So Transformers 3, and Priest are both out at Theaters – I was FX Lead on both of these films, which was a lot of fun as well as had it’s challenges. I’ll definitely put up more information soon on some of the work I did as well as hopefully more of a in depth breakdown on some of the VFX. You can also check out the latest cinefex which covers a bit of the vfx contributions from myself and the rest of Spy’s team. I was primarily brought on to destroy the train at the end of the film, creating a pipeline for making the trains buckle and tear open, massive cg explosions and fire, as the train derails and blows up. I also animated and blew up two motorcycles and oversaw a lot of the 3ds max side of pipeline and the max fx artists.

Transformers 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHRf01Gjosk

Priest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z52ry2FBhyY

I attended IG2011 this year, it was a blast to participate, I held a master class covering a lot of topics, mainly to do with FX and also a lot of the FX work for Priest, I also was on a panel alongisde John Carmack and a lot of other big name presenters but what I was really excited about was a key note I put together on how to fast track your career, build a name for yourself and make yourself 10x more employable. I will put up some more information on this soon as it’s been something I’ve spent the last year and a half working on primarily, and I plan to release a lot more information soon! I also did an interview for the event which should land on youtube soon.

So this has been a massively successful workshop that CG Society is running for a 3rd time. It’s an 8 week in depth workshop covering a lot of Fume FX material, primarily used in film. Actually a lot of this is based on the work I did in Priest (I can say that now the film is out) so most of the explosions and actual shots from Priest are what this workshops based around. Lots of advanced content – but the best part is that students work with other students and collaborate together, and are instructed personally by me for 8 weeks. Usually it sells out pretty quickly so you might want to jump on it right away.

Sign up to the 8 week workshop at CG Society!

Gary Davis over at Autodesk has put together an article recently covering a lot of the particle flow presets I created for Autodesk for a previous release of Max. Not everyone knows these presets are there so he wanted to shed some light on these, as well as show some ways to implement them.

I created these for Autodesk back in 2010 – which was a lot of fun to put together, however I was limited to not using any FX plugins, which unfortunately for a lot of FX work in max is necessary to create film quality effects. In addition I had to ensure the assets could play in realtime so none could be too overly complicated. So that was the only unfortunate thing about this project, as if having access to afterburn, fume etc. would have meant these assets could be much higher quality. That still being said they’re very useful, and of course can still plug right into a lot of the above mentioned plugins to take them to the next step.

Check it out at Gary Davis’ blog!

I will be holding a master class for siggraph later this year, more information to come! Also speaking at other events later in the year!

Now, there were a few people who did misinterpret the meaning of the article, and I expected that. I did receive comments about “You’re right Allan, this industry sucks, we’re worked too much” which wasn’t really the point of the article. I think that that’s entirely up to you whether you want to put up with OT and bad working conditions.

But the stories that have come in about changes to studios have been really rewarding to hear about.One of my favorites was actually one I witnessed first hand which a studio I was at arranged for a lady in a pink ape suit to come in and sing her own variation of You are my sunshine to everyone in the studio to boost morale, the lyrics I’m not sure if they were specifically customized to us but basically were that we’re appreciated for our hard work and efforts and keep up the great work. Now I thought this was great, as it really takes peoples minds off of work and gets everyone to laugh for 5 minutes, and probably costs $150 to arrange.

Plenty of people have contacted me to say that there has been drastic changes in day to day work, as well as how they handle a lot of their planning and scheduling etc. How to treat their team and reward them to keep morale up etc.

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