Category: Visual Effects

Paramount Digital Ent. and European production and distribution company Gaumont will develop SECTION 8, an interactive web series exclusively distributed in the U.S. by MySpace.

Endemol will handle worldwide distribution, product integration and brand partnerships.

Starz Media's SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND will star Lucy Lawless, with Australian actor Andy Whitfield in the title role, per VARIETY.

The fantasy-action hourly series goes into production in April and will air on Starz in January 2010. It is a reunion for Lawless and her XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS creators Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi. XENA ran in syndication from 1995-2001.

HP has unveiled the HP Z Workstation series -- a reinvention of the product category from the core outward that offers customers unprecedented performance, value and serviceability in a sleek new design.

The HP Z800, HP Z600 and HP Z400 Workstations are the culmination of more than 20 HP design innovations -- including a self-checking power supply -- and take advantage of the new Intel Xeon processor.

Get ready to meet the Girl of your dreams! Adding another addition to its 3D content library, DAZ 3D has unveils the newest version of its popular 3D figure, the Girl 4, complete with customizable body shaping, increased texture map resolution and greatly improved joint rigging. Created from DAZ 3D's fourth-generation Unimesh, the Girl 4 is fully compatible with all Victoria 4, Victoria 4 Elite and Aiko 4 head and body shapes, textures and poses, opening more options and new creative possibilities than ever before.

AJA Video Systems' KONA 3 video capture and playback cards are an integral part of the post production workflow at Norwegian VFX and post facility Storm Studios. KONA 3 is AJA's top-of-the-line uncompressed capture card for SD, HD, Dual Link 4:4:4 HD and 2K formats for Apple Mac Pro systems.

How do you distill the world's collective understanding and evidence of UFOs into three-and-a-half minutes? That was the challenge facing visual design and motion graphics studio yU+co., led by Creative Director Garson Yu, for the main title sequence to Disney's RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN, opening in theatres on March 13.

'RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN represents the third time yU+co. worked with director Andy Fickman after THE GAME PLAN and SHE'S THE MAN. ''This project was especially challenging, but we're proud we could bring Andy's vision for the titles to life," Yu said.

Fusion CI Studios and Department of Motion Graphics pooled talents recently to create this lively spot for New Zealand creative agency, Sugar and client, Fonterra. Fonterra's new "smart" water, Whole, leaps into the air then transforms itself into shape after shape -- first a brain, then a bridge, then bananas -- displaying a vigorous character and life of its own.

NVIDIA has announced two major technologies: its intelligent lineup of Quadro professional GPU solutions and NVIDIA SLI Multi-OS, a ground-breaking technology that allows users and visualization applications, for the first time, to take full advantage of multiple NVIDIA Quadro GPUs from a single graphics workstation in a virtualized environment, enabling digital artists and designers to streamline the process of using complex workflows that require a combination of GPU-centric applications running on multiple operating systems concurrently.

PRIMEVAL, ITV's critically acclaimed, hit adventure series, returned on March 28 to take a monster size chunk out of Saturday nights. With an extended run of 10 episodes, the action continues to evolve with more new faces joining the team. Also evolving are the creatures that Professor Nick Cutter and his team face each week, with a more diverse menagerie than ever before leaping out of Framestore's Wells Street offices and onto the screen.

Digital-Tutors, an Autodesk Authorized Publisher and Pixologic Authorized Training Provider, has launched two new training titles for artists learning character development and modeling, and effects animation and dynamics. With the addition of CHARACTER CREATION IN ZBRUSH and INTRODUCTION TO ICE STRANDS, Digital-Tutors' collection of video-based training continues to grow for new and experienced artists using ZBrush and Autodesk Softimage.

MAX PAYNE 3 is currently in development and scheduled for a winter 2009 release on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC from Rockstar Games, a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software. Developed by Rockstar Vancouver, MAX PAYNE 3 tells the story of a retired police detective embroiled in a world of corruption, turmoil and intense violence.

Allan McKay, director at Catastrophic FX, has officially announced the new FUME FX ADVANCED DVD. The follow-up to FUME FX ESSENTIALS, the new training DVD is aimed at advanced fluids for feature film visual effects.