Skillset have released a great handbook for those looking for a career in the visual effects industry. They collaborated with myself and many of my colleagues across a range of facilities, and utilised the wide range of knowledge and experience to come up with a simple but sensible collection of advice and suggestions for modules that could be taught in educational institutions to improve the outcome for both the student, and the industry.

To quote the handbook, it has ‘one simple, but ambitious aim; to improve the new entrant skills available for the UK’s VFX industry.’

You can download it by clicking here.

I’ve just heard the great news that Sherlock Holmes has won the VES Award for

Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Feature Motion Picture

Congratulations to all of the crew at Framestore and Double Negative who worked on it, and a special mention to Kate Windibank, Sam Osborne and Jan Adamczyk who attended the ceremony and accepted the award on the nominees behalf. You guys look like you do this stuff every day!

Photo from neonmarg‘s Flickr photostream

For the full list of winners head over to FX Guide.

The Mill has released an iPhone application that can apply looks or emulate some basic color grading tools found in a grading suite. The app has some rudimentary preset looks, as well as controls for lift, gain, gamma and saturation.

Click here to open iTunes to the app in the store.

The Flickr group for images graded using the app can be found here.
FX Guide Article

Anyone who is involved with capturing or dealing with digital imagery in any way should read this excellent article by John Galt, the Senior Vice President of Advanced Digital Imaging at Panavision.

Here’s a trailer for my current project, Sherlock Holmes. Starring Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes and Jude Law as Dr. Watson, it’s directed by Guy Ritchie.

I recently completed work as the Visual Effects Supervisor and Compositor for Todd and the Tooth Fairy.
Produced by Gigi Berardi and directed by Tony Clark, it’s a short film aimed at children about a boy who loses his false front tooth during a football match. With the school disco fast approaching the story follows the boy’s journey and the characters he meets as he tries to find his tooth.
I completed around 40 visual effects shots ranging from glowing eyes and magical fire effects, to crystal ball inserts, computer generated environments and numerous tooth removal shots.
Hopefully the film should start working it’s way around festivals soon, at which point I’ll try and get a Quicktime on the site.

BAFTA have announced their nominations for this year’s film awards and QUANTUM OF SOLACE has been included in the shortlist for Special Visual Effects.

Here’s the full list:

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON
Eric Barba, Craig Barron, Nathan McGuinness, Edson Williams

THE DARK KNIGHT
Chris Corbould, Nick Davis, Paul Franklin, Tim Webber

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL
Pablo Helman, Marshall Krasser, Steve Rawlins

IRON MAN
Hal Hickel, Shane Patrick Mahan, John Nelson, Ben Snow

QUANTUM OF SOLACE
Chris Corbould, Kevin Tod Haug

Bafta nominations

The awards ceremony takes place on 8th February.

The Siena Chase and Fight Sequence of QUANTUM OF SOLACE has been nominated in the Outstanding Compositing in a Feature Motion Picture category of the 2009 Visual Effects Society Awards.

Here is the full list:

THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, PRINCE CASPIAN
Stuart Lashley, Arundi Asregadoo, Mark Curtis, Richard Baker

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON – Benjamin Comes Together
Janelle Croshaw, Paul Lambert, Sonja Burchard, Sarahjane Javelo

IRON MAN – Head Under Display – HUD Compositing
Jonathan Rothbart, Dav Rauch, Kyle McCulloch, Kent Seki

QUANTUM OF SOLACE – Siena Chase and Fight Sequence
Anthony Smith, Christian Kaestner, Adrian Metzelaar, Jon Thum

CG Society Article
FX Guide Article

The awards ceremony takes place on 21st February.

So, the fruits of my labours for the past 8 years in this industry are to have a convincing enough CV to nudge my way into the VES (well it happened back in November… I’m a bit late with this post).
There are quite a few names on the list of members that deserve a lot of respect, so I’m very pleased to be a part of it.

Visual Effects Society website.

I found this video of Kevin Tod Haug talking about the main focus of my work on Quantum of Solace, the big fall into the art gallery in Siena.