May 2008 Archives

Happy Memorial Day everyone! I hope all of you are enjoying your three day weekend while we in the trenches are finishing up The Mummy for you. If you caught Indiana Jones or Prince Caspian over the weekend you've probably seen the Mummy teaser trailer, if not, head on over to Rob Cohen's blog and check it out. Another show that Digital Domain is working on is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. There's an international trailer out, in Spanish, but from what I've heard, it's pretty much identical to the trailer that is in front of Indiana Jones. From the IMDB listing, Digital Domain is one of the companies that is creating the visual effects, along with Asylum, Hydraulx, Lola, Drac Studios, and Ollin Studio.

It's been a crazy busy couple of weeks. Aside from hitting several deadlines in a row (one of which included finishing the shots for the teaser trailer, now available online) and heading up to the Bay area briefly (for about 18 hours), I almost have no free time. The vfx work on Mummy is coming along, and we've still got some time to finish all the shots. Rhythm is doing some fine work as well, from what I've seen, and you've seen as well, from the stuff in the trailer.

GTA IV is now finally out of my mind, having spent about 30 hours over the last couple of weeks finishing up the main story. This is actually the first Grand Theft Auto that I've completed! All the other ones I get around half way through and give up, or something else pops up on my radar. Now I can just casually play, instead of trying to finish a huge story. I guess I just liked the characters in this one, and enjoyed the story that much more.

On Sunday we finally were able to sit back and watch Iron Man, and it was everything that I hoped it would be. Such a shame that Digital Domain didn't get to work on it, but ILM did an amazing job overall, as did the other numerous vfx houses. We'll see what happens with number two! One thing that disappoints me with the way ILM does credits is that everyone is listed as digital artist, not compositor or lighter or animator. It's a cop-out.

Rob put up the teaser trailer for The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor on his blog, check it out at this link! You can also hit the HD trailer at MSN Movies. In addition to the new trailer, there's a new layout that he's created. Pretty cool. I've got two shots in the trailer, the opening shot of the great wall, and a wide battle shot of the two armies. You'll be able to check the trailer in front of Prince Caspian today, and Indiana Jones internationally next week. After you see the trailer, put your comments below! Something you might see come August? We've got a bit of time before we're done, but the work is coming along beautifully. You'll definitely want to see the trailer in HD or on film. It looks promising.

Computer Graphics World has a great article on the work accomplished on Speed Racer! Check it out at this link.

In addition to Digital Domain, more than a dozen visual effects studios worked on postproduction for the show—compositing greenscreen shots into the digital bubbles and creating the races. Of those studios, Digital Domain, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and ILM focused primarily on CG cars and the racetracks, with Digital Domain landing the bulk of the CG work.

A crew of 440 artists at Digital Domain drew on the studio’s experience in creating digital cars for television commercials, along with their expertise in visual effects, to create the stylized look of the cars, tracks, and environments in Speed Racer.

With two or three minor exceptions, the cars are always CG. Working in Autodesk’s Maya, Digital Domain’s modelers started with the previs cars to create the hero and background models. Animators referenced animatics and live-action footage of actors “driving” digital cars that compositing supervisor Darren Poe had assembled on set.

Be sure to hit that link to see all the sweet background detail that we had to do to accomplish the shots, and some of the reasoning behind the way they did what they did.

So this shows up in the mail today, impulse bought on Monday from Amazon.. Looks like my productivity at home is going to hell very shortly, and Call of Duty 4 is going on the backburner.. Anyone else a fan? I'm hoping this installment of the franchise is just as great as before!