Method Studios, a Deluxe Entertainment Services Group company, has added three animation artists to its creative team–Erik-Jan de Boer and James Jacobs who join Method’s Vancouver office as animation supervisor and creature supervisor, respectively; and animation supervisor Keith Roberts who will work out of the Los Angeles studio.
Born in Amsterdam, de Boer has been creating animations and visual effects for nearly a quarter of a century. He has worked at many top British VFX houses, including the Moving Picture Company. In 1996 he joined Rhythm & Hues where his credits included The Golden Compass (an Academy Award winner in the visual effects category), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and Night at the Museum. This year he was among the core Rhythm & Hues team honored with a Visual Effects Oscar for his work on Life of Pi.
Jacobs is another Oscar-winning artist who received the 2013 Scientific and Engineering Academy Award for character simulation software used in Avatar. A creature expert nominated for a 2013 Visual Effects Society Award for his work on the Goblin King (The Hobbit), Jacobs has credits on numerous films, including Prometheus, The Adventures of Tintin and King Kong. A Toronto native, Jacobs has spent the bulk of his career focused on the unique challenges involved with creating compelling characters. From Method Studios in Vancouver, he is currently at work on director Wes Ball’s thriller The Maze Runner.
And Roberts, a long-time member of the Rhythm & Hues ensemble, is versed in all styles of CG animation, and his credits include “The Chronicles of Narnia,” “The Cabin in the Woods” and “The Incredible Hulk.” Originally from Yorkshire, England, Roberts most recently oversaw extensive visual effects work on the upcoming feature “R.I.P.D.” Roberts noted that at Method he is looking to divide his time between high-end feature film and commercial VFX work.
Christian Kubsch, president of Method, said that the hiring of de Boer, Jacobs and Roberts is well timed given that Method is “in the process of expanding the character animation talent across our global network.”
Method has facilities in Los Angeles, Vancouver, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, London, Sydney and Melbourne.
AI-Assisted Works Can Get Copyright With Enough Human Creativity, According To U.S. Copyright Office
Artists can copyright works they made with the help of artificial intelligence, according to a new report by the U.S. Copyright Office that could further clear the way for the use of AI tools in Hollywood, the music industry and other creative fields.
The nation's copyright office, which sits in the Library of Congress and is not part of the executive branch, receives about half a million copyright applications per year covering millions of individual works. It has increasingly been asked to register works that are AI-generated.
And while many of those decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, the report issued Wednesday clarifies the office's approach as one based on what the top U.S. copyright official describes as the "centrality of human creativity" in authoring a work that warrants copyright protections.
"Where that creativity is expressed through the use of AI systems, it continues to enjoy protection," said a statement from Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, who directs the office.
An AI-assisted work could be copyrightable if an artist's handiwork is perceptible. A human adapting an AI-generated output with "creative arrangements or modifications" could also make it fall under copyright protections.
The report follows a review that began in 2023 and fielded opinions from thousands of people that ranged from AI developers, to actors and country singers.
It shows the copyright office will continue to reject copyright claims for fully machine-generated content. A person simply prompting a chatbot or AI image generator to produce a work doesn't give that person the ability to copyright that work, according to the report. "Extending protection to material whose expressive elements are determined by a machine ...... Read More