VizWorld.com

A few VFX folks had a pretty crummy Christmas with the news that CafeFX closed permanently over the holidays.  A fairly successful company with projects like G.I.Joe and Public Enemies under their belt, they’ve been on haitus for 6 months in search of investors.

Part of the problem, says Barnes, was that CafeFX “got to be exactly the wrong size.” Noting that Asylum and the Orphanage were also mid-sized California vfx studios that closed, Barnes said, “Being a California-only company right now is not a good business model if you’re over 100 people.”

Although, if you’re in the market for some VFX equipment, they’ll be selling all their gear sometime around January 18th.

via CafeFX shutters before Christmas – Entertainment News, Technology News, Media – Variety.

Graphics cafefx

A new press release has quotes and information from the six VFX studios that made the magic behind G.I.Joe.  The studios include Digital Domain, CIS, MPC, Prime Focus (formerly Frantic Films), CafeFX, and Framestore.  Not only is each studios contribution impressive, but the whole project is a testament to Autodesk’s new focus on interoperability between tools:

“Enabling creative collaboration is central to our software development strategy,” said Stig Gruman vice president of digital entertainment, Autodesk Media & Entertainment. “‘G.I. Joe’ is a perfect illustration of the success of our strategy. The movie showcases the work of six extremely talented visual effects studios which used a range of Autodesk tools to bring this massive project together and deliver an astounding visual result.”

Autodesk – Press Room – Press Releases.

Graphics autodesk, cafefx, cis, digitaldomain, framestore, movie, mpc, prime focus, vfx

The VFX Supervisor of Public Enemies, Robert Stadd, sits down with VFXWorld to talk about some of the 400 VFX shots they did for the film.

(…) Then we shot Johnny doing it mostly for lighting. Then afterward there was a scanning session for his head and also for the end. So we had some CG heads that we could use and we used them a lot in the bank robbery.

BD: Who worked on that shot?

RS: CafeFX. They also did some interim work on Dillinger’s death, but, really all that blood stuff was Hammerhead. We built about 60% of it in CG with 3ds Max and then using Nuke we just manipulated it. And then Hammerhead shot a bunch of live-action elements of blood just pouring out of him (using a Styrofoam head).

via ….. >> VFXWorld / Feature Articles << …...

Graphics 3dsmax, cafefx, hammerhead, movie, nuke, vfx

Director James Wong and Visual Effects Supervisor Ariel Velasco-Shaw needed alot of visual effects for the upcoming Dragonball Evolution, and were able to round up a small army of VFX houses to do the work.  VFXWorld sat down with three of them, Hybride, Frantic Films VFX, and CafeFX, to discuss their contributions and some of the special challenges of this project.

“Being involved in the very early stage of the production was great for Hybride because it gave us the chance to work on R&D in order to develop the look of the different energy blasts such as Ki Shadow Crane and Ma Fu Ba ” Raymond offers. “We also worked on look development for the Dragon Temple as well as for the Flying Hummer and Lord Piccolo s dirigible. Having our staff on-stage working closely with Ariel Velasco-Shaw alongside director James Wong was very helpful in achieving our goal.”

via ….. >> VFXWorld / Feature Articles << …...

Graphics cafefx, frantic films vfx, hybride, vfx