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For their short film Natural Beauty, directing duo Lernert & Sander applied a year's worth of makeup over nine hours to (fantastically named) model Hannelore Knuts. Remember, too much foundation will turn you into Gloppy the Molasses Monster from Candyland. More »
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Green Lantern looks like it's all CG and motion capture, all the time. But one of the main characters in the film is wearing full practical makeup and prosthetics, at least on his face. More »
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It's been a big week for mechanical disembodied eyeballs. First there was the office Eye of Sauron; now there's this squirm-inducing cyber-eye built by Dan Thomson of Visionary Effects. It's looking pretty bloodshot, being disconnected from a skull and whatnot. More »
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This is a demo reel for a future IMAX film called Outside In, which recreates a journey through the solar system using only images taken from actual spaceflights - made by satellites visiting our neighboring planets. Effects artist and cinematographer Stephen Van Vuuren animated thousands of still shots from Cassini spacecraft's Saturn flyby, knitting them together to create a seamless journey toward the gas giant, past one of its moons and through its awe-inspiring rings. It's one of the most mind-blowing, beautiful space movies I've ever seen - especially when you consider that the entire thing was shot on location by a satellite zooming around Saturn. More »
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How did digital artists create the ballet-centric body horror of Black Swan? This neat visual effects featurette showcases the film's many strange changes. It contains massive plot spoilers, so caveat viewer. More »
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Did you know they're still doing a Waterworld show at Universal Studios Hollywood? We didn't, until we read it might get phased out. Despite being based on a totally forgettable movie, the show looks pretty amazing. Check out some photos. More »
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Researchers figured out how to use single "slices" of an image on an iPad to create 3-D animations that appear to glow in mid-air when you photograph them with a long-exposure camera. Watch a new experimental medium being born. More »
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It's the 35th anniversary of Industrial Light & Magic, the company George Lucas founded to help create Star Wars' ambitious special effects, and there's a new documentary. You may never have appreciated how much ILM changed the look of movies. More »
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Imagine a vast, geoengineered ring around a star, its inner surface entirely devoted to human habitation. Larry Niven used this idea for his Ringworld books. And now VFX artist Simon Terrey flies us through Niven's creation in this video. Gorgeous. More »
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You've already admired Ray Harryhausen's breathtaking stop-motion animation and creature design in films like The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad and Jason And The Argonauts. But now, if you're in London, you can see his incredible work up close and personal. 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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For moviegoers debating between watching Iron Man 2 and Babies, here is the perfect compromise. Iron Baby is a special effects bonanza featuring a toddler who blasts away at fluffy, age-appropriate supervillains and looks darned cute doing it. [via Cinematical] More »
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Rutger Hauer finds a severed robot head on the ground, and helps it get a new body, in this hilariously unconvincing sequence from Omega Doom. Too bad Robot Blade was using that head as a soccer ball... and he's pissed. More »
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The end of the (known) world doesn't come easily, even when Roland Emmerich is involved. 2012 required 1300 effects shots, and Popular Mechanics followed the fifteen-shot process in making just minutes of disaster happen smoothly. More »
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Five decades after American science destroyed Hiroshima, U.S. special-effects artists joining Japanese experts, to craft a CG reconstruction of the entire city for a documentary... including some of the wizards behind The Day After Tomorrow. Reverse disaster porn? [Mainichi Daily] More »
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With a couple of months still to go before James Cameron's much-anticipated Avatar is released, the movie's production designer has been spilling the beans about what it was like to work on the project. More »
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If you've been yearning to see what old-school Battlestar Galatica would look like recreated with new-school CGI, then you're about to have a fangasm. FX artist Darth Mojo, who worked on the new BSG series, whipped up this little movie. More »
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If you are looking for an antidote to the pyrotechnics and computer generated effects of summer blockbusters, look no further than Segundo de Chomón's century-old films, which depict space travel using painstakingly handcrafted optical trickery. More »
