The SIGGRAPH confab, which wrapped last week in Los Angeles, offered looks at and insights into assorted pieces of notable work. Among the prime featured discussions was one centered on the Oscar-winning visual effects for Martin Scorsese’s Hugo. Meanwhile the Computer Animation Festival at SIGGRAPH included a Digital Domain reel containing that studio’s virtual likeness of Tupac Shakur which played like a live concert performance at the Coachella fest.
Furthermore, the awards show circuit has also recognized some standout fare, a recent prime example being the AICP Next Awards which honored a ROME real-time interactive music video in the Next Experiential category. Chris Milk of @radical.media directed the video for Google Creative Lab.
From Hugo to Tupac to ROME, all three inventive pieces of work were cited as the projects offering the VFX houses involved their greatest creative challenge over the past year, with lessons to be learned from the experience. This feedback was elicited from the first of three survey questions SHOOT posed to a cross-section of the VFX/animation industry.
The three questions were:
1) What project (film, TV, commercial, other content form) has represented your greatest creative challenge this year and why? What lessons did you learn during the course of that job?
2) What is the most significant creative and/or technical trend in the visual effects/animation industry today?
3) What is the most pressing issue facing the visual effects/animation industry today?
The responses provide an overview of the most notable work and the creative and business trends that are emerging as well as the weighty issues confronting the visual effects/animation community, shedding some light on the state of the content creation and production industry.
Here’s a sampling of the feedback we received:
 Jeff Blodgett, executive producer, Brickyard VFX1) Every project possesses unique challenges creatively, logistically and technically, and we are primarily committed to determining the best solution for our clients. When we were contacted by ad agency High Wide & Handsome for a Black Box Wines campaign which involved shattering a wine bottle, our VFX team began evaluating approaches to determine the best option. Rather than animating an exploding bottle exclusively in CG with particles and fluid dynamics, we decided to obtain photographic base imagery practically. To accomplish this we partnered with director/DP Rebecca Baehler of Green Dot Films to shoot the bottle with the Phantom camera at high speeds of 1000+ frames per second. At Brickyard, we combined several layers of filmed shatters and splatters and augmented the shots with CG accents to perfect the final sequence. Ultimately, the visuals were very impactful and “shattered” the client’s expectations. The challenge in this spot was to remember that the best approach is not always 100 percent in our VFX arsenal, but can be to shoot live action and then use visual effects to complement the final imagery. 2) One of the most significant growing trends in commercial visual effects that we’ve seen at Brickyard is the expanded collaboration in the pitch process via design and/or creative concepting at the earliest stages. Partnering with both agencies and production companies early on, we flesh out design ideas utilizing style frames, storyboards, pre-visualizations, animatics, etc. to provide a clear direction on the creative approach prior to production. At Brickyard, we tailor the design/animation team to best suit the creative at hand. Ultimately the work done at these early stages serves as a springboard towards the final creative vision. This early visualization of the creative vision allows our artists more time to finesse the visual effects as schedules become more highly compressed. 3) Visual effects has been in constant change since its inception and it is critical to keep evolving and to remain current and diverse in the range of creative approaches and services. As clients’ expectations become heightened, combined with compressed schedule and budget challenges, we strive to remain steps ahead of the creative process and stay positioned to react to sudden changes. We pride ourselves on being nimble and able to react at a moment’s notice to the needs of our clients regardless of the discipline. The scope of services required for projects vary widely and our VFX and animation are often supported in-house with edit, color correction, motion graphics and production. We realize that clients have multiple platforms for delivery and it is important that our shop be positioned to handle the many demands with a variety of creative resources. |
