WWZ is a trilogy???

Apparently....according to Brad Pitt, WWZ is going to be a series of films, a trilogy no less. It seems this is the trendy thing to do these days, announce that the film your working on is one of many, does this create hype? buzz? I'm not sure it does, i mean look what happened witht he Golden Compass! That film was based off a trilogy of books, the trailers made mention of the series as a trilogy and then just before the film came out, it was edited to be one stand alone film with a very loose ending, just in case.... I think you have to be supremely confident in the quality of your film to announce its going to be a Trilogy or else your gonna look like an idiot! But hey, its far more likely that its just a marketing ploy to drum up interest in the film.

Sooooo, what does this mean for the VFX? well very little is my honest answer, I have worked on franchsied filmed before and it very rarely stays with the same company, with the odd exception of something like Transformers and Star wars, which has always been done by ILM. Harry Potter, Narnia, the Batman films, all done by different post houses, and why? because they out bid each other, maybe the VFX looks good, but perhaps the working relationship between the VFX house and the production broke down? who knows, but more often that not, a new film means you go back to the drawing board on the VFX! nothing is secure in post production and the simple development in software means that in as little 2 years, a company that handle 80/90 percent of the VFX in one film may not get any in its sequel.

anyway, here is the origional article from which these thoughts stem:

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=85621

first decent shots of john carter are here!

as usual, I have been terrible at updating my news section - really the whole site needs updating, but finally Disney have realised some decent screen shots of the John Carter of Mars, and behold a beautiful render of an airship! which I worked on.

In additon to which, there is a nice little review from Harry Knowles at ain't it cool news on these pics.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/52084

finally we come to the big write up....

disney screened about 20 minutes of the film to a select group of press and reviewers.....

AND THEY LOVED IT!

you can check the first one here:

http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/1145066/john_carter_our_thoughts_on_20_minutes_of_footage_that_weve_seen.html

This sort of write up actually gets me excited about the movie and I worked on it! This may be the sort of film , that whilst your working on it, you become quite detached because it consumes so much of your life, for me it was over a year and half, i know plenty of people that worked on it for over 2 years...but maybe just maybe its going to be the massive blockbuster we all hoped it could be...will just have to wait and find out now...

fingers crossed.

here come's WWZ!

So the days of John Carter of Mars are over, and I've moved onto a new production - WWZ.

Im hoping some of your will heave heard of it, if not for the book - An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brookes, then almost certainly for the media circus a surrounding the lead star - Brad Pitt!

Im short, its a post apolalyptic zombie film, set all over the globe. Cant really say much more than that for now, but there is plenty of information available online, and the book is really good, so i definatley encourage you to pick up a copy!

John Carter of Mars

Well, sadly there havent been many updates from me in a while. The reason for this, is that i've been on one project for the best of part of the last year and a half, so my updates on projects etc, have been rather limited.

That being said, i see no reason why i can't familiarise people with the project, and also offer you exciting news of a personal project i am working on, that i will be posting about in august! so stay stay tuned, because its coming soon!

Anyway, as the title of the post suggests, i am working on a filme called 'John Carter of Mars' can't really say too much about it, but it exists in book form, so i suggest you go out and buy it, there are 11 books in the series, written way back at the beginning of the 20th century, its old school sci-fi. Im working my way through them at the moment, but have only got up to book 7. They are pretty entertaining, i wouldnt go so far to say they are well written, its all pretty one sided, the hero always wins, get the girl and kills the bad guy, there is very little depth, but what can you expect from a science fiction novel from 1917?

anyway to clue you all in a bit im posting some of the book covers, that depict the rather colourful world of mars (or barsoom as it is refered to in the books). these covers were designed by Michael Whelan, who is an awesome fantasy artist, i bought his book after seeing these images, and i thoroughly encourage you to look him up! anyway, enjoy:


A Princess of Mars

The Gods of Mars

Warlord of Mars

Thuvia - Maid of Mars

The Chessmen of Mars

Mastermind of Mars

A Fighting man of Mars

Swords of Mars

Synthetic men of Mars

Llana of Gathol


and the image at the top is from 'John Carter of Mars' which is the last book in the series.

visual effects work on Prince of Persia

This morning I found this article about the various effects work done on prince of persia, there is a breakdown of the roles of the different post production houses.

