Just over sixty years ago the
Reverend W. V. Awdry told his sick son a series of stories based on
real life incidents with trains,
which he later wrote up as the Railway Series. Now
Thomas the Tank Engine and
the other engines of the Isle of Sodor (somewhere
between Barrow-in-Furness and the Isle of Man) are a global phenomena, with
toys, books and of course the TV series - filmed using model trains on
more than 70 1:32 scale 16-by-20-foot sets, and voiced by the likes of Ringo Starr and Alec Baldwin. 2008 has been a rough year for Thomas: George Carlin, who voiced the series in the US up until 1998, passed away (
previously), as did
David Mitton, who had written and directed over 180 episodes (and who has previously worked on the special effects for
Thunderbirds). There's changes ahead for Thomas as well - this year saw the faces of the engines, which had previously been cast in silicone and attached with double sided tape, replaced by
CGI faces, and from 2009 onwards
Nitrogen studios in Canada will be taking over production with an
entirely CGI Thomas. Meanwhile a group of British students continues the tradition of model engine-based storytelling with their YouTube based
British Railway Series.
posted by Artw
on Dec 21, 2008 -
74 comments
Although the movie Tron was groundbreaking due to its unprecedented and extensive use of CGI in 1982, after pre-production, it only took four months to shoot and nine months to complete all of the special effects. From
Computer Animation Primer published in 1984, we learn a bit about the technical process, which seems amusingly tedious by today's animation standards.
[more inside]
posted by SpacemanStix
on Dec 11, 2008 -
11 comments
Area 56: Peeing robots, rockin' office workers, engaging panoramas, and even a few sexy girls.
posted by artifarce
on Sep 6, 2008 -
9 comments
In the years after leaving MST, Joel Hodgson of Mystery Science Theater, and his "smarter brother" Jim Hodgson, worked on a new movie-repurposing concept for USA Networks. The introduction for the test clip read:
"
The Jolly Filter segment is a proof of concept test for a new film process. You will first view 2 minutes of the original film 'Rollercoaster' and then the same 2 minutes utilizing the JollyFilter technique.
"Note: If you find yourself getting bored during the original 'Rollercoaster' footage, don't worry, this is normal."
(SLYT, but an awesome one.) [more inside]
posted by JHarris
on Jul 27, 2008 -
50 comments
Blosxom is an ultra-lightweight piece of blogging software that uses the existing structure of a file system to index and date your posts. The program itself weighs in at a scale-tipping 16.4 kilobytes, and does everything you need to tell the world about your navel. And for those things it doesn't do, there are
plugins. At the other end of the weight scale is the >160 page
annotated source code.
posted by kaibutsu
on Mar 6, 2008 -
32 comments
Evil Bee (embedded QT) is a gorgeous & interesting animated short about a worker bee in a factory who rebels; bonus points for awesome soundtrack by menomena.
posted by jonson
on Nov 8, 2007 -
35 comments
The Fountain "No matter how good
CGI looks at first, it dates quickly...So I set the ridiculous goal of making a
film that would reinvent space without using CGI." Director Aronofsky tapped into the
microphotography work of Parks and Parks to bring a new look to
special effects in science fiction cinema.
posted by dhruva
on Feb 13, 2007 -
95 comments
In 2003, Paramount proposed redoing the special effects for the original "Star Trek" series and rereleasing the episodes as
"Star Trek Enhanced". Two CGI firms
redid the effects for the teaser, the opening credits and title, and the first two acts of
The Doomsday Machine as a proof-of-concept with no changes to the acting or the story. Paramount ultimately decided not to pursue the project, but it's interesting to see how two different CGI firms handled the transporter, phasers, and starship effects.
posted by fandango_matt
on Jun 23, 2006 -
74 comments
The Steam Tank is a brief visual effects reel by Chris Paul, from the Vancouver Film School. It begins with a somewhat mundane steam powered tank attacking a mounted gun in a downtown building, but then replays the event shot by shot, showing the original filmed plate, and adding on each cgi component, to give a good idea of how cg & reality interface in an effects piece.
warning: link goes to direct download of 56MB QuickTime mov
posted by jonson
on Feb 7, 2006 -
13 comments
Eat Dog Cat Mouse (link goes to embedded QT movie with audio) is a charming, weird 3 minute cg cartoon described as a folk tale about the food chain. More info
here.
posted by jonson
on Dec 12, 2005 -
8 comments
Bizarre music video featuring a cgi animated Nazi army composed of anthropomorphized piglets. The video is for a song called Shvayne by a 19 year old Russian singer named
Natasha Ionova, who performs under the name
Glukoza.
