Avatar Delayed, CG A-Bombs & The Silver Surfer...
James Cameron's Avatar Pushed Back to 2009
(comingsoon.net) Titanic director James Cameron talked to
The Independent about his new feature, Avatar, which he says will now
hit theaters the summer of 2009 (it was previously scheduled for
summer 2008). Here are several clips from the interview:
"Avatar is a very ambitious sci-fi movie." The director's enthusiasm
is evident in his voice. "It's a futuristic tale set on a planet 200
years hence. It's an old-fashioned jungle adventure with an
environmental conscience. It aspires to a mythic level of
storytelling."
"The film requires me to create an entirely new alien culture and
language, and for that I want 'photo-real' CGI characters.
Sophisticated enough 'performance-capture' animation technology is
only coming on stream now. I've spent the last 14 months doing
performance-capture work - the actor performs the character and then
we animate it.
"I always want to find something mentally engaging. I'll spend many
months completing the special effects on Avatar, and it will not be
released until the summer of 2009. It's quite a challenge - and for
that reason, I embrace it."
In Avatar, Jake, a paraplegic war veteran is brought to another
planet, Pandora, which is inhabited by the Na'vi, a humanoid race with
their own language and culture. Those from Earth find themselves at
odds with each other and the local culture.
In director James Cameron's original script treatment of Avatar, a man
tries to make his way as a miner by combining with an alien during an
interplanetary war in which aliens can manifest themselves by
possessing human bodies -- avatars. When Avatar was titled "Project
880", a casting plot description read: "In the future, Jake, a
paraplegic war veteran is brought to another planet, Pandora, which is
inhabited by the Na'vi, a humanoid race with their own language and
culture. Those from Earth find themselves at odds with each other and
the local culture."
Did You Know: Avatar will be shot using the "Fusion Camera System"
developed by Cameron, Vince Pace and Rob Legato. The Fusion Camera is
a digital high definition camera developed specifically to capture
films in stereoscopic 3-D. The film will be shot completely in a
studio and will feature a cast composed mostly of CG performers,
through performance capture.
First Look: The Silver Surfer
(comingsoon.net) 20th Century Fox has provided us with a
high resolution version of the new photo of The Silver Surfer from
Fantastic Four: Rise of The Silver Surfer, opening in theaters on June
15.
Here is what today's USA Today says about the character:
With computer-generated imagery techniques similar to those used to
create Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, the slippery Surfer, voiced by
Doug Jones, "will look somewhere between gun metal and fluid metallics
so you can see the body motion, the breathing, the muscle tone, the
mood," says Marvel Studios CEO Avi Arad.
The Surfer's mood is key to the story. After striking a deal with the
evil Galactus to save his planet, the once-human Surfer wreaks havoc
throughout the cosmos. "He is a highly emotional being, trapped inside
fluid metal," Arad says.
Take a look: http://media.movies.ign.com/media/762/762424/img_4139332.html
Large-Scale Animation Deal Continues 'Corporatization' Trend
(equitybulls.com) Satyam Computer Services Ltd has announced
that Nipuna Services Ltd (Nipuna), BPO subsidiary of the Company, on
December 21, 2006, has announced that it has signed a USD 25 Million
"edutainment" deal. Nipuna is partnering with 4K Animation (4k
Animation) Ltd, UK for the execution and delivery of these projects.
The contract is one of the largest over won by a global BPO service
provider in the animation marketplace.
Nipuna will work with the 4K Animation team for 15 months on two
'iconic' European animation projects: the third season of "Marvi
Hemmer Presents National Geographic World," an award-winning, 52-
episode TV series, and a movie, also featuring Marvi Hammer. More than
120 Nipuna professionals will produce and deliver animation services
for the projects.
The series and movie feature a combination of live action and
animation. They include actual studio sets used as animation
backgrounds, a furry Computer Graphics creature and 2D-animated
characters. Hamburg-based YOUA Edutainment, National Geographic, and
German broadcaster ZDF will co produce the series and movie.
Nipuna will provide VFX, CGI, 3D and 2D animation services, including
pre-production, production, and post-production, from its
state-of-the-art studio in Chennai. Other animation artists will also
collaborate from Hamburg and Berlin for this project delivery.
"This partnership reflects a growing trend toward 'corporatization' in
the animation industry, which is leading to increasingly significant
opportunities," said Venkatesh Roddam, Nipuna's chief executive
officer, "Long-term contracts such as this one show that companies
recognize Nipuna's capabilities in an industry where 'human resources'
are integral to quality, and thereby responsible for the success of
creative ventures."