 Anthony Filipakis, head of CGI, for Click 3X1) In the beginning of the year, Click 3X helped create a fun, energetic spot for the Maryland Lottery featuring the famous Monopoly dog game piece taking his chances at a lottery scratch off ticket. Our goal was to create a fully animated spot that would be both amusing as well as visually impressive in a photoreal sense. Along with the game piece, we decided to create most of the environment virtually. This gave us much more flexibility later on in terms of lighting and camera angles. Foreground objects such as the table, chairs and bowl of fruit were created in CGI and rendered seamlessly into our HDRI plate. The virtual set helped us create camera movements and capture angles that would have been much more difficult to achieve practically. Animating the monopoly dog itself was also a lot of fun–it gave us a chance to dust off our high-tops and windbreakers. We also had loads of fun developing the dust and debris that builds up from playing a scratch off ticket. When creating something on such a macro level that the viewer is not accustomed to seeing everyday, shooting lots of reference is crucial–so that’s exactly what we did. This helped tremendously in creating the beautifully lit photorealistic close-ups. |
 John Fragomeni, head of animation, visual effects & digital production, Mirada1) The most complex challenges didn’t come from our commercials, feature film or TV projects, but from on an interactive music video called ROME. Mirada was a creative partner with @radical director Chris Milk and Google to help produce the first real-time interactive music video, using web GL (which was still in development during production). As this was uncharted territory, it was a learning process for all concerned and there were both technical and creative challenges that we had to solve along the way. At the forefront was having to create beautiful fully animated CG worlds that the user could control and interact with in real-time in a web browser. We had to design the CG world with these constraints in mind, which involved embracing a unique low polygon aesthetic. Rather than seeing this as a limitation we used it as a form of artistic expression. Part of our delivery process was to develop the real-time shaders that added another level of procedural animation and drove the rendered look. Work in the digital and interactive realm is becoming essential to our clients, and this is an area that we are enjoying growth in. 2) The trend and change we are seeing is the demand for content to be delivered across multiple media platforms, driven by the internet and social media. The real challenge for the visual effects and animation industry is adapting the traditional post model to meet changing business needs and opportunities. Within the Mirada visual effects group, we have traditional visual effects artists working on projects that range from creating photo-real creatures for film, to developing a pipeline to deliver real-time content streaming on web and mobile devices. Our clients look to us to be problem solvers, to be nimble and malleable and to diversify the core talent of our workforce to meet these market needs. 3) It’s the same issue that the visual effects industry has always faced and dealt with. Visual effects and storytelling are inextricably linked, and the visual effects/animation industry is part of almost every film, commercial, music video, and TV show we take in. Creative and technical demands continue to grow which requires greater infrastructure. At the same time technology continues to shift and evolve, often faster than the industry can keep up with. To meet these demands there is a question of sustainability of the traditional visual effects model, especially competing in a global market. |
3) I learned a lot about time management and knowing when it’s time to bring in the help/expertise you need to get things done. |
 Chad Hutson, executive producer, Leviathan1) Leviathan just wrapped up one of our most ambitious and challenging projects to date: a spot melding live-action dialogue with outdoor projection mapping, complex programming, heaps of CG design and visual effects, as well as editorial. As of this writing, the campaign had not yet aired so I can’t reveal any further details, but it’s a clear reminder of what animation/visual effects studios like ours can do to remain on agencies’ radars: good design and creative concepts have to be matched with new and evolving technologies. I think broadcast and web spots are still here to stay, though increased client interest in experiential advertising has content of similar quality appearing in entirely new and unexpected spaces. Using the aforementioned project as an example, agencies need such teams under one roof, and we were able to deliver…this is very reassuring that we’re going down the right road. 2) Software, and the hardware required to run it smoothly, has followed Moore’s Law and exponentially evolved into a set of tools no longer exclusive to Hollywood features. And a large part of this advancement is due to independent developers of plug-ins, render engines and other components. Certainly large software companies like Autodesk or Adobe are pushing their software to new limits regularly, though it’s the small teams in unexpected areas like Croatia, Bulgaria, even your own backyard that are enabling those apps to do amazing tricks via custom tools for fluid or smoke effects, or to render quicker and better imagery with outside renderers. With more integrated studios like Leviathan’s, we’re also seeing increased innovation from artists who spread their creative and technical wings beyond their usual specialities. Animators who cross-pollinate with developers may pick up new software script-writing skills to simplify tasks or create new and improved automated effects. Or 3D lighting artists can become surprisingly agile compositors by mixing their CG workflow with the likes of Nuke. So while there’s no doubt that specific specialists are needed in our industry, animation/VFX artists with multiple and versatile skill sets can be utilized more efficiently and spur greater innovation within their respective studios. 3) I’m sure this can be said about any aspect of production or post, though budgets and time allowed for projects seem to always be limited, and that trend is continuing. Building pre-viz into the timeline helps to identify many potential issues up front, and when a step like this, for example, isn’t available due to schedule constraints, it can make an already-compressed schedule even more challenging. But as business owners, sometimes we take on the risks of a limited budget or calendar, and out of that can come creative solutions and incredible work. The downside of those risks is far less glamorous, though. |
 Mark Leiss, owner/artist, ArsenalFX 1) ArsenalFX was able to expand upon our creative abilities collaborating on Canon’s Project IMAGIN8ION with Ron Howard. ArsenalFX provided the visual effects and finishing for the project’s film, When You Find Me. An interesting challenge set forth to us was to create the infrared effects needed for several of the film’s scenes. While still striking, the raw infrared images delivered the more severe and eerie effect than was desired for the scene. In order to make the tone more ethereal and magical, VFX Supervisor Lauren Mayer-Beug came on board at the start of the project to ensure that every aspect of producing the infrared shots would lend a hand in creating the best possible images. She advised the team to choose clean locations with green landscapes to make the infrared coloring “pop.” She also advised the creative team to utilize the sun in their composition in order to lend to more compelling images once she laid on the final effects. She notes, “There was a lot of matting and processing of the actors so that their skin would stand out. We wanted to take the raw, rather scary images and create a much more beautiful and affecting look. 2) Providing the client with an accurate and reliable visual representation of their film while they are off-site has become increasingly challenging in recent years. Technically speaking, we’re embracing the new retina iPad for onset dailies. It’s a simple solution that is a very powerful tool for preserving our color and VFX vision. We no longer worry about loss of color spectrum for the client while they are away from one of our facilities. By handing these tools out, we get much quicker and more intuitive responses. This is very powerful when your client is half way around the world–definitely a trendsetter. 3) With increasing technology advancements in visual effects, clients are expecting more and more without any increases in project budgets. |
 Jeff Lichtfuss, partner, Ghost Town Media1) We were contacted by Carl Rinsch in November of 2011 to work on a unique project for Absolut Vodka and Swedish House Mafia. What was originally supposed to be a 30 second commercial for Absolut featuring the music of Swedish House Mafia turned into a full length three and a half minute music video. Not a problem, we thought, since we began in the music video world and have worked on several hundred videos since 2006. However, we soon learned that we’d be required to build 3D modeled helmets around each of the three musician’s heads, place them in giant orbs of light, and have them control three robotic greyhounds via holographic instruments and magic. This required about 2 months of 3D camera tracking, rotoscoping, 3D modeling, animation, and compositing. As a studio, we’ve spent most of our time in the 2D and 2.5D design and VFX world, so having to dive head first into this amount of 3D was a great challenge. Since then we’ve been pushing further into 3D design and animation and have used it extensively on jobs like Linkin Park’s “Burn it Down” music video. 2) The emergence of physical computing in the post workflow has really changed the game. As personal computers have become more powerful over the last decade, companies have been able to create truly professional grade software packages that are attainable to people outside the major studios. The same situation is now happening with hardware that was once very expensive to rent or buy, such as 3D scanners and motion capture devices. We are now able to use items like the Kinect to create motion capture animation without the need for a traditional mo-cap rig, and even 3D scanners cost a fraction of what they used to. New tech comes out almost daily, such as software that allows us to control 3D cameras in a computer with an iPhone. These innovations are constantly pushing the boundaries of what can be done in the VFX industry. 