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Spock gives you the rundown on using models and moxie to create blockbuster science fiction sequences, in this 1985 video. It's a rare look at the era between Star Wars and the rise of CG. [Props via Mary Robinette Kowal] More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5324868&view=rss&microfeed=true David Berry worked at George Lucas' special effects studio, Industrial Light & Magic, in the mid-1970s, when the now-legendary group brought Star Wars to life. He filmed everyday life around the ILM workshop, capturing special effects shot setups, model-making, and parking lot waterslide shenanigans. Now he's released a 10-minute video of the days of ILM before Skywalker Ranch and everything else. It's a sweet, fun look at the people who literally built the world of Star Wars out of paint cans and plastic molds. Check it out on Berry's Vimeo page. More »
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John Gaeta, who is responsible for creating "bullet time" for the Matrix Trilogy, is working on a new eye-burning project that will revolutionize special effects again. BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin interviewed him about Ninja Assassin. More »
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Did the 3-D version of Monsters Versus Aliens make you want to barf, even though you liked the movie? Now Slate's Daniel Engber explains why - and says the problem may never be solved. More »
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The Matrix was one of the best movies of the last decade, but its director/producer team, the Wachowskis, headed downhill with the sequels, and bombed with Speed Racer. Here's what they need to do next. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5169075&view=rss&microfeed=true BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin talked to Zack Snyder about the difficulties (and joys) of designing digital effects for the allegedly unfilmable Watchmen. She also talks to special effects creator John Des Jardins, who explains everything the concept designers went through to create Watchmen's unique look. Definitely worth a watch. via BoingBoing More »
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We’ve made no secret of our admiration for special effects artists. This week, we got to talk with Dan Rebert, the Effects Producer for MastersFX, the house that created the aliens of Stargate Atlantis and Slither. Rebert told us all about his cultural influences, talked Stargate, and gave us the inside scoop on the fang physiology behind his current project, HBO series True Blood. More »
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When file-sharing destroys the movie biz, at least special effects designers will still have work — in the aerospace industry. Orbital Outfitters, the first company to manufacture special pressurized spacesuits for civilians, is hiring special effects designers from Hollywood to help. This swanky suit that you see here, created with help from special effects maven Chris Gilman for Orbital Outfitters, may be worn by passengers on XCOR Aeorospace's suborbital jets. Apparently Gilman's skills designing knight-in-armor costumes is going to help with the design of a suit that you could use in an emergency to eject from a suborbital ship and reenter the atmosphere. More »
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With the sad news earlier this week that special effects master Stan Winston had died, Hollywood lost one of its master creature-makers. Though Winston's studio did do some digital effects, Winston may have been one of the last great artists of the animatronic. With the help of a huge group of artists, sculptors, mechanical engineers, and even (at one point) the Sociable Robotics Lab at MIT, Winston built everything from a life-sized dinosaur for Jurassic Park to the uncannily realistic teddy bear bot for the movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence. He also had a hand in some productions you might not have guessed, like 1970s Wizard of Oz remake The Wiz with Diana Ross and Michael Jackson (holy crap I loved that movie when I was a kid). At the time of his death, he was working on James Cameron's upcoming Avatar, and Martin Scorcese's Shutter Island — but despite his association with primo directors, his amazing creations have appeared in more than one cheesy-but-awesome movie, too. Below, we take you on a photographic tour of Winson's career in creatures. More »
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This industrial sea-going ship provided inspiration for special effects designers working on the spaceships in Battlestar Galactica. Designer Mojo describes how in a recent blog post about how he makes Battlestar's ships look realistic by imitating the "self-lighting" look of this ship, which is illuminated only by its own onboard lights. Want to see the spaceship that was directly inspired by this image? More »
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Mojo, who does effects for Battlestar Galactica, has just written a really cool blow-by-blow analysis of how the effects team put together one of the most exciting scenes in last week's episode. Spoilers ahead . . . More »
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If you have any friends who mock the special effects on classic Doctor Who, and you've been trying to convince them the effects weren't really that bad, it's best not to let them watch this clip. It's a brief snippet from the behind-the-scenes feature on the DVD for the Doctor Who story "Time Flight." The actual effect in question only appears on screen for a brief moment in the story — and watching it come together, you can easily see why. I watched this DVD while recovering from surgery for a while back, and this moment of silliness totally cheered me up. More »
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Now your computer can simulate the movement of light through fog in a way that will easily fool the untrained eye. Using new "photon mapping" algorithms that map how light would bounce off water particles in the air (i.e. fog), UC San Diego computer scientists can now whip up a quick, realistic fog world for a videogame or movie without a lot of expensive computer power. Compare the photon mapped image above, with what the same amount of computing power would have produced without the algorithm, below. More »
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The skyrocketing number of special effects shots in the Star Wars movies has become a shorthand for the way movies in general have become more SFX-heavy. But while the Star Wars films may have started the SFX arms race, they didn't win it. None of the three Star Wars prequels has as many special effects shots as 1996's Independence Day. Also, the visually stunning first Matrix movie only has as many SFX shots as The Empire Strikes Back. Click through to find out the most SFX-heavy movie of all time. More »
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Witness the genius of Screaming Mad George, one of the true special effects visionaries working today. He uses absolutely no CGI to create gloopy, strange, mind-boggling imagery for movies like Predator and The Abyss, as well as indie freakfests like Jack Frost and this flick, called Faust: Love of the Damned. One of Brian Yuzna's latter-day vids, Faust is basically your standard dude-sells-his-soul deal, except for this scene. I've seen a lot of fucked up shit, kids, but this is definitely one of the most deranged. The bad sorcerer guy punishes a chick for double-crossing him by changing her body in some . . . interesting ways. Also, I think he's giving her super-orgasms or something. Otherwise, how do you explain all that goo running down her legs? Needless to say, this is NSFW, and probably not safe for your mental health either. More »
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The Academy's shortlist for visual effects awards hit the web yesterday, and Sunshine isn't anywhere to be found. If you want to see why this is such a travesty, then head out and pick up a copy on DVD today. We know all of you didn't see it, and it flew under the radar for a lot of people out there, so we'll wait here patiently while you pick one up or add it to the old Netflix queue. Or you can click through to see our analysis of how special effects in the actual nominees compare to the stunning Sunshine. More »
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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences handed out their "sci-tech" achievement awards today, you know the ones that they blur through during Oscar night with someone like Jennifer Garner saying "I was forced... er, had lunch with these amazing people last month, and here are the highlights" and so forth. We noticed that there are a heck of a lot of awards for fluids and gases being given out here. Does that mean every single visual effects shot in 2008 is going to involve water or billowing clouds? After all, we've already seen The Mist. Check out the slippery winners below. More »
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Special effects are killing movies. The cost of making the 50-year-old Ray Winstone look "17 again" in Beowulf is just one example of the SFX excesses that drove up the cost of movie-making by 16 percent between 2004 and 2006. Meanwhile, DVD sales are plummeting. Image by James Higgins/Splash News [Times of London] 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 »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=322447&view=rss&microfeed=true The only thing left of the Earth is a space shuttle and a bombed-out looking car, in the first episode of Odyssey 5, a show about humans who travel back in time to prevent the destruction of Earth. The Canadian Odyssey 5 is a great example of the way a non-US show can compensate for its low budget. The actual destruction of the Earth isn't much to look at, but the floating car is an arresting image. (Is it an SUV? A PT Cruiser? Help us, car experts!) More »
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The line between science and fiction just got even more blurry. Chris Parks, an artist who worked on the gorgeous, watery special effects in Darren Aronofsky's weirdo time-travel movieThe Fountain, is also a science photographer whose picture of plankton swimming into the eye of a needle won 5th place in Nikon's microscopic photography contest. Sometimes it takes a fantasist to make the microscopic world beautiful. More »
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