Happy New 2009

Ahhh.. It's been a long couple of weeks since I last wrote, but all that's the norm for the holiday season. I took some much needed down time from pretty much everything! It's all good though, I'm back with a vengeance for this year. There are lots of exciting things on the horizon, and I can't wait to share them with you all! The most public right now is the nomination list for the 2008 Visual Effects Oscar. The top seven are:

• Australia


• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button


• The Dark Knight


• Hellboy II: The Golden Army


• Iron Man


• Journey to the Center of the Earth


• The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Here is more information from the Academy site itself. Digital Domain worked on two out of the seven this year. Out of all of them, I haven't seen Australia or Journey. I think the Academy will pick the following for the final three for the possible Oscar.

• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button


• The Dark Knight


• Iron Man

Why The Dark Knight? There has to be a popularity contest with these nominations, and TDK was a very popular movie, even though it didn't have overwhelming visual effects like some of the other films. I personally think Hellboy II should replace it, simply because of the environments and characters that were created. We'll find out in a couple of weeks what the VFX branch chooses!

Over the twelve days that I was not missing work, I popped in Fallout 3. I hadn't played it yet until the beginning of my holidays, and over the break I have put 120+ hours into that silly game. I really enjoyed it. Now that I'm back in the saddle of finishing up my next show here, the game playing will be put on the backburner again. There are a lot of priorities that I need to hit this month!



I've also received a bunch of Academy screeners this year. VES has been pretty good for that during the winter season. I don't anticipate getting any more, but we've still got a month left before the Oscars, so there might be a few stragglers.



VFXWages is getting on its way a bit more. There's a HUGE list of things we've to accomplish for our public release later this month. I just hope we can get to everything that we want to before we give public access! Ah, the perils of not having enough time in the day.