VFX Artist - John Knoll

My guess was that most people were going to research Joe Letteri (Who has worked on LoTR along with The Hobbit) So I decided to do two different artists who had done older movies that I was very fond of as I was younger and growing up. Along with Janek Sirrs, John Knoll are my favourites. Unlike Janek there is a lot more information on John as some of his features are little more well known. I've pretty much seen every film that he has worked out give or take a few. Born ins 1962, a widely known and established visual effects artist and Check Creative Officer at Industrial Light and Magic (Now you know right?). Another fun fact that I DID know being a huge techy, is that he is the co-founder (Along with his brother Thomas Knoll) of the now Adobe owned Photoshop. Something I didn't click on at first but have now is that he also the creator of 'Knoll Light Factory' built into the Red Giant Suite, a brilliant lens flare plugin that I have personally used many times.

In his early days he was given some great chances to work on titles like Empire of the Sun and of course some of the older Star Trek Films! He worked as a 'Motion Control Camera Operator' mostly until he eventually took flight to higher work. As his career progressed we saw him working on bigger films, what I love about him is I found out that he did many collaborations with other visual effect artists; this is awesome because they're really stretching each other limits and combining ideas to come up with the best solutions, a great work ethic.

In the 90's he finally became a visual effects supervisor taking films like Mission Impossible and Star Wars Episode 1 at the end of the decade (Which isn't surprising since he worked most of the other Star Wars movies even Star Wars IV in 1977.). Basically by the time we had reached the new millennium he would go on to work on pretty much every big film produced. Star Wars, Avatar, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince, Pacific Rim and a favourite of mine Deep Blue Sea.

A movie he largely worked on was Pirates of the Carribean (all three). By the time we had reached the second and third the amount of CG was massive, he would of definitely had his work cut out for him. Again with Avatar seeing some of the VFX breakdowns of this movie make my head spin, to be able to supervise project like this you need to be very versatile and have an integral mind. His most recent work is of Pacific Rim, which reading that it took somewhere between 80 - 90 hours per frame, yes frame to render out is crazy. It just goes to show that if you're passionate about your trade you work hard you can be working for 50 years and more, this guy is almost legend.

VFX Artist - Janek Sirrs

Purely because I love the film Dante's Peak (not even that sure why), I knew obviously the lava couldn't been totally real if at all. So I found out who was responsible for the majority of them and then appear Janek Sirrs. The best films are the ones that have VFX but you don't even realise them, you thought they were just real or they were so good that you didn't question them. Obviously it wasn't Janek himself who made these but he was supervisor of a large team who put the effects together, he drove it.

Instead of trying to research about Janek Sirrs himself, it's better to just look at some of the bigger films him and his team have had a hand in creating (which you'll be surprised). Let's start with older works, he starts from the late 80's to present. His major work has really been in the past ten years but that doesn't mean he has had gems in the past. As I mentioned earlier Dante's Peak (some of that lava was CGI!), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Braveheart (Personal Favourite) and funnily enough The Matrix Trilogy! There must be a trait in Janek that I find aesthetically pleasing!

As I mentioned above, his fame has came in the passed 10 years really. Branching from blockbuster films such as Batman: Begins and Iron Man 2 and almost most recently the Avengers. If someone of the videos I have seen are of him and his teams VFX work then no wonder he has been getting requests to do films such as this. Iron Man 2 is heavily CG of course, Batman: Begins not so much. As much as his latest supervised work is fantastic it seems to have moulder in to every other vfx companies style, because that's just how you do it now. I prefer his old work, less frequent it may be but it was almost magical to the point that you didn't question if half of it was even real. Don't get me wrong I could watch Batman: Begins and The Avengers over and over but sometimes it's nice to watch films that look natural and not heavily built from CG. Overall an incredible artist who surprisingly created many iconic scenes we take for granted now days.

VFX Movie - Mary Poppins

Instead of looking further into the future for vfx movies, I decided I would look at one that I loved as child and had the heigh of vfx for it's time in the movie. Mary Poppins and internationally known story, book, film, musical and much more; continuing to capture hearts of many people even 50 years after it was released. So I then decided to check in a little more detail just what VFX they had available to them, and apart from complex CGI they really did have almost anything everything was just analogue and 'non' reversible. The majority of their effects came from the commonly known "Matter Shot" (which I will be researching later). But looking at breakdowns of the movie there so many scenes that you wouldn't normally realise was fake. There was many, many, many examples I could use through out the film as it's built out of matte shots, but I will post a few below.

