ILM on the water simulations of 'Battleship'.

Today, the VFX team of ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) uploaded a new video showing more of their work on their recent movie 'Battleship' and the creation of a completely new fluid simulation system, which had to be re-engineered completely from the ground up for this film. It includes interviews with Grady Cofer, Pablo Helman, Willi Geiger and Nick Rasmussen of ILM. As always, make sure to check it out in full HD below.

In 2007, Nick Rasmussen, Ron Fedkiw and Frank Losasso Petterson already received a Sci-Tech Award from the Academy for the development of the original ILM fluid simulation system. Simultaneously, Duncan Brinsmead, Jos Stam, Julia Pakalns and Martin Werner were awarded that year with a Sci-Tech award for the design and implementation of the Maya Fluid Effects system.

For this year's Sci-Tech Awards, seven achievements have been selected from various companies for award consideration. Among them, Lucasfilm for 'Zviz', a previsualisation system, WETA Digital for 'Tissue', a Physically-Based Character Simulation Framework and PDI Dreamworks for their new Lighting tool. The 2012 Scientific and Technical Awards will be presented at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills on February 9, 2013. The event will be hosted by actress Zoe Saldana and actor Chris Pine (from the upcoming 'Star Trek: Into Darkness').

Cloud Catchers!

Lucas Martell is an indie filmmaker and like, the MacGyver of CG. Where others literally spend Millions on CG animated productions, he's the guy that get's that same quality of animation done within a minute fraction of those interstellar big budgets. You might have seen his animated short 'Pigeon Impossible' around the block, as it was a hit on the internet. Now, with Michael Cawood (director of the award winning independent short 'Devils, Angels & Dating' ) and their team of stealthy CG ninja's, they're back at it with another CG short that will definitely make a huge impact soon: 'Cloud Catchers'!

Above: Lucas Martell and a shot from 'Pigeon Impossible'. There's not much so see yet of 'Cloud Catchers', but I hear they've been working really hard at it so far. As with 'P.I.', Lucas has already put two podcasts up on Youtube to share his bewildering approach on tackling the creative jungle, while Cawood just recently updated his demo reel showcasing some early clips of their new short. You should definately check out if you want to catch an early glimpse.

Above: work in progress. A few early animated shots of 'Cloud Catchers'. About the project, Lucas says 'The story takes place in a time when all of the Earth' s oceans have dried up. and it's about one courageous pilot fighting against vicious sky pirates for control of the last remaining source of water, the clouds'. In the mean time, a kickstarter project was set up to collect some much needed funding for the project. So if you feel like pitching in on this little gem and you want to make a donation, make sure to contact Lucas.

Beside Cawood and Martell, the creative team on 'Cloud Cathers' also includes Tad Catalano, Tray Duncan ('I am Legend' and 'Zathura'), animator Henning Koczy and modeler Ryan Saper among others.

'Pigeon Impossible' 

Martell's previous short 'Pigeon Impossible' has been shown at over 250 festivals in 43 countries, and won more than 20 awards including 'Best Short' at the Oscar-qualifying Montreal World Film Festival, and 'Best in Show' at ArtFutura in Spain. If you haven't seen it yet, you should definitely check it out below. 'Cause there's some pretty awesome stuff on the net, and then there's the really amazing stuff, the little gems that make the world shine brighter. This one sits atop of that!

Nick unleashes the Ninja Turtles in 3D.

Cowabunga!! Nickelodeon has begun airing their new CG animated TV series of the 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' and after three episodes I can positively say this show is pretty cool. While most of it is CG animated, it really does it's best to remind us of the Turtles' comic book past by including 2D backgrounds and visual effects while throwing still image sequences (animated in After Effects) into the mix. A great follow up to (although maybe not as sophisticated as) Warner Brother's CG animated 'TMNT' feature from 2007, which was done by Francis Kao's Imagi Animation studios in Hong Kong.

