ Easily Trim or reveal handles and slates

The new integration module will be provided at no additional cost to users of both products. Users can try out the new features by using a fully functional demo database and matching media package. Watch a video tour of the new features and sign up for a free evaluation here: http://www.shotgunsoftware.com/rv

About Shotgun Software
Shotgun Software was founded in 2006 by a group of visual effects professionals to build production tracking and pipeline solutions. The founding members worked together on a major studio animated feature, and are developing Shotgun to fill the mounting industry need for a commercially viable system for efficiently managing increasingly complex digital production projects. Shotgun is actively developing the system in close collaboration with more than 100 industry studios, including Digital Domain, Framestore, Dr. D, and Zoic Studios.

About Tweak Software
San Francisco, CA-based Tweak Software was founded in 2007 to develop tools that address real-world production needs of VFX and animation professionals. The Tweak partners are Jim Hourihan, Seth Rosenthal and Alan Trombla. Jim Hourihan is the recipient of two Sci-Tech Academy Awards and is best known for developing Dynamation, the first commercial particle system that was subsequently incorporated into Autodesk Maya software. Hourihan, Rosenthal and Trombla spent many years at Industrial Light and Magic where they developed many tools and techniques still in use at the facility today.

RELATED LINKS
www.shotgunsoftware.com
www.tweaksoftware.com

Popularity: 3% [?]

Artist owned-and-operated bi-coastal effects boutique Brickyard VFX recently created CG cars that appear alongside live-action counterparts and added graphics to other live action cars in a new NASCAR-themed ad campaign for Toyota Racing that spans TV, print and the web.

Titled ‘Sponsafier,’ the campaign invites NASCAR fans to get involved with the season and drivers by ?‚àö√ë‚àö‚â§sponsifying’s a Toyota Racing car. A series of three hilarious :30 TV spots (and one :60 combined version) introduces the concept and drives fans to the ToyotaRacing.com website, where they can design a custom skin for the race-version Toyota Camry that could earn them a trip to a NASCAR all-star race.

The spots show ?‚àö√ë‚àö‚â§sponsifying’s in action, with ordinary fans ?‚àö√ë‚àö√Ü a kitten-loving little girl, a love-struck teenage boy, and a role-playing video gamer ?‚àö√ë‚àö√Ü designing their own Toyota racecars that real NASCAR drivers have to pilot. Viewers watch poor Kyle Bush, dolled up in a pink suit adorned with fluffy kitties, racing his ridiculous pink car around a stadium track surrounded by traditional-looking cars.

Joey Logano suffers a similar fate, driving a dragon/warlock themed racecar while dressed as a medieval knight. Denny Hamlin actually seems slightly enthusiastic about his sponsor as he jockeys for position on the track in his ?‚àö√ë‚àö‚â§love car’s dedicated to an adolescent crush on his fantasy girl, Amanda.

Brickyard created CG versions of each of the hero cars, complete with high-resolution texture maps, using photos, HDRI and lighting data from the shoot to match lighting and details. They also created additional cars (Little Debbie, Window World and NAPA) and integrated them all in to the spots to augment the racing scenes and add camera angles and turntables that helped to sell the stories.

‘Three cars on a racetrack isn’st much of a race,’ said Brickyard lead 3D artist David Blumenfeld. ‘When we added CG cars around to make the race more competitive.’

The stadium shots presented a particular challenge in tracking, Blumenfeld said. ‘NASCAR races with speeds approaching 200mph, are shot from cameras alongside the track. They pan on a banked track and do a tremendous amount of zooming, which flattens the entire field. That makes it challenging to use tracking software. Also, replicating the shots without having information on the lens or the size of the stadium was a challenge. We did most of the tracking was finessed above the level of automatic tracking software capabilities.’

‘The objective was obviously to make the cars look completely realistic so that the viewer can’st identify the fake cars on the racetrack. We separately had to create a more stylized car for the end tag,’ said Carl Harders, Lead CG Artist. ‘To achieve these looks required two separate lighting setups, one that was like a traditional studio and one that was taken from environment of a race track. Since they were created after the shoot, we created the elements and HDRI we needed to match reflections that best suited the situation.’

Brickyard also created computer-based lighting to match the exact conditions on the track, including reflections of the stadium environment passing over the tops of the CG cars. The studio used Maya and Renderman to create, light and render the CG elements for Toyota. The client was ecstatic with the car assets that Brickyard created are also used in the ToyotaRacing.com ‘Sponsafier’ feature and gallery, and were rendered out in high resolution for use in the print campaign.

Located in Boston and Santa Monica, Brickyard VFX is an independent visual effects boutique specializing in top quality visual effects from 3D characters through to compositing. Artist owned and operated, the company was founded in 1999 to bring clients a level of customer service, craftsmanship and focus difficult to find at facilities today. Brickyard creative expertise on set and in the studio has been applied to model, animate, light, texture, track, color correct and render seamless digital effects for Pontiac, Bud Light, T-Mobile, NBA, Visa, Sprint and many other accounts.

CREDITS
CLIENT: Toyota
SPOT NAMES:
‘Warlock’ (:30)
‘Amanda’ (:30)
‘Kimmy’ (:30)
‘Sponsafier’ (:60)
1st BROADCAST LOCATION: USA

ADVERTISING AGENCY: Saatchi & Saatchi, Los Angeles
Creative Director: Andrew Christou
Executive Creative Director: Mike McKay
Art Director: Rick Ardito / Nick Luckett
Agency Producer: Jennifer Vogtmann
Copywriter: Grant Smith / Eric Burnett

PRODUCTION COMPANY: Epoch Films
Director: Matt Aselton
Producer: Marc Marrie

Post Production/VFX: Brickyard VFX, Santa Monica
Head of Production: Diana Young
Visual Effects Producer: Carla Attanasio
Lead 2D Artist: Patrick Poulatian
Lead 3D Artist: David Blumenfeld
2D Artists: Mandy Sorenson, Chris Sonia
3D Artists: Dan Gutierrez, Carl Harders, Drew Daleo

Editorial: Cosmo Street
Editor: Tom Scherma
Audio Post: Lime Studios
Mixer: Loren Silber
Sound Design: 740 Sound
Designer: Eddie Kim

RELATED LINKS
www.toyotaracing.com
www.brickyardvfx.com

Popularity: 5% [?]