Visual Effects
The dancing goo in Flubber was
animated by ILM.
© Disney Enterprises, Inc.
Fx Affects
Effects-driven movies have been doing well this month in U.S. theaters,
which will send a signal to the big studios to keep making them, and, in
turn, bring more work to effects studios. Disney's Flubber,
a live-action family flick with substantial use of computer generated characters
and effects, was the top-grossing film during its Thanksgiving weekend
opening in November (about $36 million). Industrial Light & Magic (ILM)
created the signature green goo "Flubber" animation in the film.
ILM's Tom Bertino was the character animation supervisor for these Flubber
sequences, and was one of three visual effects supervisors (with Peter
Crosman and Douglas Hans Smith) for the film as a whole. Disney-owned DreamQuest
Images did a substantial amount of atmospheric effects and CG and miniatures
shots on the film's robot character, "WEEBO." In addition, several
other effects studios worked on "Flubber," including JEX FX (puppet
WEEBO), X.O. Digital Arts (flying ball animation), and Hammerhead Productions,
Mobility, Inc. and Computer Café (additional Flubber animation),
as well as POP Film, Rainmaker Digital Pictures, 525 Post Production and
C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures. . . . . Another effect-driven film scoring big
in the U.S box office is Fox's Alien: Resurrection. The fourth
film in the Alien series, Resurrection features the first
fully computer-generated alien, created by Blue Sky | VIFX. This task was
particularly challenging because the alien is covered in a viscous slime
which has a reflective surface. To make this look realistic, Blue Sky |
VIFX animators and technicians had to apply detailed lighting information
from the live-action shoot to the computer-generated scenes before compositing.
Working mainly in Blue Sky's New York facility, Erik Henry was visual effects
supervisor, Mitch Kopelman was digital effects supervisor, Christopher
Scollard was digital effects producer and Jan Carlée was computer
animation director. . . .
The alien in Alien: Resurrection
was created
entirely in CGI by Blue Sky|VIFX. © 1997
Twentieth Century Fox.
Rhythm & Hues, the Los Angeles-based computer animation studio which won an Oscar for its' visual effects work on Babe, the 1995 film about a talking pig, has signed on with Universal to create the visual effects for the film's sequel, set for a Thanksgiving 1998 release. At 165 shots, the amount of effects work has increased over the first Babe, and apparently the studio has more than doubled its fee for the work. Bill Westenhofer is the project's visual effects supervisor, and the director of the film is George Miller (the first was directed by Chris Noonan). . . . Digital Magic, the visual effects arm of Burbank, California-based Four Media Company, created motion capture and CGI effects for the feature film Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, which opens in theaters on November 21. The effects completed by Digital Magic include shots portraying a live actor in combat with a 3-D computer-generated character. . Engineering Animation, Inc. (EAI) will create computer-generated lunar footage for HBO's series, From the Earth to the Moon, which will air in April 1998. . . . Digital Artworks, a 15 year-old design and animation house based in Eugene, Oregon, is opening a Los Angeles studio this week. Through a newly formed partnership with L-Squared, the company plans to develop its own proprietary creative properties. . . . Atlanta-based media conglomerate Crawford Communications, which owns the animation studio DESIGNefx, has launched Crawford Digital, an imaging and editing facility which will offer computer animation services. . . . Software developer Positron has released GenesisVFX, a plug-in for creating atmospheric effects with NewTek's Lightwave3D. The product, which was first offered in May 1997 as a plug-in for Kinetix 3D StudioMax and Adobe Photoshop, retails for about $420.
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