Cinefex Weekly Update | Issue 49

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Article by Matt Hurwitz

There isn't a science fiction fan who does not know the work of artist and visual futurist Syd Mead. Long admired for his pioneering conceptual designs on such films as Tron, Aliens, and Blade Runner, among others, Mead has created startling images of the future that have left an indelible impression in the minds of filmgoers. Mead's instructional skill is now available in a new series of DVDs, titled The Techniques of Syd Mead.

Released by Hollywood-based visual effects school The Gnomon Workshop, the four volumes walk students through the major steps of creating a concept design, from start to finish. "We wanted to capture the entire process of Syd doing a new Syd Mead painting," explained company founder Alex Alvarez. "Syd has a very distinct style that he has maintained for nearly 50 years. We wanted to document the process and technique that he uses."

The discs feature Mead demonstrating the process of creating a new image in four major steps, with voice-over describing the work. "It's not really a 'lecture' per se," Mead said. "It's more like a tutorial."

After giving talks at a variety of graphic arts schools around the world -- at such prestigious locations as the Carnegie Mellon Institute, the Pratt Institute, and, most recently, the Virtuality Conference in Italy -- Mead began considering making a videotaped version of his talks to reach a wider audience. The idea took flight when Mead was approached by fellow design teacher Scott Robertson at a party. "Scott had the same idea, but to do it for Gnomon," said Mead. The project was videotaped at Robertson's Design Studio Press offices in Culver City during the summer of 2004. "I'd drive out to Scott's three or four days a week, and paint and draw on camera."

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Once the footage was completed and edited, Mead recorded a voice-over at Gnomon's home base, describing the onscreen steps. "He talks about design," explained Alvarez, "about composition, about references. He also talks about experiences that he's had, working in different industries. You basically get to hang out with Syd for several hours. Considering how many amazing things he's worked on, that's pretty cool."

Mead reviews the steps for creating a concept painting for a new vehicle concept -- the Hypervan. "I always have in my mind a theoretical vehicle," Mead said, describing the Hypervan as a four-wheeled vehicle with large, narrow wheels, designed to make less ground contact. Fully-enclosed, it has no windows, but instead utilizes a laminate layer which duplicates the 3D world outside with holographic images. "If you can avoid using glass, not only is it cheaper, you can make the vehicle lighter."

In Volume 1, 'Thumbnail Sketching and Line Drawing,' Mead walks the student through the creation of an initial thumbnail drawing of the concept, in several views. "It reinforces the fact that you have to pay attention to black and white, as a composition in a frame," Mead explained. "It's the most basic way to start. It if looks good at that small scale, the more detail you add back into it, the more dynamic it becomes."

In Volume 2, 'Value Sketching,' Mead utilizes the thumbnails to produce line sketches, experimenting with different perspectives and different viewpoints to create value studies and block out the lighting for the scene. "You're taking a theoretical camera and moving through the proposed scenario," Mead commented. "Being a scenic designer requires you to really have a knowledge of scenario creation, and to think in 3D. In fact, when I product-design, I draw the hands and maybe a person holding the product. I'll draw the person first, and then scale the whole mentality to the end situation."

In Volume 3, 'Creating the Color Preliminary,' Mead describes creating the piece's color palette, typically using up to 20 colors. "It's the creation of a full-color miniature from the line drawing in the previous step," Mead said. "The final piece will be 20-by-30 inches; in this step, I create something about 8-1/2 -by-11 inches to check color balance, and to make sure I like what I'm seeing. And because of its smaller size, I can change it very quickly if needed. These usually take about four hours, which is fairly quick, relatively speaking."

Mead walks viewers through the creation of the final illustration in Volume 4's 'Final Gouache Rendering.' "Gouache is a very difficult technique to master," Mead observed. "I tell people that 'gouache' is French for 'bitchy medium!'" Once mastered, though, the opaque water color technique offers the artist the ability to paint in all manner of styles. "You can paint with it like oil. You can do it semi-transparent, and back to opaque, back and forth. You can glaze. It's a very tactile medium. With a brush, you're making a color addition to an existing scenic situation that you've already designed. You're really refining the illusion."

While Gnomon offers tutorial DVDs for both computer-based and traditional media, Mead notes the importance of experience in basic skills. "The techniques are getting much better," said Mead, "so you can automate a lot of this. But if you don't understand picture-making as a core skill, I don't think you're really equipped to criticize what the computer is doing for you. I've seen computer generated stuff where the lighting was bad, or with shadows casting the wrong way. When you do 3D work, you have to assign attributes to all of this stuff, frame by frame. That's what I do. It's suspension of disbelief. I just do it one frame at a time."

