Steven Hulett is the Business Representative of The Animation Guild (TAG) Local 839 IATSE, he last joined us for a podcast in August of 2008. We wanted to talk further with him about the Guild and get more of the history of previous efforts to organize visual effects. We talk about the failed efforts a few years ago to organize Sony Imageworks, about the current global economy and about many issues artists are facing. Steven writes the excellent and frequently updated blog on the TAG website. The Animation Guild recently moved into a new building in Burbank that features Gallery 839 where members can display their artwork they create apart from their daily work, a new show just started February 5th entitled, CANVAS, BRONZE AND POLYRESIN.

Visit the fxpodcast page for direct downloads and RSS feed links. To be notified automatically and have the episodes downloaded in iTunes, subscribe via this link.

Several links are mentioned in the podcast, you’ll find those along with photos of the new TAG building after the read more…

Lee Stranahan is a Filmmaker, Writer, Photographer who writes for the Huffington Post. He has crafted an Open Letter To James Cameron. This is a must read: Open Letter To James Cameron: Fairness For Visual Effects Artists

Nominations for the 82nd Academy Awards® were announced early this morning by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. For the visual effects category this means the field is now narrowed from seven to these three nominated films:

Avatar
Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew R. Jones

District 9
Dan Kaufman, Peter Muyzers, Robert Habros and Matt Aitken

Star Trek
Roger Guyett, Russell Earl, Paul Kavanagh and Burt Dalton

Avatar and District 9 are also nominated for Best Picture. The Visual Effects branch of the Academy is made up of 290 members, 279 of which are active members and 11 are retired. Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2009 will be presented on Sunday, March 7, 2010, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center®, and televised live by the ABC Television Network beginning at 5 p.m. PT. The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 200 countries worldwide.

A complete list of nominations in all categories can be found after the read more…

The Life, a live action short directed by MJZ’s Rupert Sanders to promote the launch of Halo 3: ODST for the Xbox 360, features visual effects by Asylum as we follow Tarkov, an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, through training and a major battle sequence. Visual effects supervisor and lead compositor Rob Moggach tells fxguide how Asylum added elements and grit to the live action.

Late last year, The Foundry announced a tech sharing agreement with Sony Pictures Imageworks which included access to SPI’s Katana 3D software. Since that time, there has been some discussion (even grumbling) on the net and mailing lists about The Foundry losing focus regarding the heart of Nuke: compositing. If you’ve watched some of the recent fxguidetv episodes, you’ve also seen how the 2D and 3D worlds are becoming closely entwined via 3D compositing techniques and tricks. The Foundry’s Head of Product Development, Richard Shackleton, tries to put the concerns to rest in a recent post on the company blog.

The Foundry also recently released a group of brand new Nuke tutorials on their website. Nuke experts Frank Reuter and Steve Wright cover introductory aspects of the software as well as individual nodes, python scripting, and various workflows.

For those of you who have been in seclusion for the last 3 years, we also have an ongoing Nuke curriculum over at fxphd.com. We have a total of five Nuke courses this term, including a new Nuke 6 course and a new Nuke cgi relighting offering.

In Shorts, director Robert Rodriguez delivers his trademark colourful imagery to tell the story of a young boy’s wish-granting rock discovery. Working alongside the director were artists at Rodriguez’s own Troublemaker Studios who, with other effects studios, delivered a bevy of fun visual treats, including an impressive booger monster. Troublemaker’s Chris Olivia talks to fxguide about his contribution to the film.

The Foundry has released two new versions of their Nuke compositing software, Nuke 6.0 and NukeX 6.0. Nuke 6.0 includes a completely new shape rotoscope and paint toolset and also bundles Keylight as a standard feature. NukeX 6.0 contains a new 3D camera tracker, lens distortion tools, depth generator, and Furnace Core — 12 Furnace plugins which are bundled with the higher end Nuke offering.

Downloads can be found for Linux, Mac and Windows at The Foundry download page. However, enjoy the weekend, as licenses for customers entitled to the upgrade are due to be mailed out on Monday.

For the full press release, click through….

Avatar, District 9, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, The Hurt Locker and Star Trek have been nominated for British Academy Film Awards in the category Special Visual Effects. The Orange British Academy Film Awards take place on February 21st at The Royal Opera House, London.

A complete list of nominees can be found at the BAFTA site and the names attached to the visual effects nominations can be found after the jump…

The VES nominations have been released a tad early it seems by the Hollywood Reporter, which is claiming James Cameron’s “Avatar” led the list of nominations scoring 11 nominations.

The animated “Coraline,”also released in Stereo, followed with four nominations.

New Zealand-based Weta Digital, which worked on “Avatar,” led the company noms with nine.

For visual effects in an effects-driven motion picture feature, the nominees are “2012,” “Avatar,” “District 9,” “Star Trek” and “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”

Noms for supporting visual effects in a movie went to “Angels & Demons,” “The Box,” “Invictus,” “The Road” and “Sherlock Holmes.”

“9,” “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” “Caroline,” “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” and “Up” were nominated for outstanding animation in an animated feature.

VES noms in 20 categories, covering film, animation, TV, commercials and video games were chosen Saturday by blue-ribbon panels of VES members, meeting in Burbank, San Francisco and London.

Information on the Night and the James Cameron Special Award: VES Awards site

UPDATE: FULL PRESS RELEASE WITH ALL THE NOMINEES
AFTER THE READ MORE….

At last year’s SIGGRAPH in New Orleans, Sony Pictures Imageworks (SPI) announced their open source initiative in 5 areas. At the time, we spoke with Rob Bredow in fxguidetv episode #69 about this and other happenings at Sony.

Today, SPI released the alpha version of the source code for their Open Shading Language (OSL) at code.google.com. The shading language was developed at SPI to work with its in-house renderer and is built to be adaptable to advancements in rendering technology.

For the full press release from SPI and how OSL is different from other languages, click through….