Meanwhile, Nipuna continues to grow. In the last several years, it has
built significant VFX, CGI, and 3D animation skills by producing
numerous global and domestic films. Among the more than 40 Indian
films for which it has handled animation projects are Sainikudu,
Stalin, Pokhiri, and Belly Full of Dreams. Nipuna also provides
artwork and visualization services involving 2D and/or 3D animation
techniques and processes to customers in the engineering,
architectural, and medical industries. In addition, earlier this year,
Nipuna signed a deal with 4K Animation GmbH to provide animation
services for a movie to be produced in Hollywood, California. That
contract was for about USD$ 8 Million.
Iron Man Teaser Site Launched
Paramount Pictures and Marvel Studios have launched the official
website for director Jon Favreau's Iron Man movie. The site gives you
a first look at the logo for the comic book adaptation.
Based upon Marvel's iconic Super Hero, Iron Man tells the story of
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), a billionaire industrialist and genius
inventor who is kidnapped and forced to build a devastating weapon.
Instead, using his intelligence and ingenuity, Tony builds a high-tech
suit of armor and escapes captivity. Upon his return to America, Tony
must come to terms with his past. When he uncovers a nefarious plot
with global implications, he dons his powerful armor and vows to
protect the world as Iron Man.
Iron Man, also starring Terrence Howard, opens in theaters on May 2, 2008.
Take a look: http://www.ironmanmovie.com/
Graphics Chip Price-Fixing: Samsung Exec To Plead Guilty
SAN JOSE, Calif. - A Samsung Electronics Co. executive agreed to plead
guilty and serve 10 months in prison for his role in a global
price-fixing scheme involving a common form of computer memory,
federal prosecutors said Thursday.
Young Hwan Park, president of Samsung Semiconductor Inc., the
company's San Jose-based U.S. subsidiary, is the fifth Samsung
executive this year to agree to a prison sentence over price
manipulation of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, the most common
type of memory chip used in personal computers.
A Samsung spokeswoman said Thursday that Park is still with the
company but declined to discuss the company's future plans. "Samsung
is strongly committed to fair competition and ethical practices and
forbids anticompetitive behavior," spokeswoman Chris Goodhart said in
a statement.
Dick Van Dyke Loves VFX
(calendarlive.com) He claims he's just a hobbyist, but when
Dick Van Dyke showed up on the "Night at the Museum" set, the visual
effects department was blown away by the 81-year-old actor's command
of the latest computer-animation programs.
"Dick Van Dyke is a huge visual effects aficionado," says Jim Rygiel,
the three-time Oscar winner and visual effects supervisor for
"Museum," which opens today. "He loved talking about what we were
doing."
Van Dyke says he started dabbling in the medium four decades ago on
Robert Stevenson's "Mary Poppins," in which he dances and sings with
animated butterflies and penguins.
"When I wasn't filming I was hanging out with the animators," Van Dyke
says. "I spent a lot of time working with cartoon characters, which is
what gave me the appetite for effects in the beginning. Looking at
'Mary Poppins' today, it's amazing how well the technology does hold
up and that was way before computers."
After starring in 1968's "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," in which he drove
a flying car thanks to the magic of green-screen technology, Van Dyke
bought a used Ultimatte system — a pre-digital device that allowed
visual-effects pros to do green-screen shots photochemically — and set
it up at his house. He played around with it a bit, and then about 15
years ago a friend recommended that he buy an Amiga Toaster, one of
the earliest desktop computer-animating systems.
"You could take 3-D objects and figures and photograph a background
and fill it in and animate," Van Dyke recalls. "In those days, if you
had 15 frames to render it took all weekend. It was very, very
primitive but I just got hooked on it."
Over the last decade, Van Dyke has upgraded his hardware and software
along the way. He was finally able to put his effects skills to work
on the CBS series "Diagnosis Murder," in which he starred from 1993 to
2001.
"Production needed a shot of an Evel Knievel-type stuntman doing an
impossible motorcycle jump," Van Dyke says.
"Well, I went out to the location and shot some background plates and
then I came back and put a 3-D computer-generated guy on a motorcycle
doing the stunt and they used it on the show."
Recognizing a fellow visual effects enthusiast on the "Museum" set,
Rhythm & Hues visual effects supervisor Dan DeLeeuw had Van Dyke come
into the effects studio for a cyberscan. They gave Van Dyke a digital
3-D model of himself to work with on his home system.
And he had a lot of new tricks he wanted to try at home after studying
the complex effects-laden shots on "Museum," about a night watchman
(Ben Stiller) at a natural history museum who is shocked to find the
exhibits coming to life.
"We had the best visual effects team in the world on 'Night at the
Museum,' so I came home [after the shoot in Canada] all fired up,"
says Van Dyke, who also plays a night watchman. "I have a number of
figures that are caricatures of me with an extra-big nose and a longer
chin, and I do a lot of animations with myself dancing. But the tough
stuff is really smoke, water and fog. I'm forever working on my water
effects."