Each of these images are easy to recognise what it a matte and what isn't, the picture above shows a boat scene with only a small portion being from a camera. It's incredible what they were aloud to get away with back then but it worked, it was magical and people loved it.

This sequence I love from the movie, it's almost a fully painted set of London as the children run through it. Having almost everything paint and being able to pull it off is amazing, I think the fact that it was that style of film that let people, let them get away with it! Literally the top picture is ALL paint, the children are added with a sodium matte; as is the same in the second frame, incredible.

This shot above is great example for the use "sodium vapour travelling matte system", it gave them the ability to matte very fine objects as diaphanous material such as Marys' veil on her hat. It gave them near perfect results with no fringing. Disney borrowed this technique from a company known as Rank Laboratories, located in England it became almost a feature on the majority of travelling matte shots up to late 70's. In some movies it was used in virtually 100's of shots, often when it wasn't even needed. A great movie that used the techniques it had at the time to its utter best, but what else would you expect from the film giant it's self Disney.

VFX Movie - Matrix Trilogy

The Matrix Trilogy is one of my favourite films, watching the first when I was younger and being a big fan of sci-fi this one incredible. Making popular one of the more well known special vfx sequences known as "Bullet Time". Every person who has seen 'The Matrix 1999' must have tried this at one point in there life. Leaving displacement waves in the air to represent the pressure that a bullet has created we get a slow motion effect and an actor dodges a number of bullets. I was able to find a video of how the did it back then, it could possibly be done in full render now and still look perfect. What was great about this movie was it looked sci-fi and unreal but out of the whole film they only used around 500 digital shots!



Moving on to 'The Matrix: Reloaded' having a grand total of 1227 vfx over double the first! On the whole a great film and the CGI for the scenes in the real world (zion) are brilliant. Creating squid like, flying sentinels is going to be a difficult process. Unfortunately I can't say I was massively impressed with their attempt to full render Neo in CGI in some scenes are terrible. I know this was before 2003 so full CGI wasn't even close to as powerful as it was today but still they could of put more time into something with so much detail. The shot below gives it more justice, some of them you can really tell it's fake.

Finally taking a quick look at 'The Matrix: Revolutions' for the final instalment of the trilogy. Now even though this came out the same year as it's predecessor, they did a much better job at creating fully 3D rendered scenes, it seems they used some real footage for the process which is probably what they were missing last time. For example the epic final fight between Neo and Agent Smith has a great shots of Neo slow motion punching Smith straight in the jaw. There is pretty much a whole video dedicated to it's breakdown and it has massive amounts of elements to bring it all together. I think personally they could of done it better it just feels like alot of things were wasting time more than anything, believe me If I had a whole VFX company to handle working on it I would make sure it was spot on but they great for the time!

VFX Development - Animatic

Below is animatic, nothing special just frozen frames of the footage that I will be using in the final VFX shot. I have also placed over the audio file that I fitted with shots them selfs. It comes to 47 seconds long because the other 13 are for the intro. There isn't a much I can say here, you can refer to my storyboard to get an idea of what is happening in each scene.

VFX Development - Storyboard

Below is my storyboard, as again mentioned again I am very bad at a drawing and much better with digital work. It's definitely something I need to practice more, so I can at least sketch down ideas quickly and remember them well. This is why I thrive on using other images to get my ideas across, though this time I had my potential actress paint her face and I took some shots in normal lighting and edited them to fit in.

You can read about each scene on the images below, it's built of 12 shots because it's only a 1 minute video and doesn't need a massive amount of detail. As long as it gets across clearly to the reader what shots will be used and what will be happening in that shot I am happy with that.

This story goes best couple with my 'Imagined Writing' piece I did for this, simply because I really wanted to give the greatest detail I could for anybody watching. That and potentially having some kind of narration over the whole video.

COP Lecture - Themes: Ethics - What is Good?

This is the lecture I have been looking forward to, because growing and up and through out my teenage life I always read and learn't about what being a moral person is; and I never got to share and discuss this with anyone. So it was nice a finally hear somebody else's view on the whole idea. Unfortunately I wasn't sure I totally agreed.

The lecture investigated different methods of which we can judge if we are being ethical and moral or not and all though they were showed to be floored, I believe that being ethical is a mixture of all these different methods and is ever changing. It isn't just what you yourself believe or what social constructs dictate or for the common good. You have to work in a balance around the whole thing, sometimes you must do something that isn't really ethical but for different reasons. When you can learn to be a good person electively, justify why and act between each of these ideas that's when you will become truly, ethical; because that's really all life is about, achieving a balance.

Lecture Notes

We live in a fundamentally unjust society. How can we live in a fair system ethically.

First Things First - Garland (1964)
Signed by famous creative practitioners. Produced in the boom of consumerism. Creative designers were wasting their talent on marketing pointless products, and how they are exploited.

First Things First - Adbusters (2000)
Advocate revolution, sabatage signs and highjacking air time. A journal of the mental environment. In this re draft the tone changes to not cry about wasting talent, it gets much more venomous especially against advertisers.

Paragraph "We, the undersigned, are graphic designers" they say design is about getting money and getting paid

FtF - Just Make It
Youre in all indocturanted in to designing for pointless stuff, accusing us of being complicit in a corrupt system. Marketing a credit card ecourages a life time of debt.

You're actually changing the way people talk to each other and act socially.

How do you judge worthy and what is unworthy, it stays to become  doctorial and  judgemental. "We propose a reversal of prioritrd in favour of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication"

If you work for companies who make any sort of consumer item you perpetuate it, and this unethical.

Culture Jamming
Meme Warfare
Sabotaging adverts and billboards

Famous and rich designers signed their manifesto. They don't have yo worry about their next job and can easily look down their nose.

If idea was switched to consumerism rather than against advertising. Its not really unethical to work for whoever you like. What is, is the system of exploitation that allows it to happen. This manifesto is a little more arrogant.

The idea is better to aim at doing more your talents something worth change.

"Potent memes can change minds, alter behaviour, catalyse collective mind shifts, and transform cultures."

Its almost wrong to use designers as a means to an end e.g. over throw capitalism.

Victor Papanek 'Most things are designed not for the needs of the people but for the needs of manufacturers to sell to people' (1983:43)

Papanek Beer Can Bumper, 1971
[Get Picture]

"The Design Problem"
The designers share - 10%
the real problem - 90%

How do we determine what is Good?

However there is a way to be ethical in a corrupt capitalist societ.

Subjective Relativism
Go about the world in the way I see fit. There are no universal norms or right and wrong.

Cultural Relativism
Be ethical based on the time period and where you are. Of course this is floored it can't marry differences between cultures.

Diving Command Theory
Its not based on reason but dogma.

Kantianism
Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804)
We have reason, we rationlise first. We are transcendent as a species. One of first people to try formulate on what is ethical or not. A system of principals, the categorical imperitve.

Categorical Imperative
Whatever you do think through these before you act.

Think logically, if you can universalise your thought through logic then its ethical. Act for an end - not a means to an end.

Ultiliarianism (John Stuart Mill)
If it increased total happiness, advtange, pleasure and total benefit.

Social Contract Theory
Thomas Hobbs and Jean Jacques Rousseau

If everyone did what they want it would be a constant competition. It argues that basically to be ethical is to think about the common more than useful gain.

Socially and Ecologically Responsible Design

Social Tithe
Pro Bono - 10%
Salaried Work - 90%

We should devote 10% of our time to really worth while ethical causes.


Statistics (Go check them and discuss) cow is worth more than a sub-saharan African.

VFX Movie - Man of Steel

I am a giant fan of "Superman" character and stories, I was sceptical that this new adaptation of the movie would be a flop but boy was I wrong. I think this movie being made at this point was perfect, growing up I had the comic adaptations that were more for children. Now that I am fully grown up a more serious and realistic Superman was exactly what was needed.

Everyone who knows a little about Superman knows hows the story goes, Clark Kent aka Jor-El is sent from his home world when it is about to be 1. overthrown by a general and his army and 2. the planet is unstable because Clarks fathers warnings were not headed. So his father did the next best thing, knowing the planet would perish he sets up a series of events that would send his child to a distant planet known as Earth. What was great is we got a look at the home planet 'Krypton' which featured all kinds of little extras including plant life and animal, a great chance to use some imagination.

It was great that they decided to have Krypton a massively advanced race and still have organic plant life and animals aswell. As if to say they were a wise race and didn't destroy every resource, all though that's where they were heading.