The new series joins Nickelodeon's other CG animated hit series 'Kung Fu Panda: Legends of awesomeness' and definitely brings back some good memories of the nineties, when Kevin Eastman and Peter laird's comic book characters turned into pop culture icons almost overnight after getting their own TV cartoon series in 1988, which consisted of an amazing 193 episodes and ran until 1996.

A two-part pilot, 'Rise of the Mutants', introduced new viewers to the four Turtles and their ninja master, who retreated to the New York sewers after they came in contact with an extra terrestrial substance known as 'the ooze' and started to mutate.

Hamato Yoshi, the honorable ninja and master of the turtles, turned into the huge rat, known as Splinter. His pet turtles, of course, became his full grown martial arts pupils, which he named after the four great renaissance masters: Leonardo (the leader of the gang, wearing a blue mask), Raphael (wearing a red mask, he's the most aggressive and a real fighter), Michelangelo (the goofy carefree surfer dude type, wearing an orange mask) and Donatello (the nerdy inventor-type that likes to fool around with all kinds of equipment).

In the series, the Turtles fight the aliens that created the Ooze. Physically challenged as the beings are, (well, they're pretty much just a head) the critters use robots, disguised as human clones, to fight the Turtles. As in the previous animated series, our green friends are helped by April O' Neil, who got kidnapped with her father (a scientist), by the extra terrestrials.

Above: It's all in the eyes. April O'Neil screams when she meets the Ninja Turtles for the first time, as she's being rescued from the aliens by Donatello during one of the fight sequences in the Pilot episode. In the original comic books, April was an assistant to mad scientist Dr. Baxter Stockman, while in the earlier animates series, she was a reporter for channel 6 news.

The voice cast include actors Jason Biggs ('American Pie') as Leonardo and Sean Astin ('Lord of the Rings') as Raphael. Rob Paulsen, who did the voice of Raphael for the Nineties cartoon series, now voices Donatello and Greg Cipes (known for his many characters on 'Ben 10') portrays Michelangelo.

Above: In the comic books and the live action films that were released by Fox, Splinter was the mutated pet rat of ninja master Hamato Yoshi. In the animated series both in the nineties and now, Master Yoshi himself turned into a sewer rat.

Below (click to enlarge) : Master Yoshi recounts of his past in japan, where he fought his best friend over the love of his life, a woman who died afterwards in a fire. His best friend became his worst enemy, Shredder, who is now hunting him in the US, to pick up where they left off. The illustration below is part of the scrolling 2D sequences used to tell this back story. (2D Sequences were done by Ciro Nieli, Irined Maramba, Byron Penaranda and Marco Li).

All 3D character models for the series were done by Daniel Aronoff, Joe Dela Torre, Leonard Dill, Zechariah Hutton, Dev Karna and Patrick Warner, while overall Animation production is in the hands of Technicolor India in Bangalore, who were also responsible for the cinematic animations of Naughty Dog's 'Uncharted' 1 & 2, Sony's 'God of War 2' and Epic's 'Gear's of War 2'. They've also done all animation for Nickelodeon's 'Kung Fu Panda' and 'Penguins of Madagascar' CG animated TV series. They currently have 800 artists on staff. The current season of the Ninja Turtles consists of 26 episodes and a second season has already been green lighted. The new series premiered on September 29 in the States while the first episodes aired this week in UK/Europe. The series will premiere in the Netherlands on November 4th.

Check the Cowabunga Corner site for any and all information on the Turtles and visit their YouTube page for great behind the scenes stuff and interviews with the storyboard artists designers. Check the interview with Ciro Nieli below.

Star Wars Clone Wars season 5 premieres tomorrow.

While George Lucas claims he's retired and wants to spend his days shooting experimental films nobody will ever want to see, we get to see what happens next with our favorite science fiction characters, as 'The Clone Wars' returns to the small screen for another season of action packed fun.