Nice little quote about the work I was directly involved in with Cinesite, the sequence involving the poisoning of King Sharaman, its from Sue Rowe, who was the Visual effect supervisor here at Cinesite:

"We cast two youth doubles who stood in straight after the take with the original actors so we could take high-res digital stills in the same lighting conditions. We added darkened eye lashes and thickened hair, and removed wrinkles and age spots. These were then tracked onto the actors’ skin using our in-house software Motion Analyser, which basically sticks the new skin on top of the old skin - like a digital skin graft.” A similar approach was used for the death of King Sharaman (Ronald Pickup), who is poisoned by snake venom, using a combination of 3D veins and skin graft, with smoke done in Maya Fluids"

you can check out the whole article here:

http://www.fxguide.com/featured/Prince_of_Persia/

plans for the future

I recently discovered the work of Manuel Augusto Dischinger Moura, he's a concept artist from brazil, and I really love his work! Manuel was kind enough to send me some copies of his artwork, simply because i liked it that much. one of his drawings in particular immediately had me thinking how cool it would be to model in 3d.

Its his take on the ninja turtles, I've always been a fan on donatello myself (everyone has their favourite right?) but his drawings of michelangelo had so much character that I instantly wanted to make him in maya! shame he hasnt drawn a Don, yet, but maybe in the future I hope?

here are the designs for the other three turtles:

you can see more of Manuel's work at cghub here: http://manuhell.cghub.com/

he also has a fantastic series of Street Fighter zombies!

check it out!

new tutorial character

Hello all, so thought i would give you a sneaky peak at a character im modelling for both a new tutorial series and also a short im working on!



The tutorial is a 12 part series, on full character modelling, its pretty basic, but i think it should help aspiring young modellers! :)

let me know what you think

Adam

almost oscar nominated again

well in the last 3/4 yeasr in film I've worked on one oscar award winning film, and one oscar nominated film, those were:

The Golden Compass - 2007 oscar for visual effects
The Dark Knight - 2008 nominated for oscar in visual effects

well....this year, the final 15 potential nominee's have been announced! they are:

“Alice in Wonderland”
“The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”
“Clash of the Titans”
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1″
“Hereafter”
“Inception”
“Iron Man 2″
“The Last Airbender”
“Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief”
“Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time”
“Scott Pilgrim vs the World”
“Shutter Island”
“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”
“Tron: Legacy”
“Unstoppable”

....i have two films in this list: clash of the titans and Prince of Persia..... my personal opinion is that its a two horse race between inception and tron legacy, but you never know.....fingers crossed, would be nice to be nominated again!

Mr James's reel!

Hello everyone, well another day, another update, today im showcasing the work of James Stone. James is another modeller at cinesite, and his work is excellent! He also teaches at The Animation Workshop in Denmark...and, although he doesnt have a website at the moment, he does have an excellent new showreel! check it out:

new tutorials!

Hello everyone, well as i said i was going to be making updates, here are some more, ive had a new series of tutorials published on 3d.dtuts.com

I am now regularly recording tutorials exclusively for this site, they are very accomodating, and get pretty good coverage, so im rather happy with the arrangement! they ahve posted part 1 of a new series I have just sent them on:

How to model a low poly building for games

there are 2 parts, and its a pretty easy to follow series. I record call my tutorials in real time, so you cant follow along with me, and if it takes 40 minutes...well then thats just how long it takes...is simple and effective.

anyway, here is the link to part 1: HERE

and the embedded video can be viewed here, enjoy: