Last night, while the Visual Effects Society presented their awards for this year, Visual Effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull and Stan Lee (left) received special honorary awards: Stan Lee was awarded with the VES 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award while Douglas Trumbull was honored with the Georges Méliès Award. A you may know, Méliès was a famous French illusionist and film maker, best known for two prominent movies featuring early visual effects: 'The Impossible Voyage' (1904) and 'A trip to the Moon' (1902), which became famous for it's iconic image of the moon, having a human face and receiving a bullet like space capsule in the right eye (which is also the VES society's official logo).
Trumbull was responsible for special effects on Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey', Spielberg's Close Encounters of the third Kind' and Ridley Scott's 'Blade Runner'. Trumbull, not a fan of computer generated effects, recently returned to work after a 30 year hiatus to contributed to Terrence Malick's 'The Tree of Life', which is currently up for three Academy Awards. Working with chemicals, paint, fluorescent dyes, smoke and liquids, all the scenes in outer space were created by hand, giving the film a special feeling and resembling Kubrick's epic classic from 1968.
Paramount's first full length CG animated feature 'Rango' (animated by George Lucas' ILM) became the big winner and received four awards, followed by 'Rise of the Planets of the Apes' which won in two categories. The cinematic trailer for Blizzard Entertainment's Video Game 'Diablo III: The Black Soulstone' was favored above Framestore's work on Coca Cola's 'Siege' commercial in the category 'Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated commercial or VG trailer'. The creative team of Nicholas S. Carpenter, Graham Cunningham, Chris Thunig and Taka Yasuda won the prestigious award for their incredible work (check it out that the bottom, including the full 'making of').
Below: from storyboard to fully rendered final scene. 'Rango' won 4 awards in the categories 'Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated Feature Motion Picture', 'Outstanding Animated Character' (for the character of 'Rango'), 'Outstanding created environment' ('Main Street Dirt') and 'Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in an Animated Feature Morion Picture'
ILM also scored In the category 'Outstanding models in a feature Motion Picture'. The Special Effects team of Tim Brakensiek, Kelvin Chu, David Fogler and Rene Garcia won with Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon' for the creation of their 'Driller' Decepticon character. ILM's other team consisting of Giles Hancock, John Hanson, Tom Martinek and Scott Younkin received an award for 'Outstanding Created Environment in a Live Action Feature motion Picture' for their extensive work on the Chicago location '155 Wacker Drive' for Transformers DSOTM.
Above: 'Driller' character conceptualised by Josh Nizzi for Dreamworks. Go for his official site to have a look at his amazing robotic designs or check out his tuts on robot design at Gnomon.
Fox's prequel to their 1960's 'Planet of the Apes' franchise 'Rise of the Planets of the Apes' received an award twice: the team of Daniel Barrett, Florian Fernandez, Matthew Muntean and Eric Reynolds received the award for 'Outstanding Animated Character in a Live Action Feature Motion Picture' (for the character of 'Ceasar') while Dan Lemmon, Joe Letteri, Cyndi Ochs and Kurt Williams received their award for 'Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects-driven Feature Motion Picture'.
Above: the creation of 'Caesar' from motion capture (done by Andy Serkis) to CGI. 'Tintin' and 'Harry Potter and the deathly Hallows' did not win anything while Martin Scorcese's 'Hugo' also won two awards.
For the full list with all the winners go to the VES Awards offical site. Below you can check out the winning cinematic trailer for Diablo III The Black Soulstone, which won over Coca Cola's 'Siege'. It is followed by the 'making of', which will shave an hour off your life, so be warned!
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