For more information about the Gnomon tutorial DVDs, go to thegnomonworkshop.com.

Article by Joe Fordham

Before it was published in Cinefex Weekly Update, 'Film Clips' began life four years ago as an irregular and irreverent series of communications between my Cinefex office in the San Fernando Valley and the main base of operations for Cinefex in Riverside, California. They consisted of salacious rumors, internet 'spy reviews' and word of effects projects gleaned from the grapevine -- not to mention my own, often unprintable, asides -- and were my little way of letting fellow team members know I was out here working.

Through gentle persuasion, Cinefex publisher Don Shay convinced me a sanitized version of my insights might make an entertaining read as a section in a weekly publication offered to our readers in an e- newsletter format.

As a farewell gift to our CWU readers, we will be archiving all of the existing issues of Cinefex Weekly Update on our main website at Cinefex.com, but I also thought it might be fun to offer some guidelines to help the truly devoted reader devise his or her own system for navigating the wild and polluted seas of movie news on the Internet.

What follows is a guide to the online news resources that I have been breezing through each morning while assembling Film Clips. By all means, caveat emptor, and don't believe everything you read. Rest assured the CWU editorial team will now be refocusing all our efforts where it counts -- on the print publication of Cinefex.

Cinefex -- You can purchase subscriptions to our magazine on this site or order back issues. The site also contains a section on upcoming effects films, with an A-Z listing of all potential films on our radar, including plot summaries and lists of key production and effects people involved.

Variety -- The venerable Hollywood trade magazine, and the place to start on your morning news rounds, if you can get past the Varietyspeak lingo. Articles require paid subscription.

The Hollywood Reporter -- The other major trade in town, more generous in offering reviews and some stories to non-subscribers.

Coming Soon -- Upcoming movies, trailers. A very useful, up-to-date compendium of Hollywood industry reports from worldwide. Beware press releases in sheep's clothing, sometimes printed verbatim.

Dark Horizons -- A comparatively mature movie news website, with an Australian slant, aimed at fans, but put together with a certain degree of class.

Ain't It Cool News -- If the fecal brown borders and the large point kindergarten type don't tip you off immedaitely, welcome to the self-proclaimed, red-headed stepchild of website weenie movie fandom, based in Austin, Texas. You can't fault them for their passion, but the endless vituperative bile spewed fourth in reader 'talkback' sessions requires a hazmat suit to wade through. Torn between abhorrence and horrified fascination, certain savvy studios have recently proclaimed AICN publisher Harry Knowles as a guru, inviting him to take part in upcoming productions. This is Internet in all its unwashed back-biting glory.

Cinematic Happenings Under Development -- A rollicking, darkly-toned internet film magazine, feels like the Film Threat for the net. Publisher Nick Nunziata has appeared as a media correspondent on CNN and never pulls his punches. Always worth a look.

JoBlo's Movie Emporium -- Reviews, news, trailers, wallpapers, scripts, upcoming Movies, posters. Similar to CHUD, but more prone to quips and witticisms. You might pick up an odd nugget here, or at least a second opinion, but the style is a bit slick for its own good.

Yahoo! Movies -- This was a great little resource when the original publisher, Greg Schmitz, was running the site on his own -- interesting pages on each upcoming film full of valuable historical data, often cross-referenced in a well organized data system. Things have slowed down here since Yahoo purchased Greg's site, but you can't go wrong if you need to check release dates or archived trade stories on a project.

The Internet Movie Database -- This enormous resource, started by a lone film fan in England cataloguing his video rentals, now containing countless billion entries, from early silent films, through Steven Spielberg's 8mm amateur films, to the latest blockbuster releases. Beware, though -- much of the information can be apocryphal, given the unavailability of credits until a movie is released coupled with the ability for any independent parties to enter their names to a list for a small fee. IMDb tries to verify each credit, but the volume is staggering; so rumors and conjecture occasionally appear as fact.

Animation World Network -- A wonderful on-line magazine, if not the world's authority devoted to the subject of animation in film. You will find real passion and respect for the history of the craft, both modern and the classic masters, with a refreshing worldview. The site also contains a tributary website, VFXWorld.com, which can be worth a look occasionally.

Moviehole.net -- Movie and entertainment news. I am not a fan of this one, but breeze by on my rounds -- a lot of 'he said' she said' blather gossip, written in a gosh-gee-golly-shucks style. Good for corroborating rumors, but not much meat.

VFXPro - The Daily Visual Effects Resource -- My old alma mata, once known as the official visual effects website for the Visual Effects Society, but has since been sold off from its original dot com conglomerate to another media company. If press releases are your thing, you'll find them here. The old site ain't what it used to be; and unfortunately a lot of great archived material covering hundreds of films dating back to 1999 has vanished.

