Life as a motion capture performer
T.J. Storm has been Godzilla, the Predator and now...Vader.
When directors put on the mocap suit themselves
Usually, it’s actors who don motion capture suits, but here’s where the director suited up instead.
My VFX job: VFX editor
Method Studios’ Chris Kowal on what editing in VFX actually means.
My VFX job: Rendering software engineer
Weta Digital’s Javor Kalojanov on being part of rendering research at the top-tier studio.
My VFX job: Starting out in the industry
Early-career vfx artist Monika Batchelor on making the move from Australia to Hollywood.
My VFX job: Senior pipeline supervisor
Digital Domain’s Deke Kincaid on making everything ‘work like butter’.
How ‘The Lion King’ moved away from digital matte paintings to create fully CG vistas
Something was very different about the environments in the photo-real animated film.
Coming soon to befores & afters
Lion King, The Boys, the history of mocap, and more retro VFX.
That time James Cameron gave ILM a day to come up with a test for ‘The Abyss’
What should a CG water tentacle should look like, anyway?
Sometimes you just need to blow-dry your 3D printed hands in order to animate them
Behind the scenes of the stop-motion short, ‘Bone Mother’.
The evolution of a VFX scene
How Hellboy’s epic fight against 3 giants came to be.
Take your VFX skills to the next level with fxphd
fxphd is the exclusive sponsor of #gettingshotsdone and #myvfxjob weeks.
The large-scale effort to replicate London’s Tower Bridge for ‘Far From Home’s’ finale
Lidar, shooting panos and textures 3 times a day, and closing the Bridge for just 2 minutes at a time.
It’s a big year for manipulating the ages of your favorite movie stars
And there’s one place you’ll be able to hear a lot about it...
I think I’ve seen a glimpse into the future of filmmaking
And it involves getting a whole lot of VFX shots in-camera.
The latest in digital character control from Reallusion
HeadShot A.I., iClone Unreal Live Link and a new shader.
Virtual production out of the box
Here’s what Glassbox was demo’ing at SIGGRAPH.
Breaking down that intense handheld rooftop liquidator shot in ‘Chernobyl’
A nail-biting 90 seconds of invisible visual effects.
The ‘Endgame’ cast and crew have gone into overdrive with behind the scenes imagery
Sure, it's related to the DVD release, but it's fun to see so much cool on-set stuff.
The very unique characteristics of a warthog’s hair: grooming Pumbaa
How MPC modeled, groomed, simulated and styled Pumbaa’s CG hair and fur for ‘The Lion King’.
Avatar: Fire and Ash
Get issue #52
Order my new book
Industrial Light & Magic: 50 Years of Innovation
Creativity meets technical curiosity: an FX TD’s role on Predator: Badlands.
From classroom to credits, with Campus VFX