i don’t even know what to say.  this is so awesome that it defies explanation.  Rhythm and Hues won the academy award for best visual effects!  i am … stunned.  i am also REALLY FREAKING EXCITED!

dumping links here for later reference:

• NY Times feature on Golden Compass vfx
• oscar.com transcript of the visual effects award
• vfx academy award winners photo

AND

FUCK YEAH — R&H wins the Special Visual Effects award at BAFTA 2008, for our work on The Golden Compass!

We were up against The Bourne Ultimatium, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End, and Spider Man 3 :) That’s a pretty big win, if you ask me, and a nice little bell on my cap for the look development work I did on the wolves in Bolvangar.

links:

• link to the BAFTA site listing the winners
• youtube video of our awesome vfx supervisor Bill Westenhofer giving his thank-you speech at the BAFTA ceremony in london.

I’ve seen other examples where the art in question could fall into the ‘Homage or Ripoff?’ category, but today it hits closer to home than I had suspected it ever would. A good friend of mine works in the cinematics division at Blizzard, and today I got these two images in the mail from him. The first is a print ad from Vancouver Film School, in which they seem to be using some student art, and the bottom image is a still frame from the Burning Crusade cinematic (Burning Crusade being the first expansion pack for the ever-popular World of Warcraft MMO). This print ad is from the SIGGRAPH edition of Animation Magazine, no less. And you can bet your ass these images are already making the rounds at the Blizzard offices down in Irvine.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that student homage is great and studying other people’s work is a great way to learn, but the usage in this instance is just wrong. I graduated from VFS back in 2003, and unless things have changed radically, students still need to show their source material when they’re creating their work, and plagiarism is highly frowned upon. Whether or not this instance qualifies as plagiarism could be debated, but the fact that VFS are using this work in an advertisement strikes me as really stupid and insulting. “Oh, hey Blizzard, thanks for your hard work, we’re going to use this to round up a few more students, is that okay?” except not so much with the asking or the legitimacy.

This is either the student’s fault for not disclosing all sources of inspiration like they were supposed to, or VFS’s fault for not giving a shit about who they make money off of. Let the student put it in his/her demo reel at his own risk, sure, but for christ’s sake don’t use it to make money for your school when it’s so very obviously someone else’s work.

VFS, I hope you’re listening. I really want to be proud of my vfx alma mater, but this puts you in a very poor light.

Edit: I realize that this is a strongly worded post, so I want to add that there are definitely good people working up there at VFS, but stupid things like this overshadow that good work and make the school look it doesn’t have any idea what it’s teaching or producing. Obviously something broke in the chain of events that lead to this advertisement, and whatever it is that broke (or was broken already) needs to be fixed.

yeah, there’s been a lull. i don’t post as often as i used to. mostly because i haven’t had anything to impart. that, and it’s been pretty busy here at work. i’m involved on the R&D team for the work we’re doing on an unnamed movie, and that’s taken up a LOT of my time. i’ve moved to a bigger and better office, though, and that’s nice. i likes a bigger space fo’ sho. the sad thing is that my MAME cabinet got the axe, and i had to take it home with me. on the downside, there’s a lot of people who played on it that are sad because now they’ve got to do something else on late nights or during lunch. it was a fun service to provide for people, and it wasn’t distracting (we had pretty strict rules about use in order to keep from bothering people nearby). on the upside, i have a nice MAME cabinet in my apartment now, that i can play on whenever the hell i feel like it. :)

also, i’ve been teaching myself some php and mysql, which has been challenging but very rewarding. it’s for my own project for myself and some friends, so it’s nothing huge, but it’s a good experiment. speaking of my friends, i’ve made a bunch of new ones. i’m going to be an enforcer for PAX’07 this coming august, and i’ve been chatting a lot with other enforcers, both new and veteran. they’re a great bunch of people, and i’m stoked about volunteering at yet another awesome convention.

i’ve still been drawing, but not as often. the drawing level has dropped since i’ve been involved in this more technical project, but once it’s done, i expect the pendulum to swing the other way again. i’ve read scott mccloud’s books and i bought myself a giant awesome volume of facial expressions (one of my weaknesses), and i’m excited about drawing more soon. maybe when i scan in some of this fun stuff i’ll share it up.

thanks for listening/reading.

well, mostly:

• BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
  • “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” John Knoll, Hal Hickel, Charles Gibson and Allen Hall
  • “Poseidon,” Boyd Shermis, Kim Libreri, Chaz Jarrett and John Frazier
  • “Superman Returns,” Mark Stetson, Neil Corbould, Richard R. Hoover and Jon Thum

i thought that xmen would be in, but thought that poseidon might edge it out.  and it did!  very cool.

my life is full of fur. mostly canine. i’m currently combing wolf fur for a movie adaptation of Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass”, a young adult novel that’s been a favorite of mine and sara’s for a while now. it’s fun, but sometimes when i’ve been staring at wolf butt for four hours straight, my brain starts to leak out my ears.

last night was a lot of fun… sara and i and some friends went to the academy voting session for the VFX bakeoff films last night. the 7 films that made the cut get presented… 5 minute intro, 15 minute reel, and 3 more minutes for closing comments and questions. this is the fourth year in a row that sara and i have gone, and the first year that we haven’t gone with our good friend jude, who is just a little too far away to attend with us. of the 7 films:

• “Casino Royaleâ€?
• “Eragonâ€?
• “Night at the Museumâ€?
• “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chestâ€?
• “Poseidonâ€?
• “Superman Returnsâ€?
• “X-Men The Last Standâ€?

i predict that Pirates will win, and the other two nominees will be Superman Returns and X-Men, though it’s possible that Poseidon could edge out X-Men. X-Men’s story was way stronger (no surprise there), but the fx shots in Poseidon were just awesome. i wish that Casino Royale would make the cut, but i think that the work that they did was too invisible for anyone to appreciate it enough. it would be nice if i was wrong. oh, and it was obvious even from the 15 minutes of dragon footage that was shown, that Eragon was a steaming pile.okay, back to work! the wolves are howling…

what a crazy holiday that was. lots of wii sports, lots of family and family dogs (yay!). not as much sketching as i had hoped for, but i’m happy with what i did accomplish. got a couple nice artbooks (frazetta and n.c. wyeth) for christmas, along with a big ol’ sketchpad which i’m happy to have. and man, did i clean up on dvd’s. sara and i keep a list of dvds that We Can’t Figure Out Why We Don’t Own Already, and we managed to cross many off of that list this season. in quick random order: spiderman, free enterprise, back to the future boxed set, labrynth, dark crystal, mirrormask, fast and furious 3: tokyo drift*, and done the impossible (the firefly fan documentary)! it’s nice to have these among our dvd collections, but man — now we’re hurtin’ for more shelf space (yet again).

*: because i have screen credits. and the chase scenes are cool. oh, and seeing the vfx work i did on the Mitsubishi Evolution in the main menu loop of the DVD was pretty sweet. :)

saw Night at the Museum with my family, which was really nice. it was actually quite the entertaining film, and as always, it’s a big ego boost to see my name up in the credits for the visual effects. i was going to take a picture with my cellphone, but mom jumped up out of her seat and starting whooping and hollering, so i missed the pic. but i appreciated the enthusiasm! even though i did a lot of work on the zebras, oryxes (orii?), the rhino, and a couple other animals, it’s still nice to see them on screen and have the illusion fool you, even if only for a little bit. now i just have to go see Charlotte’s Web with sara sometime this week before it goes off the big screen. it’s my first ’3d lead’ credit, and i aim to see it in the theatre!

vacation always ends, and it’s hard coming back to LA again when it means leaving my family behind. i always have such a good time hanging out with everyone, and there’s never enough time to do everything you want to. dad and i (well, mostly dad) made a sweet cutting board that’s on it’s way to us in the mail. you can see pics of it at mom and dad’s site: avant gourds. and mom and sara made some awesome pants. we’ll have some pics of them up soon, but we have to decompress from the holiday first.

so i said that i’d finished the marquee. i had. demons in the intertubes, however, prevented me from uploading (long story involving DHCP and a stupid way of keeping track of my internal addresses — now resolved) to share with… well, me, since this ‘blog’ is hardly public consumption. :) anyway.

work has been… interesting. a higher-up has announced that he’s leaving, causing a lot of rumour and consternation in amongst the masses. certainly doesn’t do much for the feeling of job security. scary, actually. i’ve never been worried about my job before, at least not here.

in other news, my friend jude has left for india for 6 months — i wish her well, but sara and i are going to miss her a lot. from what’ we’ve heard so far, it sounds like she’s already having a blast. good luck, jude!

okay, lots of massive animals to set up and prelight. back to work.