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Animator John Banana has created this charming short animation as an homage to Dave Stevens' jetpack-wielding hero. It's cute stuff, and the only thing it's missing is a CG John Locke as Howard Hughes. More »
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This here is a 1982 demo reel from Information International, Inc. (or Triple-I), the computer designers who animated Tron — in this montage, you can see plenty of clips from Michael Crichton's kooky plastic surgery flick Looker. More »
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The Last Airbender will carve a new path in visual effects, showing you things no movie ever has: water tentacles and gusts of fire. We visited Industrial Light and Magic, and saw what every other movie will be copying soon. More »
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In its documentary Extraordinary Animals In The Womb, National Geographic captured rare highly detailed images of animals at various stages of gestation. Now you can see fetal dog, elephants, penguins, and dolphins still inside the womb. More »
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Will Avatar keep its technological promises? We've seen a huge backlash against the film's CGI, and our sibling site suspects it will suck. But when it opens, Avatar will prove a remarkable advance in motion capture and computer animation. More »
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Directors like James Cameron and Robert Zemeckis are using motion capture and computer animation to place actors in unusual bodies and fantastical environments. But the medical community is increasingly utilizing technology originally designed for movies and video games. More »
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There have been countless characters in movies and television generated entirely using computer effects. But which one was the most believable as a character? More »
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Like robots doing complicated surgeries, the computers that generate CGI effects are more than just tools. They're storytellers. This week on io9, we explore a world where humans watch the world through computer eyes just by going to the movies. More »
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Youngwoong Jang is a Korean student filmmaker whose short "Mirage," about a tiny cyborg who needs a drop of water to survive, is one of the most beautiful examples you'll see of CGI as art. More »
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Dreamworks released some B-roll showing the making of Monsters Versus Aliens, with Danny Elfman's boisterous score. Apparently Ginormica started out bald. Also, why do you think that guy is walking through a tiny city? More »
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It's been too long since we've heard word from the creepy-beautiful CG series Chadam. But now we've got these exclusive screen shots showing buddies of our blockheaded hero Chadam. Take a closer look at the citizens of Vulture City where the people are under attack from a mysterious virus and Chadham must use his massive imagination gland to save the town. Plus we've got video of creator Alex Pardee describing Chadam's origins. More »
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Supposedly when Wall-E was already in production, the Pixar team found out that Blue Sky Studios was putting out an animated robot movie called Robots. Andrew Stanton was worried — until he saw Robots, which is nothing like Wall-E and also pretty horrendous. In this scene from the movie's opening credits, Stanley Tucci and Dianne West are a robo-couple who make a baby — from a kit. I love how Tucci's such a stereotypical guybot (not wanting to read the instructions) even though he and West need a lug wrench to reproduce. And the hilarious — hilarious! — cap-off to the scene is that they forget one crucial part of their new robo-boy. Imagine if this movie had succeeded in derailing Wall-E? More »
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At last kaiju fans have the first-ever footage of a CGI Gojira who looks really freakin' great — and of course, it's just a dream. Literally. This clip is from a dream sequence in last fall's Always 2, the sequel to Japan's much-loved 1950s comedy-nostalgia flick. Always is basically Japan's equivalent of the U.S. TV show Happy Days: the 1950s remembered with a serious dose of sugar-coating. And yet in this scene, where one of the main characters dreams of facing off against the Big G, many people's dreams are realized. At least, those of us who are still trying to erase from our minds the memory of the awful CGI in 1998's U.S. Godzilla. Here's hoping for an awesome CGI Gojira flick that ain't just a dream. More »
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A trio of flies follow their hearts on board NASA's Apollo 11, and end up saving the lives of America's first moon-walkers in the animated movieFly Me To The Moon. Follow Nat, IQ and Scooter as they dream big and end up sharing a space suit with Buzz Aldrin (who voiced his own CGI character). Other familiar voices include Tim Curry and Christopher Lloyd. The movie, coming out August 8, is more proof that animated movies are going through a scifi fad, with Wall-E, Space Chimps, Planet 51 and Escape From Planet Earth coming out this year and next. [Fly Me To The Moon] More »
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On Friday, I posted about a series of mysterious UFO pictures that have been circulating on the internet, suggesting they were part of a viral marketing campaign. Many commenters said the UFOs were the work of one Kris Avery, a 3D graphic artist who made a music video for Drone filled with images of the spiny ships. So I wrote to Avery to get to the bottom of the mystery, but his response only made the images more mysterious. Apparently, he did do the music video but he did not create the pictures of the UFOs. He based his video on images he'd seen online in UFO enthusiast forums. He actually made the video to prove to "believers" that the original images could have been faked with CGI. And now he's been accused of creating them as a viral marketing campaign. Here's his weird story. More »