After Genndy Tartakovsky (Dexter's Lab, Samurai Jack) came up with his 2D animated series of Star Wars in 2003, following the exploits of Lucas' main characters from the prequel trilogy, 'The Clone Wars' was greenlighted for further endeavorment. Showing us more of what really took place between SW II 'Attack of the Clones' (Anakin-good-guy fights for the Republic) and SW III 'Revenge of the Sith' (Bad Anakin suits up to become Darth Vader), a CG animated feature of 'The Clone Wars' was released in 2008, followed by the first 22 episodes of season one, that aired on Cartoon Network.

Below: character designs for Padmé Amidala by Kilian Plunkett and final 3D model in Maya.

Tomorrow, the first episode of season 5 will premiere on the CN. Beside the CG animated series, other plans are still in the making. So far, 50 scripts have been written for an expensive all out live action TV series of Star Wars, as proposed by Lucas a few years ago. Latest reports say the production of this continuing saga have been put on hold for at least several years as of now, giving room for 'an increase of technical developments' according to Lucas, meaning that CG and VFX production costs may have dropped drastically by then. (Production of the series would cost at least 50 Million per episode, according to Lucas, if it would be made today).

Rick McCallum, producer of the upcoming series (which supposedly has been given the working title 'Star Wars: Underworld') says it will be about the republic's growing corruption and downfall, taking place between episode III and IV ('A New Hope') In a recent interview he said the main story showed quite some similarities with current economic events and joked that it centers on keyfigures not unlike 'the people on Wallstreet, who are basically running the United States now.' McCallum is positive the new series will actually happen, although it may take some more years, adding jokingly 'If we're all still alive by then'. In the meantime, let's enjoy the action packed new episodes the CN has in store for us this season and see what plots will unfold this time around.

Above:'The Clone Wars' is Computer animated using Autodesk Maya software. Character designs for 'Yoda' by Dave Filoni, and the 3D CG model in T-pose. Directed by Dave Filoni and produced by Katherine Winder, the pre-production, scripts and models are created by ILM, but all animation production is done by the talented people at CGCG in Taiwan, known for the popular 'Lego Bionicle' animated features.

Check out the great trailer for the upcoming season below, showing you just how good 3D animation for TV has become. It looks pretty amazing! Toggle 1080p for a higher resolution.

VES Awards 2012: Stan Lee Honored.

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!

Polar bears instead of dragons at Super Bowl XLVI: 'Siege' up for VES Award.

Just two more days to the biggest sports television event of the year in the US: The 46th NFL Super Bowl will be played this Sunday, the Championship game of the American National Football League. While most are anxiously awaiting this year's already classic rematch between Tom Brady's New England Patriots and Eli Manning's New York giants at the Indiana Colts' Lucas Oil Stadium, the final match of the season is also known to have the most expensive, and brilliantly created ad campaigns.

Okay, so normally I would agree that most commercials out there are just scrambling your brain, but there are certainly a few gems that can make your jaw drop and the Super Bowl has made a tradition of it to show some pretty impressing stuff. The huge amount of viewers (100.000.000 world wide) and the extremely high costs of air time during the match, makes the Super Bowl the perfect showcase for exclusive and expensive commercials. The average cost for a 30-second spot this year was $3.5 million to $4 million Dollars. Remember last year, Coca Cola had the brilliantly CG animated 'Siege', directed by FX&Mat and created by the multi Oscar nominated and winning studio 'Framestore'.

Above and below: 3D models for the dragon from 'Siege'. Framestore won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and the BAFTA in 2008 for their work on 'The Golden Compass' and was nominated in 2007 for 'Superman Returns', in 2009 for 'The Dark Knight' and in 2010 for 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1'.

The London based CG house also worked on every Potter movie since the first one came out and has worked elaborately on the final one, 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2' (the last of the eight movie franchise and the second based based on J.K. Rowlings seventh book) which became the third highest grossing film ever (worldwide a total of $1,328,111,219 Billion dollars). Framestore, along with Moving Pictures Company and Double Negative have collectively worked on the VFX for 'Hallows 2'. Tim Burke, David Vickery, Greg Butler and John Richardson are nominated for their work and are up for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects this year, but will have to compete with the extremely talented creative team behind 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' (also nominated are Transformers: Dark of the Moon', 'Hugo' and 'Real Steel').

above and below: designs and 3D models for 'Balfour' the main character in Coca Cola's 'Siege' and the Orc general and his beast.