3) As the economy has changed over recent years and budgets have tightened across the industry, we are beginning to see a reaction from the VFX world. Smaller budgets mean less artists can be hired for a particular job, which has given rise to the post generalist. These artists are adept at many aspects of the post workflow and are able to take on numerous roles. This unfortunately leads to higher demands and longer hours, which has become a staple of the VFX industry. There has been increasing momentum and talks of unionizing the VFX industry as result, which will present many challenges to studios both large and small. |
3) As the technology and creative continue to evolve and push the limits of what’s possible, budgetary stress can become more of a factor in the creative process. This is not a new issue, but the latest twist on this is the request to do the same work as say a commercial spot, but at a fraction of the cost because it is destined for social media, or the web. It’s about how to stretch your budget without sacrificing creativity or quality. |
 Bob Nelson, executive producer, QuietMan1) Without a doubt, our greatest challenge this year was the Coldplay/Rihanna “Princess of China” video. The piece was nearly four minutes long, and shot entirely on green screen. All of the environments were digitally created, and most of the design work could not truly begin until the rough cut had been approved by the two celebrities and their record labels. For a boutique such as ours, the project was immense, and the question we asked ourselves daily was “How do we maintain our creative standards, take on something with the financial and scheduling challenges of this project, and maintain all of our other clients and friends who are depending on us for our core business — advertising?” Every day became a balancing act, and ultimately we arrived at the conclusion that the project needed to involve artists from outside the QuietMan fold — even those who may be regarded as our competitors. For four and half weeks (the original schedule), “Princess of China” was “all QuietMan all the time.” But the two directors were still conceiving and revising environments. For the good of the project, we opened our studios, our equipment, and our resources to COPA for an additional two weeks, and a few days of final work was even taken outside of our walls. At the end of the day, the project came first, and sole-ownership was less important. We are very proud of our role in this collaboration, and “Princess of China” has just received two MTV VMA nominations. 2) There has been a tremendous democratization in the industry over the past few years. Projects that once required $100,000 machines can now be completed on desktops. Simultaneously, budgets have been decimated. Five years ago, QuietMan was strictly a high-end flame-based effects company specializing in :30 commercials. Today we offer a staff of designers, animators, editors, producers, CGI, motion capture, flame, and live action personnel for every project. QuietMan routinely employs our 3-D staff to enhance 2-D animation. We may use a flame on an animation project to compress the delivery date, shoot an element to add realism to an effect, or use our motion capture system to produce two minutes of animation in…two minutes…under client supervision. It’s about being nimble, doing whatever is necessary, and doing it better. And being invited back. 3) At QuietMan, our everyday challenge is to maintain the highest standard of creative consistency amidst an uneven pool of freelance talent. Effects companies constantly adjusting their personnel, use most of the same artists. So how can we be better than the next guy? QuietMan is a leadership-focused creative boutique. Our leadership works on every project every day. Our solution to the wide variation in freelance has been to bolster the strength of our in-house team. Over the past two years QuietMan has expanded our core staff across all disciplines. QuietMan maintains two staff Creative Directors, Executive Producers, effects producers, staff CGI, design, live-action, and editorial personnel. We adjust just like the next guy, but our business is run by a consistent core group of leadership. Our freelancers do not have to look far for guidance. |
 John Parenteau, general manager, Pixomondo1) Hugo, for which our supervisors won the Academy Award this year, was by far the greatest challenge in all aspects for us. At the time it was the biggest project to date for Pixomondo, and was the first major film where we were the lead vendor. We had, by the start of that project, laid the groundwork for major international work within our (then) 11 divisions through projects like Fast 5 and Suckerpunch, but the concept of “in-sourcing” was truly put to the test on Hugo. The biggest lesson we learned is that each division could accomplish their own full sequences without a hitch. Most VFX companies with international offices often use those foreign offices for isolated tasks such as rotoscoping or paint. We endeavor to set up each division as a full service office, capable in theory to produce full effects shots on their own. Hugo allowed us to truly prove this pipeline, and the reward was a beautiful film. 2) The hints toward 48fps begin to make me nervous. That, alone isn’t worrisome, but add 4K and possibly stereo, and we’re building toward a formula that promises to choke most VFX pipelines. But like any innovation, it’s a matter of adapting systems and technology. Though I may fear a stereo project shot at 48 fps and is 4K, the truth is that anything is possible in VFX, even the systems to make that happen. 3) The most pressing issue is the problem of outsourcing. Despite our fears of jobs moving internationally, it’s going to be impossible to stop studios and production companies from not wanting to use international discounts or incentives, particularly as those artists become more proficient in VFX. Everybody’s bottom line is getting pinched, and that includes producers. We’ve tried to answer that challenge creatively, by utilizing foreign talent yet still maintaining a significant presence in California and the U.S. We’re trying to embrace the future, utilize the world’s talent, yet keep a large portion of the work here. |
 J.J. Sedelmaier, director/designer, J.J. Sedelmaier Productions, Inc. 1) I finished a :30 spot for Kaplan Thaler Group and their client USBank that involved a complicated live/animation combo. The concept involved different styles of children’s drawings coming to life on the door of a refrigerator as the camera panned across the surface. The compositing of the animation onto varying paper stocks and the dynamics of the camera moves had “this could go terribly wrong” written all over it, but everyone involved — from the agency, through Optimus/ONE, and even the clients, were so buttoned up and professional that the outcome was seamless – and everyone had a blast working together to boot ! It reminded me how important it is to assemble a crew that never looses track of what’s important. No attitude, no egos, just good work with good people plussing the project at every available opportunity ! 2) Taking advantage of all the outlets available. TV, web/viral, theatrical, print. . . Developing concepts that naturally inhabit the realm they’re intended for. . . 3) With all the technological bells and whistles available now, the techniques used to produce the work sometimes overshadow the idea. The understanding of how the idea needs to be executed with a balance that takes advantage of the technology without “showing off” a technique will always be the issue. |
 Ed Ulbrich, chief creative officer, Digital Domain1) Creating the virtual likeness of Tupac Shakur for a live performance at Coachella was by far our greatest challenge this year. We created an entirely believable, completely original digital performance that was not based on archival footage. The project required an immense amount of research and development and relied heavily on the techniques and technologies we’ve developed over the years on projects like Benjamin Button and TRON: Legacy. We learned that there’s a massive global appetite for this media as it erupted into a seismic event in entertainment. The impact revealed itself in things like 15 million YouTube views of the performance, a 500% increase in 2Pac album sales and a 1,500 percent increase in downloads of his song “Hail Mary.” There were thousands of media stories, assessing “virtual 2Pac’s” impact on everything from music to entertainment, ethics, technology and intellectual property. 2) The most significant trend is probably the increasing use of virtual production techniques. Directors are becoming much more comfortable with this technology and are using it to see more of their created world while they’re still in production. What we’ve known as ‘visual effects’ is a process that now permeates every stage of a production from the earliest phase of concept development. We’re seeing more directors take advantage of our virtual stage, coming here to navigate through virtual environments to frame up shots as if they were shooting live action. 3) The economic models in VFX for film, games and advertising are completely different, so the pressing issues facing these aspects of the industry are different too. While all of our models are based on work for hire, in advertising, the most pressing issue for companies working in digital production is being respected and valued for what our contribution is. We’re still operating under a 40-year old business model that is relegated to budgeting for shoot days and that’s no longer relevant in the realm of digital production. So while the tools of the trade have changed, the business model in the advertising space hasn’t–we have this legacy tradition that doesn’t reflect the way we are actually producing work today. |
Manny Galan, creative director/CEO, 
Tom Matheu, VFX supervisor, and Ryan Duggan, art director, 