VFX Voice - Fall 2017

More documents

Recommendations

Info

COMPANY PROFILE ILM’S GLOBAL ART DEPARTMENT ILM’s art department traces back to the first Star Wars and artists Joe Johnston and Ralph McQuarrie. “It’s different now that we use a lot of 3D tools,” says Jennifer Coronado, Senior Manager of ILM’s Art Department. “You don’t need orthos if you can do a sculpt and spin it around, but other than that, it’s still very much the same. We’ve grown and taken on more work, but even though we’re in four countries now, we try to make sure the team feels like a team.” Twenty-two artists work in San Francisco, 14 in London, three “and growing” in Vancouver and two in Singapore. In addition to work on films, the artists have done videogame design, marketing materials, and even provided Star Warsbased designs for prosthetics for children. “We pursue our own work,” Coronado says. “For film, we can take a show from blue sky to pragmatic builds and if the film gets awarded, continue through production. We’d love to work on the visual effects for every film we design, but sometimes that doesn’t work out.” Recently, to find new artists, ILM held a Star Wars-based competition. Three thousand people entered. After phase one and two – ship and character design – only 250 were left. After phase three, only eight. “People post great concept art on the web, but taking that to a final design is different,” Coronado says. “Phase three was most important. We had them create key frames for a fake movie with fake characters and a fake brief. We gave people two weeks and in the middle, changed it on them completely. Because that’s what a director would do.” They hired the third place winner, who now works as an art director in Vancouver. “Talented art directors are a finite resource,” Coronado says. “It’s amazing what these folks do, the way their brains work. They’re not just executing. They’re inventing under pressure. I applaud them every day.” TOP to BOTTOM: Kong: Skull Island (Photo copyright © 2017 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.) improving day-to-day efficiency and creating new tools for the artists. “I think there’s plenty of room for improving the number of man-hours it takes to do a task, to make the workflow smoother and slicker so we can produce the same quality with fewer man hours,” he says. That’s true inside the facilities and out, as well. Lucasfilm and ILM recently announced an open-source release of the MaterialX library developed by Lucasfilm’s Advanced Development Group and ILM engineers. MaterialX, for which both Autodesk and Foundry have voiced support, facilitates the transfer of rich materials and look-development content between applications and renderers. “But equally important is focusing on enabling technology,” Knoll says, “on tools allowing us to do things we couldn’t before.” 60 • VFXVOICE.COM FALL 2017
“Rather than wait for other people to figure out what the rules [of VR storytelling] are, we’re learning them ourselves. We have people very excited about the possibilities of VR who are driving that forward... .” —John Knoll, Chief Creative Officer & Visual Effects Supervisor, ILM ILM’s long list of Technical Academy Awards attests to that effort. Today, Knoll cites tools for facial animation, for better compositing, and for effects simulation as ones he’s looking at in particular. “There are always more projects you want to do than you have engineering man hours to do,” Knoll says. When Disney bought Lucasfilm, ILM gained some partners in that effort. Helping the studio expand their R&D talent pool are Disney’s Pixar Animation and Walt Disney Animation. “We have a commonality of mission,” Knoll says. “Each year we get together at DISGRAPH where we share technical development and general information about how we work in a way that can be somewhat more open than we can be at SIGGRAPH. We can be explicit. We share code. If we have something one of the other studios likes, they can have it and vice versa.” ILM developers can also tap into work being carried on in the labs at Disney Research. “We meet with them every week,” Knoll says. “They’re interested in making sure that what they do has application, and we suggest things we would like to see. We’re in constant communication about the state of development of some of their tools. They have all kinds of really cool things we can apply directly.” IMMERSIVE ENTERTAINMENT All these departments plus Lucasfilm’s Skywalker Sound feed talent and expertise into the studio’s ILMxLab in San Francisco where visual artists, sound artists, researchers and interactive storytellers create immersive entertainment. Knoll is intrigued by VR and AR, but personally hasn’t jumped TOP to BOTTOM: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Photo copyright © 2016 Industrial Light & Magic, a division of Lucasfilm Entertainment Company Ltd., All Rights Reserved FALL 2017 VFXVOICE.COM • 61
Page 1:
VFXVOICE.COM FALL 2017 VES 70: ALL-
Page 4:
[ EXECUTIVE NOTE ] Welcome to Our V
Page 8:
FALL 2017 • VOL. 1, NO. 3 VFXVOIC
Page 11 and 12: six 9’ x 9’ pods that held one
Page 14: VR/AR TRENDS LEFT and RIGHT: In the
Page 17 and 18: the same characters acting.” This
Page 19 and 20: was made available last year for Go
Page 22 and 23: MUSIC TOP: Coldplay in a 360 concer
Page 24: MUSIC TOP: The Oculus Rift headset
Page 27 and 28: offered a Visual Effects Production
Page 30 and 31: EDUCATION TOP LEFT: One of the adva
Page 32: EDUCATION experts. Around 250 films
Page 35 and 36: developed during the original LEGO
Page 38: ANIMATION SHOOTING FOR REFERENCE Th
Page 41 and 42: up elements to form a supercell and
Page 43 and 44: “It was amazing to have a lot of
Page 45 and 46: ack to the roots of undistracted st
Page 47 and 48: “Virtual reality allows us to cre
Page 50 and 51: PROFILE DR. SKIP RIZZO AND THE RISE
Page 52 and 53: PROFILE Q. A lot of your work has f
Page 54: PROFILE beyond distraction to chron
Page 57 and 58: (Majdanek), so that through this ve
Page 59 and 60: “The preservation of history is a
Page 61: GLOBAL ILM SINGAPORE Lucasfilm open
Page 65 and 66: “We have a commonality of mission
Page 67 and 68: “In the history of restoration, I
Page 69 and 70: event that fulfills the Society’s
Page 71 and 72: TOP: Visionary director Darren Aron
Page 74: VES 20TH ANNIVERSARY And a second g
Page 77 and 78: COVER NOTES: WE’RE ABOUT TO SEE A
Page 79 and 80: Alien: Covenant took it to yet anot
Page 81 and 82: 300 (2007). Zack Snyder’s stylist
Page 83 and 84: anging from wild success to abysmal
Page 85 and 86: “The Mill developed Blackbird, a
Page 87 and 88: esulting tools for making VR and AR
Page 89 and 90: expensive IT equipment, to a more f
Page 91 and 92: development are: automotive, constr
Page 93 and 94: arcades that you see popping up in
Page 95 and 96: and most importantly, more cost-acc
Page 97 and 98: up your ultra smartphone. You will
Page 99 and 100: PETER SCHLUEER, CO-FOUNDER AND PRES
Page 101 and 102: “On what would become the vertica
Page 103 and 104: TOP to BOTTOM, LEFT to RIGHT: Tom P
Page 106 and 107: [ VES SECTION SPOTLIGHT: GERMANY ]
Page 108 and 109: [ VES SECTION SPOTLIGHT: GERMANY ]
Page 110: [ V-ART ] Lorin Wood V-Art showcase
Page 113 and 114:
CyberGraphix, one of the first Mac-
show all

VFX Voice - Fall 2017

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?