CGNetworks.com -- A hardcore computer graphics forum, with very flashy graphics and occasional artist profiles. Also contains CGChat, a forum where young CG users and developers ardently discuss sundry issues effecting the worlds of computer graphics, visual effects film-making and computer games. I dip in from time to time; but they make me feel old.

Make-Up Artist Magazine -- The on-line website for publisher Michael Key's eminent makeup industry trade magazine. Always worth keeping an eye on once in a while, but the real juice here is reserved for the print publication.

TheOneRing.net™ -- Lord of the Rings movie news and rumors. Indispensable resource for anything Tolkienesque, and that includes the personal accomplishments, birthdays and pregnancies of director Peter Jackson's stars, but you've got to love them. Behind the scenes shots and inside scoops abound, so don your latex hobbit feet and tread carefully. Affiliated with Peter Jackson's irreverent and self-descriptive fansite 'The Bastards Have Landed.'

Kong is King.net -- King Kong movie news and rumors. Where OneRing left off, KongisKing began, chronicling the shooting of Peter Jackson's great ape run amuck, by special arrangement with Universal Pictures. Includes laboriously shot and archived documentary footage of Jackson's new film, posting a new episode each week, with Jackson proving to be an ebullient front man. A brave and very good-natured use of turning the problem of Internet espionage on its head.

His Dark Materials | BridgeToTheStars.Net -- A handsome fansite devoted to the production of New Line Cinema's upcoming adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials fantasy novels

~ Welcome to NARNIA ~ -- Not quite as sophisticated, yet, as the Kong or OneRing sites, but a nicely laid-out site that provides occasional updates about this C.S. Lewis fantasy film adaptation, and the book that inspired it.

Vfxblog -- Australian visual effect fan Ian Failes, a polite and intelligent young man in Australia, set up his personal web log page devoted to visual effects and has continued to gain experience in interviewing effects personnel, as well as providing nicely laid out an informative links to visual effects related news. Good work, Ian.

Spielbergfilms.com -- Another one-man band, run by Steven Anwalt, a young man with the most comprehensive fansite devoted to the work and accomplishments of filmmaker Steven Spielberg. Anything you want to know about Spielberg, Steven hears it first and will not suffer hype or conjecture gladly.

Lee's Movie Info
The Numbers
Box Office Mojo -- Box office data, movie stars, idol speculation. These three are good for bean-counting box office statistics, if the trades are bamboozling you with statements about 'the best movie opening in the history of movies about basketball-playing dogs that opened on a Thursday...'

The Moviebox.net
Apple.com -- QuickTime - Movie Trailers. You can't beat Apple for its trailer gallery; although the MovieBox is a close second for more obscure and international trailers. A word of warning: many an hour can be frittered away at these sites, if you have a fast connection. And beware the 'Full Screen' option, which may require strange things from browser preferences.

Los Angeles Times
The New York Times
The London Times -- Breaking news, world news & multimedia. It can also be healthy to get an East Coast / West Coast view from time to time; and venturing father afield can bring broader perspectives. Also, try to turn your computer off eventually, pet your dog, kiss a loved one and fly a kite one in a while.

Cinefex marks the occasion of its 100th issue with a probing 'roundtable' discussion of the past, present and future of visual effects by more than 50 of the industry's leading effects practitioners. Filled with insightful observations from those who have been in the trenches, pushing effects technology to new and dazzling heights over the years, the article also offers color reproductions of every Cinefex cover to date.

Our 100th issue also contains in-depth coverage of ...

The Polar Express: For his adaption of the award-winning children's book by Chris Van Allsburg, about a young boy who embarks on a journey to the North Pole on a phantom locomotive, director Robert Zemeckis pulls out all the stops in The Polar Express. Entirely computer generated, the film relies on new and innovative techniques in performance capture and rendering to retain the charm and artistic vision of Van Allsburg's classic tale. Spearheading the effort were Oscar-winning visual effects veteran Ken Ralston and supervisor Jerome Chen, working with a team at Sony Pictures Imageworks.

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events: Trouble looms around every corner for the Baudelaire orphans in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, directed by Brad Silverling and based on the first three installments in the immensely popular children's book series. Industrial Light & Magic led the visual effects effort, providing some 500 shots for the production that ranged from digital matte paintings and models of the Baudelaire mansion to a CG version of the youngest Baudelaire, baby Sunny. Makeups for Jim Carrey as the evil Count Olaf, whose schemes to claim the orphans' inheritance entail an elaborate series of disguises, were designed and implemented by Bill Corso.

This collector's edition is available now and makes a great Christmas gift.