'Siege' is nominated for the 10th annual VES Awards, the awards for outstanding visual effects given by the Visual Effects Society. Framestore is among the nominees in the category 'Oustanding Visual Effects in an Animated Commercial or Video Game Trailer'.The ceremony takes place February 7th. The VES is the entertainment industry's only non-profit honorary society dedicated to advancing the arts, sciences and applications of visual effects. It represents the full breadth of visual effects practitioners in all areas of entertainment from film, television and commercial to music videos and games. It currently has 2300 members in 26 countries.

This week Coca Cola announced it would be trading the dragons for their regular Polar bear characters, as they would be part of a much larger campaign (they're having their own party at CokePolarBowl.com where you can watch the game live and comment on it through facebook, etc). So unfortunately no sequel to 'Siege'. If you've never been able to watch this brilliantly animated commercial, check it out below, (you can toggle 1080p HD) I've added the polar bears vid behind it (sure, they're cool too!). You can also head over to Pixologic who have the video up on their site, followed by some behind-the-scenes footage and an interview with the creators. If you want to read what Framestore's visual effects supervisor Diarmid Harrison-Murray had to say about it, you can also read his interview at FXGuide. Anyway, gonna have fun watching the game Sunday, so Cheers guys!

Oscar nominations without 'Tintin'.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences officially revealed the nominees for the 84th Academy Awards which will be presented Februari 24th. It was a big surprise to see that Steven Spielberg's 'The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn' wasn't even nominated in the category 'Animated Feature Film' while it had just won the Golden Globe on January 15th ('Best Animated Feature Film') and is nominated for a BAFTA award in the category 'Animated Film' along with 'Arthur Christmas' and 'Rango'. The Golden Globes are awarded each year by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and are usually on par with the outcome of the Oscars.

So, no 'Tintin' but five other animated features will be eligible to receive the Academy award, two of which were also nominated for the Globes:

'A Cat in Paris' directed by Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli.
'Chico & Rita' by Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal.
'Kung Fu Panda 2' directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson.
'Puss in Boots' directed by Chris Miller.
'Rango' directed by Gore Verbinski.

It is the first time that Pixar isn't part of the nominated since the category was adopted in 2001. apparently the voters decided 'Cars 2' wasn't really what they expected from Pixar but instead favored the 2D 'tradigitally' animated 'Chico & Rita' and the French 'A Cat in Paris'. 'Tintin', created with motion capture of the actors (just like in 'Avatar') had a tough time. In 2010 the Academy changed the game by stipulating that "motion capture by itself is not an animation technique. In addition, a significant number of the major characters must be animated, and animation must figure in no less than 75% of the picture's running time." Check out the BAFFA rules here.

However, Tintin isn't completely out of the picture, as Spielbergs favorite composer John Williams was nominated for 'Orginal Score' (he is actually nominated twice, also for Spielberg's live action film 'War Horse'). The category Animated shorts also holds five nominations:

'Dimanche/Sunday' directed by Patrick Doyon.
'The Fantastic Flying books of Mr. Morris Lessmore' by William Joyce and B. Oldenburg.
'La Luna' directed by Enrico Casarosa.
'A Morning Stroll' directed by Grant Orchard and Sue Goffe.
'Wild Life' directed by Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby.

'The Fantastic Flying books of Mr. Morris Lessmore' is based on William Joyce's digital childrens book for the I-pad. In 2007 Disney released the computer animated 'Meet the Robinsons' which was also based on one of Joyce's childrens books ('A day with Wilbur Robinson'). Joyce also worked as character designer and concept artist on 'Toy Story' (1995), 'A Bug's Life' (1998) and 'Robots' (2005).