Ideally, Van Dyke says he would like to work on a film where he can
put the skills he's learned over the last four decades to the test.
"I haven't had a chance lately to do much visual effects work in a
film, so I really loved working with the guys on 'Museum,' " Van Dyke
says. "I would just give anything to be in a movie where I could have
a hand in the visual effects."
COMPANY PERKS KEEP VFX WORKERS GOING
(animbiz.blogspot.com) One of the very interesting things about
the vfx/animation industry is the perks that companies build in to
their studios. We all know that sometimes, these film schedules can
get quite busy and morale can go on a downward spike at any time. Some
of the smallest things though, can keep the average employee quite
happy about sitting in front of a computer for umpteen hours.
I have seen quite the gamut of perks. From foosball tables to free
daily lunches and dinners to onsite outdoor patios to full on open
beer/wine bar within the building. The big one in Vancouver was
Electronic Arts who boasts all kinds of sports and outdoor leisure
facilities like a football field and a basketball court. Very cool
because again, sitting in front of a computer all day can't be that
healthy.
Cineastes Rejoice In Treat Animation As Art
(austin360.com) "The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes," the
long-awaited second feature from experimental-animation geniuses the
Quay Brothers, is scheduled to open here Dec. 29, courtesy of Austin
Film Society's "AFS at Dobie" series. For that small but intense cult
of fans (count me in) who can barely wait, a number of recent DVD
releases cover the spectrum of animation arts.
We're not talking those big 'toons ("Cars," "Over the Hedge") that
proved so popular at the box office this year, although they're
hitting shelves in time for Christmas — as are welcome new batches of
SpongeBob and Simpsons material, oddball TV-toon collections such as
"The Dick Tracy Show" and the Casper-heavy "Harveytoons," and a fresh
set of "Walt Disney Treasures" spotlighting Pluto and the 1929-38 run
of "Silly Symphonies."
No, this is the strange stuff — stranger even than Richard Linklater's
spot-on trip through Philip K. Dick's paranoid "A Scanner Darkly,"
which was released this week. Strange as in a Czech Surrealist named
Jan Svankmajer, whose stop-motion amalgams of puppetry, clay and
rotting vegetables paved the way for the Quay siblings.
KimStim and Kino Video have recently reconfigured earlier Svankmajer
anthologies into one double-disc package, "The Collected Shorts," and
supplemented it with "The Ossuary and Other Tales," a batch of
hitherto un-DVD-ified short films. Obsessions with food, violence and
violent food rule the roost here, with side trips into agitprop
efforts that wring more political commentary out of clay figures than
one might guess is possible. If the techniques wielded here look
familiar, it's only because they've been copied by every art-aspiring
stop-motion filmmaker for the past two decades. (Svankmajer's latest
feature, "Lunacy," and a "definitive" set of Quay Brothers shorts are
due from Zeitgeist in the spring.)
3-D CG Reveal A-Bomb Dome
(yomiuri.co.jp) A Hiroshima City University research group has
recently reproduced 3-D computer graphics of the A-Bomb Dome based on
footage of the building taken from the air.
The images of the dome, which were made to mark the 10th anniversary
of its registration as a UNESCO World Heritage Site on Thursday, will
be shown on a university Web site in the near future.
The research group plans to reproduce
3-D computer graphics of A-bombed buildings in about 90 locations in the city.
Permanent preservation of these buildings, which are regarded as quiet
witnesses to the atomic blast, has become an issue 61 years after the
bombing.
The research group will preserve the buildings in digital images and
send peace messages to the world over the Internet.
Although it is possible to make a three-dimensional image of the dome
based on photographs, the dome is surrounded by buildings and a river,
so it is difficult to photograph all vantage points from the ground.
Using aerial photographs, the complicated structure of the dome can be
shown clearly.
The office of university president Prof. Naoki Asada, who started the
research project about five years ago, obtained about 30 aerial
photographs of the dome in 2004 in cooperation with the Hiroshima City
Fire Department.
The research group then selected about 170 features of the dome, such
as beams and window frames, and made computer calculations to produce
realistic 3-D images.
Asada said, "As a university in Hiroshima, it's important to send out
a message of peace. I want to preserve buildings and A-bomb related
materials using digital techniques."
So Just How Fun Is It To Work At Pixar?
(jutanclan.blogspot.com) OH
MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Today is going up and up on
the list of best days ever. Today was Pixar's Halloween Party. Since I
have recently purchased a onesie one-piece pyjama suit, I figured I
needed to make a ridiculous costume out of it. Over the weekend I got
together a coloured baseball hat with a propeller on top, a squeaky
pacifier, a yellow "blankie" blanket and a big plush shark toy. Now
the story just gets better and better and better.