Video is embedded flash animation.
posted by jonson
on Sep 8, 2005 -
40 comments
Alien planet "The drama takes place on Darwin IV, a fictional planet 6.5 light-years from Earth, with two suns and 60 percent gravity. Having identified Darwin as a world that could support life, Earth sends a pilot mission consisting of the mothership and three probes." Discovery channel feature, Flash heavy site, via
Pharyngula.
posted by dhruva
on May 9, 2005 -
20 comments
How Bob the Tomato got squashed by Barney the Dinosaur Phil Vischer, creator of those Veggie-Tales cartoons gives a reflective account of why he did
not become "The Christian Disney". So why did Big Idea Productions fail while other "Holy Cultural Warriors" are thriving? (Maybe this guy was too sincerely Christian?)
A shorter version of this Tale from "Christianity Today" magazine here.
via the spiritual center of animation on the web: Cartoon Brew
posted by wendell
on Apr 30, 2005 -
21 comments
Our Whizeels iz tha Shizeel Awesome compositing, audio and 3D work. I like art that make me want to step in to its world, (Note: QuickTime). The incredibly low barrier to entry for this kind of project, as compared to 10 or even 5 years ago blows my mind.
posted by Scoo
on Nov 19, 2004 -
31 comments
Seeing The Matrix yesterday (and just before it, the preview for the third Terminator movie) reminded me of this old David Foster Wallace essay
"F/X Porn", in which he points out how Hollywood blockbusters have become the equivalent of your average "2 for $10.99!!" XXX rentals.
[Google cached version here.]
posted by slipperywhenwet
on Jun 13, 2003 -
36 comments
Ability vs. Guile. If you've seen the latest Gatorade commercial where 39 year old Michael Jordan plays against himself circa his 85 - 86 Bulls era and wondered "how'd they do that?",
here's a very cool description of one of the neatest tricks I've seen recently.
posted by jonson
on Jan 16, 2003 -
7 comments
The Vancouver Company that created
ReBoot will be making a
CGI Spider-Man cartoon for
MTV. Neil Patrick Harris as Spidey, Lisa Loeb as Mary Jane and Ian Ziering as Harry Osborn will inhabit a
"seemingly realistic neon lit city of the immediate future". Will this show set a new standard of production for cartoons based on comics? Will MJ wear glasses?
posted by will
on Jul 30, 2002 -
23 comments
It's the plot, stupid.
USA Today runs their usual insightful commentary about the upcoming release of Lilo and Stitch. It obsesses over the absence of CGI graphics pointing to
Atlantis as evidence for the failure of traditional animation to draw box office. Funny me, I thought that
Atlantis bombed because of a plot better left in 50s serial format, a cast of sterotypes rather than characters, and no sense of humor beyind dirty French jokes repeated over and over again. And is huge success of
Pixar due to their pioneering animation, or their brilliant comic talent?
What causes FX myopia anyway? Granted I can understand why fanboys obsess over the wrong things in a movie. Do the studios set it up by trying to hype each new summer release as the next big technical development (while the artistic development gets trumped by
Waking Life and
Insomnia?)
posted by KirkJobSluder
on Jun 18, 2002 -
7 comments
Best. Transformers. Video. Ever. CGI render of a new VW Beetle transforming into a transformer with live background [1.5 meg mpg video]. Makes me wonder if a live-action Transformers TV show would work, with real actors and CGI rendered robots. I'd certainly watch it.
posted by PWA_BadBoy
on Jun 9, 2002 -
28 comments
