Framestore generated many of the VFX shots in the new medieval comedy “Your Highness”, and found several new challenges. From the unorthodox scenes (animating a minotaur penis?) to dealing with a constantly changing script and adlib’ed scenes, fxguide got them to describe some of the work.
McGee: Well there are a lot of wizards that fire magic as a weapon. And the magic comes out in the shape of electricity from a staff or the palms of hands. The director wanted this to be an homage to magic from the past, so he didn’t want the effects to be super-glossy and Harry Potter-style. He wanted it to be a little more man-made, but still look like a modern visual effect. So we came up with this magic that fires from people’s hands and then we have a big action sequence at the end, where the wizard has taken his virgin bride that he has reared from a child, which he is going to impregnate with dragon seed – and then she’ll give birth to this dragon which he will then control and rule the kingdom. He has to impregnate her at the time of twin moons. When they eclipse he is able to impregnate her, so the film is moving to this climax of the twin moons. The ceiling of the observatory opens up to let the moonlight in and the moonlight sends down electricity which puts a forcefield around the bed that he’s strapped this virgin to.
A new spot for Carmax showcases the work of Framestore and Amalgamated, working under direction from Tom Kuntz to combine live action, CG, and digital matte paintings into some clever spots.
For “Kid in a Candy Store” Framestore uses digital matte paintings and augmentation of live action plates to show what a geek, a mermaid, a wrestler, a hippy and an acrobat have in common. In the spot, “Gas Station”, Framestore helps a modern day man collide with an old-fashioned gas station in order to show that customer service should not be a thing of the past.
“It’s been great working with Tom Kuntz again on this campaign” says Framestore Executive Producer, James Razzall, “We worked together closely to layer in those additional details- adding crowds and flying saucers, replacing skies/backgrounds as well as bringing the mermaid’s tail to life – that really bring the spots to life.”
Over at FXGuide, they have a great writeup of the various effects in the new Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie. Covering work done by MPC, Framestore, Cinesite, and others, it goes into incredible detail of several of the effects. I love the discussion of the “standing tidal wave” from the end of the movie.
Markers placed on the beach set out the proposed location of what was conceived as an enormous standing tidal wave. “Our problem was that it was to be on screen for minutes and minutes,” said Fawkner. “And in broad daylight. The other problem was how to realise the wave given that it was kind of alive but also static. We also had to work out just where all the water was actually coming from.”
Recent comedy “Morning Glory” shows a down-on-her-luck TV producer who gets the gig working on a last-place national morning news show, and finds herself fixing not only the show but her life. A quick-paced romantic comedy, Framestore NY was the lead vendor for the VFX work which involved several tiny little tweaks frequently forgotten about but all important in bringing the story to life.
By changing even the smallest details – times on clocks, names on tags, re-working monitor inserts and other issues that affect continuity, Framestore could help the director make changes to the comedic timing or pace of a scene. It was also necessary to make it very clear to the viewer whether the scene they are watching was taking place in the television studio or if they were watching footage of the actual morning program. Framestore helped make that distinction by compositing television graphics and borders and animating a ticker for the bottom of the screen. Those visual cues proved very important in creating an authentic world for the characters to occupy.
A new commercial for Coors new Silver Bullet Aluminum Pint required a lot of special attention from Framestore NY to recreate the NASA shuttle-launch environment for the new product.
The launch sequence begins, the vfx-created ice cubes tumble down to commence the final cooling and the silver pint Silver Bullet Aluminum Pint is cleared for launch. The Framestore team spent a lot of time in post getting the moment of take-off look believable and epic. The boosters fire, smoke billows from under the can, the ground shakes and we have lift-off.
“The volume of VFX in this spot was huge,” Butler said. “The surrounding environment, the bottle, the billowing smoke, the shot of the bottle traveling through space, they all took 100s of layers to render them realistically. But it was all worth it, we love the epic feeling of this spot.”
You can see the shot on Framestore’s website. Read the full release after the break.
The movie ‘Salt’ chronicles the hunt to find the true identity of Evylyn Salt, played by Angelina Jolie, and takes the moviegoer on a wild ride through countless stunts, car chases, and explosions. Framestore NY worked on some of the most impressive and difficult shots, and CGNews has the details on how they pulled it off.
Framestore created a variety of CG crowd extensions, vehicles and set extensions to achieve the scale that the Director was after. Framestore’s VFX and animation work was vital to several key moments in the film, assisting the storytelling as well as making the action more compelling. Framestore even built, cracked and eventually disintegrated the floor of St. Patrick’s Cathedral using advanced CG and VFX techniques.
FXGuide has a great article up on the visual effects of The Price of Persia, discussing how Cinesite, MPC, Framestore, Double Negative, and NVizage all worked together to create the many VFX shots in the film. In particular, I love the part about the similarities between crowds and cities.