Today I showed up at work and one of my best friends out here Jake
Brooks was dressed up as ME for Halloween!! Haha it was fantastic. He
had my shirt on that said "I'm really excited to be here" and a Pixar
jacket and a Mike Wazowski hat angled slightly to the side with the
brim not really curved enough, he had the word "#1 Intern" on the back
on his jacket and was wearing hilariously loud Hawaiian shorts. He was
also wearing the same Sketchers fancy shoes that I have, but with this
whole t-shirt/Hawaiian short getup!! Haha that is especially funny
because Jake always makes fun of me for wearing my fancy shoes with my
Hawaiian surf shorts. :) AWESOME!!!!!!!!
So the excitement was only beginning then. We had a free breakfast
this morning and all talked about our costumes and the ladies from HR
thought Jake's costume (dressed us as Me) was hilarious. Everyone had
really amazing costumes and put a lot of work into it all.
Then we had free lunch!!!!!!!!! Man it keeps getting better. Then we
had the costume contest... wait for it... wait for it... John Lasseter
was the MC and Ed Catmull was one of the judges!!!!! So after a little
bit of encouragement from my other intern friends going up on stage, I
took one deep breath and joined the line. I walked up with my yellow
blanket in tow, wearing my onesie and sucking my thumb and looking out
at the crowd and looking a bit scared and nervous. "Come on... come on
up... don't be scared!" said John Lasseter as the crowd laughed. I
slowly walked onto stage and John said, "What's your name?" "Mikey" I
said still acting a bit nervous and looking out upon the big crowd in
the Pixar atrium, "There are a lot of people here." John laughed and
then I pretended to get more comfortable and I rattled off a big
run-on sentence into the microphone, "You wanna know something that's
cool? Last night, my Mom put on a DVD and it was my favourite movie,
maybe you've heard of it, it's called Toy Story" (John Lasseter is the
director of Toy Story by the way), "And it's my favourite movie and
then you were on my TV and you said 'I like toys' and I like toys too,
so I figured we should be friends!" Hehe to this John laughed and
said, "Do you like it here? Do you want a job here when you're
older?!" I said, "Yeeeah! This place is really cool!" Haha all the
while I had been speaking in a sort of young kid voice, haha this was
just awesome. We carried on the act a bit longer on stage and then
everyone cheered and I walked off the stage and the next few people
and their costume entries went up onto the stage.
At the end of the costume contest, the judges deliberated for a few
minutes and then they came out and were giving out prizes for the
pumpkin carving contest and also the costume contest. They were giving
out cool prizes for most original costume, best group costume etc.
Then it came time for the "Most Bizarre" costume, and Ed Catmull was
reading out the winners... "The third place winner is...
Mikey!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Haha I couldn't believe it and it
took me a few seconds to realize it was me and I ran up onto stage and
people cheered and John Lasseter gave me my prize and then shook my
hand and everyone said congratulations and then I shook Ed Catmull's
hand and he laughed and said Congratulations too and I was like....
whaaaaaaaa?!?! Someone pinch me, this must be a dream!!!!!!!! :)
Amazing. So that was just like the most exciting thing ever. THEN John
Lasseter came up to all of the interns afterwards and comes at me, I
am ready to shake his hand and he comes up and gives me a big hug and
says, "Well done, that was great!" It was amazing. As I was walking
back to my desk, there was a professional photographer here taking
photos of everyone and John Lasster was taking photos with the HR
ladies. After this his assistant told me to wait there and I should
get a photo with John!!! Oh man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So yes after all these awesome things that already happened, I then
got a hilarious photo of me and John Lasseter with me wearing my crazy
Halloween costume. AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So yeah, this day is pretty awesome.
Following this, I met legendary directory Darren Aronofsky!! He
directed Pi and Requiem for a Dream and he came to screen a film for
us and hang out and chat. It was AWESOME. After the movie he came up
to us, and I was smiling and he shook my hand and said, "Hi! What's
your name?!" I said Mike and he said "So what do you do here, Mike?!"
I told him I am a TD and I do modeling and shading for the 2008 Movie.
He was super cool and I told him his movies are awesome.
Hangin' out with friends, free food, acting out something silly on
stage with John Lasseter, a professional photo with John Lasseter,
shaking Ed Catmull's hand, and talking with Darren Aronofsky. Insane.
I'd like to make a joke here and say, "Ahh yeah, just another day at
the office" but I don't think anyone would believe me. It was
exceptionally cool and what an amazing day. Rock ON!!!!!!!!!! :)
Some pics as well:
http://jutanclan.blogspot.com/2006/11/pixars-halloween-2006.html