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Battlestar Galactica's post-apocalyptic leader, Edward James Olmos, races his sportscar through a world of flying cars, elevated trains and missile-firing rocket bikes, in this commercial for Farmers Insurance. Olmos has been appearing in Spanish/English Farmers ads for a while now, but this one features CGI world-building by Zach Mandt, who just finished working on Speed Racer. Also, that exploding building Olmos drives up to at the end? According to reader cde, it's the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers' Command Center, where Zordon and his cylon-esque robot Alpha-5 hung out. Click through for a side-by-side comparison. More »
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Stephen Chow's E.T.-inspired CJ7 opens this weekend, and although it's been critically kicked around like the lowest dog on Earth, we loved the cute little thing. It's not your typical science fiction movie, and it's not even a typical Stephen Chow movie, who is best known for comedies like Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer. But this tale of a boy and his cute alien friend was the most fun we've had going to the theater in a long time. Spoilers and clips below. More »
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Cloverfield was best known for its shaky-cam handheld amateur-documentary style. But it actually deserves more props for its ambitious and sweeping scenes of New York in flames and rubble, which appeared in the background of almost every shot. Now a "showreel" from digital effects designers Double Negative shows how a small soundstage or single-block area got "opened up." You can seewhere the actual destruction ends, and the digitally painted stuff begins. And the joins aren't as obvious as you'd expect. (Note: video has no sound.) [Double Negative, via 1-18-08] More »
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Freddie Highmore of Willy Wonka fame will be lending his voice to the upcoming animated version of Astro Boy set to arrive in theaters next year, and we wonder why they chose a 16-year-old with an English accent to play the titular hero. In the manga, Astro is only nine years old... will audiences buy Highmore as a little robo-boy? At least he has the spiky hair down. [Comic Book Movie] More »
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With Jumper opening today and everyone abuzz about teleportation, it seemed like the perfect time to remind everyone of another movie about teleportation: Tron. The device that zaps Jeff Bridges into the video-game world is actually built to teleport matter from one place to another. Learn the secret history of Tron, after the jump. More »
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Construction is nearly complete on the Beijing Olympic Stadium, shaped like a massive steel bird's nest, and the swimming-pool-filled Water Cube, which looks like a piece of glowing alien machinery. This is an actual photo of the buildings at night. We've also got some less-surreal glimpses of them too. More »
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A swarm of deadly aliens has attacked the Earth and eaten up everyone and everything on the planet, except for a small group of survivors. What do you do? Make a B-movie of course. Dark Swarm is just that: a CGI alien-infested monster movie, complete with an infestation of B-grade scifi TV actors in its lone band of survivors. They include actors from Stargate, Babylon 5, and Eureka, which might just slate it for the direct to DVD shelves. At least Christopher Judge can finally play a role without having that giant thing that looks like an @ symbol branded onto his forehead. [IESB] More »
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Thank the star-gods that CGI effects have improved since 1984's The Last Starfighter. Just check out this climactic scene, where our trailer-park video-game champ finally uses his skillz in the space battle you've waited the whole movie for. It looks like an unfinished version of modern CGI effects. Starfighter also takes the "young hero rejects call to adventure" cliche way too far. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=345125&view=rss&microfeed=true The best parts of Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes remake are like a simian version of 300 . The giant ape army looks totally badass, and the "running apes" special effect still looks cutting-edge. Few films since then have used CGI to create such a convincing non-human society. And the explosion, with the apes raining from the sky, is priceless. Too bad the rest of 2001's POTA was so boring we ended up grooming ourselves for long stretches. More »
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New Line Cinema announced today that it will be distributing Planet 51, Europe's biggest CGI film ever, in 2009. The $60 million dollar film features astronaut Captain Chuck Baker landing on a planet filled with 1950s-era aliens who live in complete fear of aliens, namely Chuck himself. Gallery of cute aliens after the jump. More »
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Beowulf, the CGI 3D monstrosity that hits theaters Friday, was originally an alliterative Old English poem. Instead of composing a review of this cinematic epic, I'll just go Old English on your ass and alliterate. Below the fold are your spoilers, in verse. More »
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Anglo Saxon epic Beowulf hits theaters Friday in a haze of speculation. Can cutting-edge motion-capture CGI animation, combined with 3D, turn a 1000-year-old alliterative poem about a monster-slaying warrior into the awesome? The answer is no. Studios rolling out 3D stuff for 2009 like James Cameron's Avatar, and the animated Monsters vs. Aliens are hoping Beowulf will be the test case that proves 3D is back. But it's really just a sad, last-ditch effort to pull people out of 3D video game worlds by using the 3D word, and it won't work. More »
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