This week Daybreakers won Best VFX at the AFI awards! Something I’m extremely proud of due to the fact that we created all of the VFX for this film back in 2007! The film was just released this year, so having it stand up still almost 3 years later against all of the current VFX films out there has been very rewarding!

For those who aren’t aware, I created all of the digital fire for the film for vampire ashing sequences, as well as being sequence supervisor for the major car crash sequence midway through the film. We created the project as a mix of Houdini and 3D Studio Max using Fume FX for all of the fire. Our VFX team was 7 people, 2 were seniors, 2 juniors and 1 animator, as well as 2 compositors in under 3 months!

Officially wrapping for the year this week, some of the more bigger projects I’ve been tied to have been The Last Airbender and Daybreakers which both came out this year, Priest which comes out in February, working with all of the talented crew at Industrial Light + Magic, and all of the ex Orphanage team now over at Spypost. Also being tied to a lot of game cinematics and more recently in New York Grimbergon french beer commercial which comes out very soon, which involved creating over 100+ flame effects for a 30′ tall Phoenix bird on fire. I also just now completed a large piece for the Asia Games opening Ceremony for next year. More information to come!

There will be major updates coming very soon, I will soon be announcing Industry Drinks event in Los Angeles for February, this event will be huge and I plan to get backing from a lot of major companies, hopefully to help flip the drinking bill!

Real Flow 5 Workshops to be announced in January! And loads of free Thinking Particles, Krakatoa and Rayfire coming!

Catastrophic FX will be officially launching in Los Angeles in March. We already have multiple feature films lined up and a lot of exciting news to announced about this! Custom tools for water creation and advanced visual effects! Kick Ass!

VFX Bootcamp – The name says it all!

Recently I wrote a review of the new fire plugin Phoneix FD for 3D Studio Max. It has been very widely received and gained a lot of interest, so check it out when you have time!

Phoenix article also hosted on Chaos Group’s website & Direct Link to article here

For anyone not subscribed to 3D World Magazine, here is a link to the article on Chaos Group’s Phoenix FD website

Also – keep an eye out! Advanced VFX 3 DVD also plugged in the latest 3D World Magazine issue!

Recently I was asked to be a judge in the VFX wars contest, the results are up at their website

NYC Presentation a success!

Recently I did a quick talk at the Pratt Center for the 3D Studio Max End User Group, it was a massive turn out, apparently the biggest in the 14 year history of the meetings. I did a 1 hour talk about various subjects, the video will be online next week, so stay tuned!