The best VFX in this whole film for me personally is the final fight scene between Clark and Zod. Even though there isn't a great amount of the film left to see, this is where the action really picks up. I remember thinking holy crap in the cinema when they got into it, it was all over place really taking it out on each other! They aren't the vfx methods that I am most interested in but man they pack a punch. With as much as the camera is moving through the scenes aswell a large chunk of it had to be full 3D, it was moving so fast you wouldn't be able to tell with a filler shot here and there that had footage of the actors.

Seeing this makes me realise really, how important the 'Render Passes' tutorial was, without each of these options in much more complexity you could create the images exactly how you liked with flexibility needed aswell.

VFX Development - Wisp Research

So I thought I should take a look on line as what a wisp really was, and what results I would get for simply searching wisp. I knew what I had in my head what a wisp was so I need to know what other people believe them to be aswell. Firstly the definition of wisp which if I'm being honest wasn't the best explanation, it was a different context.

Next I took a look at something from my favourite series of books entitled 'The Sword of Truth' where beings knowns as 'nightwisps' exist. There was a TV series adaptation of the book of which they are shown in, as you can see they are very similar to the wisps seen in brave. All though this wisp is contained in a vial for what reason I don't know, but there is another scene in the series where the nightwisp is moving freely through the air. No light trails though.

Next I needed to see what real world wisp trails look like, there are two ways I could go about this. One is looking at smoke which seems to disperse out going in one general direction, as seen below.

I like this however, it's not the type of style I'm going for not to mention that making this glow would be tricky. So I also looked at light trails, specifically I search 'neon light trails' but you could use replicate this using a long exposed shutter shot on a camera and moving a small light source around in front of it.

And after watching a small tutorial on the old iPod advertisement, that featured silhouetted people dancing with light trails coming from their iPods. I grabbed that image aswell for ideas of the movement should look.

So then for visual purposes, I decided to take my images in to Photoshop and recreate some still image wisps my self. This is what I came up with. Take note that this is only a still image, and may not fully reflect on how the final VFX version is done. Which is why I am choosing not to explain the process of this.

VFX Development - Character Development

So in my test shots I want show how I got to a visual representation of how my subject will look in blue lighting, uv glowing and wisps flowing.

First I took my original images, that were shot in my bed room against a wall. I had my actress paint a skull on her face and we worked together to agree on a style. The image was initially quite yellow but that was quickly fixed with altering the temperature of the image. I then took the image in to Photoshop as I have the most experience with colouring with this program, in fact to get the general idea of what I wanted it only required a blue fill with a 'multiply' layer overlay. I had already messed with my lights and and darks to make sure the black is black and white was white, with raw images I had great dynamics.

Next I started to try replicate some kinda of UV light with different image, when you don't have much colour to react with initially it's difficult to utilise options such as Linear Dodge and Add through layer overlays. So it took me quite a few attempts to get something that generally matched with the image in my head.

As you can see there seems to alot of things going on, to be honest I could of probably done it in few but I'm not interested in the background detail here I'm bothered about the image itself.   You could say I should do this a bit differently, more towards how I intend to do it with my video footage so I have a solid foundation and steps that lead towards my final image.

Regardless of this, I now had a total idea of colour, brightness, facial expressions and the digital addition of a uv mask. Again I did no drawing because I prefer not to, I am still capable of showing all the information I need with a camera and software.

VFX Development - Test Shots & Colour Development

So I did a test photo shoot with my actress, nothing professional just in my bedroom taking photographs against a wall with RAW format so I got the best options when it came to editing them. Every photo I took is here even the messed up ones, as you can see there is a lot of work to do with them all but it's exactly what I needed.

As you can see, the images are nothing special but what I do in with my software is going to change them dramatically.

First I took my RAW (CR2) into an Adobe program called 'Camera Raw' it allows you to edit the data embedded in the image before it has all be baked in. I balance the colours of my image and made sure I have a the full range of blacks to whites. What is black is black and what is white is white, you can see this in the top right hand corner with the RGB spectrum.

Then came the quick colouring, in my head I already had a great idea of what the shot would look like, so that was my first attempt. As you can see from the image I simply added a few curve adjustments and a solid layer that had a 'Multiply' adjustment  to it. This is of course is far from the way I will be doing it when it comes to colour grading but right now I'm just looking for the look.

For ease after this I simply took my images in to 'Magic Bullet Looks' by 'Red Giant' and took a look at a few of there different ideas. Which is fine because I would be able to use these presets on my footage.

To no avail though I found that I preferred my first attempt, the colouring was dark but you could still see detail and it had the cold blue look. Enough that I could get the image to react with light which I will soon be demonstrating.