Drawing on the underlying structure of MPC’s existing proprietary ALICE crowd system, Town Planner gave MPC an initial pass at the city that could be augmented with other surrounds like gardens, streets and trees, as well the surrounding mountainous environment. “Buildings are pretty much a crowd that doesn’t move,” noted Ceretti. “We already had layout tools for the crowds – why not make it similar? In the end, we stripped out everything we wouldn’t need in terms of simulation of crowd motion and just used it for layout, but it was still a huge render so we had to split up parts of the city and bake out different renders in RenderMan to make it possible.” In the end, this amounted to about 20,000 buildings and 180,000 props – things like canopies, piles of wood and pots. For shots of the invading army and other crowds in the city, the ALICE software was used to generate 10,000 agents made up of soldiers, flags, citizens, horses and camels, and then integrated into the city shots. Further projection work was done in both Shake and Nuke to allow for 3D space adjustments and other details to be added, along with the layering of atmospheric dust, mist and rays of light.
The FX Studio competition is closed with the winners announced, and animation underway for the winners. If you’re not familiar with FX Studio, it’s a joint project by FrameStore & Nokia to create a mobile-platform & web application to allow people to embed hollywood-style VFX directly into home videos shot with mobile devices. You can view the video above showing some of the entries, and visit their website to see the winners. The winning entry:
Srikapardhi Kala India
MAGNET MAN Concept: A simple marker acts as a magnetic power source attracting animated iron objects to it. Comment: “This is imaginative and different. The dynamic nature of how all the objects can behave is the winning element. It promises huge amounts of fun for the user, and a chance to achieve a really believable finish. We look forward to developing powerful sci-fi magnets from a galaxy far away!”
Prince of Persia’s VFX Supervisor Ben Morris sits down with ArtOfVFX to discuss the creation of the many ‘sand’ sequences in the movie, as well as his background in the industry and tips for newcomers. I was personally surprised to find that the flowing sand was not generated with a fluid solver, but rather with geometric approximations.
The whole sequence was blocked out by the animators using geometric surfaces to represent the sand’s surface, we were able to get most of the key movement of the sand signed off in this way before an fx artist became involved. Once the layout of the shot had been finalized we had a custom plugin in Maya that took the animated geometric surfaces representing the sand and were able to produce a flow of particles that replaced the geometric surface in the final render. The plugin was able to create particle movement that appear fluid like and was dictated by the gradient of the under lying surface. Any additional flow detail could be controlled via maps, allowing the artist to quickly and visually paint the sand flow direction, including any turbulence and spay.
The new ads for the 3D Ready, LED, Slim-bezel, internet connected LG Infinia television showcase the work of Framestore in animating clouds of butterflies, tree-climbing elephants, and friendly fish in the trio of ads.
In Butterflies, the main challenge was to create thousands of butterflies that looked real as a swarm, whilst retaining the intrinsic beauty that these fascinating insects possess, particularly during flight. The 3D team had to find the right balance between naturally chaotic flying and choreographed flying that could neatly tell the ad’s story of ‘infinite flow’. Caution was taken to ensure the butterflies didn’t become too stylised and bird-like, especially in the more crowded shots. The opening hero butterflies were hand animated for a smooth and organic feel, but the wider shots used a particle system to disperse the insects when they begin to number in the thousands. Range of colour and attention to detail were crucial, so the team created unique butterfly designs and added touches like rendering a fine layer of fur to avoid a plastic or solid look.
Framestore generated many of the VFX shots in the new medieval comedy “Your Highness”, and found several new challenges. From the unorthodox scenes (animating a minotaur penis?) to dealing with a constantly changing script and adlib’ed scenes, fxguide got them to describe some of the work.
A new spot for Carmax showcases the work of Framestore and Amalgamated, working under direction from Tom Kuntz to combine live action, CG, and digital matte paintings into some clever spots.
Over at FXGuide, they have a great writeup of the various effects in the new Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie. Covering work done by MPC, Framestore, Cinesite, and others, it goes into incredible detail of several of the effects. I love the discussion of the “standing tidal wave” from the end of the movie.
Recent comedy “Morning Glory” shows a down-on-her-luck TV producer who gets the gig working on a last-place national morning news show, and finds herself fixing not only the show but her life. A quick-paced romantic comedy, Framestore NY was the lead vendor for the VFX work which involved several tiny little tweaks frequently forgotten about but all important in bringing the story to life.
The movie ‘Salt’ chronicles the hunt to find the true identity of Evylyn Salt, played by Angelina Jolie, and takes the moviegoer on a wild ride through countless stunts, car chases, and explosions. Framestore NY worked on some of the most impressive and difficult shots, and CGNews has the details on how they pulled it off.
Prince of Persia’s VFX Supervisor Ben Morris sits down with ArtOfVFX to discuss the creation of the many ‘sand’ sequences in the movie, as well as his background in the industry and tips for newcomers. I was personally surprised to find that the flowing sand was not generated with a fluid solver, but rather with geometric approximations.
The new ads for the 3D Ready, LED, Slim-bezel, internet connected 
VizWorld.com 
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