'A Morning stroll' (left) was created by London based animation Studio AKA. Grant Orchard's short is also nominated for a BAFTA award in the category 'Short Animation'. The BAFTA's will be presented on Sunday February 12th.

'La Luna' is created by Enrico Casarosa, who is head story at Pixar and also worked on 'Cars', 'Cars 2', 'Ratatouille' and Up'. The theatrical short has been in production for two years and will be released on June 22nd along with Pixar's 'Brave'. La Luna is based on Italo Calvino's story 'The distance to the moon' and features a young boy, his father and his grand father on a fishing trip, unaware they are to embark on an exciting lunar adventure.

Like Patrick Doyon's ' Dimanche', 'Wild Life' is also a Canadian animated short.  It is created by Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby, who already received an Oscar in this category in 1999 for their work on the short 'When the Day Breaks'.  Watch 'Wildlife' and Dimanche/Sunday at Cartoonbrew.

Althought I think it's a real honor for 'Chico & Rita' to receive an Academy Award nomination, I still think a CGI feature will hawk the prize. I'm putting my money on Paramount's first CGI animated feature 'Rango' (all animation is done without motion capture by George Lucas' ILM). Rango was completely awesome. I mean come on, check out this guy, isn't he great ?

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Devils, Angels & Dating finally done!

After 5 Years of Development, 3 Years of Online Production by a Global Online Team, 2 Years of Animation, with a 0 dollar budget, 'Devils, Angels & Dating' is finally completed and released online! Michael Cawood has been working on this film since 2006, collaborating with a worldwide team of artists and animators. Entirely developed in public online, his short has become a fantastic resource for Animation students and professionals alike. Along the way, Michael has done almost everything imaginable to get his project funded (I said 'almost'!) and you can still pre-order the artbook to help him with that.

Watch 'Devils Angels & Dating' below or go to Michael's official site.You can also go behind the scenes and check out all kinds of videos on different stages of the development process on his Youtube Channel. Congrats Michael!

Pixar releases full length trailer of 'Brave'.

Today Disney/Pixar released the theatrical trailer for their new CGI animated feature 'Brave'. Set in the 10th century mystical Scottish Highlands, the story tells of Princess Merida, a brave archer who defies all traditions and has to fight off a beastly curse to restore peace in the land. With the voices of Scottish actress Kelly MacDonald and Kevin McKidd, who also voiced Captain John 'Soap' MacTavish for Infinity Ward's 'Modern Warfare III' video game (which was released last week and has officially now broken all sales records: 1.5 million people bought their copy on the night of November 8/9, 6.4 million copies were sold that day generating $ 400 million within the first 24 hours).

'Brave', originally titled 'The Bear and the Bow', is directed by Marc Andrews and Brenda Chapman. Also responsible for story development on Disney's 'Beauty and the Beast' in 1991, Chapman wrote the screenplay for 'Brave' with Irene Mecci, writer of Disney's 'The Lion King'. Director Marc Andrews has worked as a storyboard artist on Cartoon Network's 'Samurai Jack' and 'Star Wars: Clone Wars', but also directed Pixar's short 'One Man Band', which was nominated for an Academy Award in the category 'Best Animated Short Film' in 2006. Andrews also co-wrote the screenplay for the upcoming Disney feature 'John Carter' based on the books by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

HBO meets Pixar: Kevin McKidd played 'Lucius Vorenus' for two seasons in 'Rome' while Kelly MacDonald now stars as 'Ms. Margaret Schroeder' in the second season of Terence Winter's critically acclaimed 'Boardwalk Empire'.

Animation has been carefully placed into the professional hands of many digital artists, including Jude Brownbill (BBC's 'Kerwhizz' and Blue-Zoo Production's 'Those Scurvy Rascals'), Robb Denovan (Peter Jacksons' 'King Kong') and Rich McKain (who did excellent graphics on EA's video game 'Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath'). 'Brave' will be released on June 22, 2012 in the US, European releases have been set for July/August. The theatrical trailer has just now been released today so check it out above. The concept artwork is very high res, so you may want to click to enlarge.