Visual Effects Artist

So it’s been a bit since I’ve posted, a lot has happened since then. Most importantly, I’ve Graduated! Four years of blood sweat and tears have come and gone. Armed with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film and Animation and a sharp new demo reel, I am ready to make my mark in the Visual Effects world!

Elysium is still in post-production–the many many shots that exist in the film are being tackled one at a time, and that seemingly endless list in my Google Doc is actually getting shorter! My decision to try and learn a bit of scripting in Blender (Python) and After Effects (ExtendScript) has helped me speed through a lot of shots that required simple, boring, repetitive work such as importing objects, instancing these objects to their low-res counterparts, and setting up render settings. It’s amazing how much time is saved!

Adobe CS5 has been released in it’s 64bit glory, and unfortunately I cannot afford to purchase it yet, but sometime soon…I promise…I am really looking forward to Premiere CS5’s new “Mercury Playback Engine,” a new addition that would significantly enhance the playback speed and general responsiveness of Premiere when dealing with big HD sequences. It also has native support for footage captured from the Canon still cameras, eg. 5D, 7D, T1i, etc. All awesome features, but just two of the many that now exist. I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy.

Also in case you didn’t notice, my website has gotten a facelift! Much nice than my old look.

So I finally finished setting up my demo reel!  The first reel I’ve ever officially put together.  Check it out at the aptly named “Reel” page of this site, and actually go to Vimeo to watch it in HD if you want to see the details.  It probably will change soon, there are some more shots I want to add/substitute and I’m waiting on some professional feedback too.

I am currently on my spring break, a break which hopefully allow me time to revamp this site and update it with a bunch of work that I have been involved with.  Elysium is still progressing, slowly but surely, it’ll get there.  That bug in Blender that I mentioned in my last post got fixed literally a few days ago which makes my life insanely easier.  Andrew and I released a second trailer a few weeks ago, hopefully improving upon the previous one.  There are really no new effects shots, however it is much shorter, has a new voiceover, and give the audience a bit more information.  Check it out at the Elysium web site.

Well things are really happening!  A few days ago Andrew and I launched the first full length trailer for Elysium.  Its over two minutes long, and contains a ton of fully realized visual effect shots.  Check it out at:

http://elysiumthefilm.com

I basically hammered most of the vfx shots out in a week, working 12-16 hours for a about a week.  It was brutal, but worth it.  I learned a LOT about my workflow, what works and what doesn’t!  All of the initial 3D animation was done in Blender 2.49, and I decided to switch almost completely over to a build of Blender 2.5.  Since I wanted to use raytraced shadows, the speed improvements of 2.5’s raytracer were amazing.  Switching from 2.49 to 2.5 was no simple task, and often I had to reset the in and out points of my ships flying along a curve.  Simple things like this weren’t a problem, but I ran into one huge glitch–a big bug in the particle system.

Basically whenever you have an object that has a particle system on it AND has keyframed scale, location, or rotation, things go WRONG.  The calculation of a shockwave, for example, calculates fine the first time, but whenever the animation loops the simulation disregards the scaling of the shockwave circle, and particles shoot out from the center.  It is very odd, and very frustrating.  I had to basically kill any particle systems with animated objects and use the particle systems with static objects.  I made it work for the trailer, but hopefully this bug gets fixed soon.  I posted a bug report on Blender’s bug tracker, so I’m hoping.

I’m taking a short break from working on Elysium VFX, I want to use some of the shots from the trailer to add to my demo reel, and get that posted on here soon.  My senior thesis is starting to move forward, and I have some shoots that I need to supervise and plan for too.

When I get my demo reel finished, which should be up relatively soon, It will have some breakdowns of shots from the trailer, so keep an eye out for it!

-mark

Well after weeks and weeks of editing and animating rough animatics for Elysium, things are FINALLY winding down! I have an official list of the last shots I need to animate, and there is a total of eleven! (and two of them are just tweaks!) It’s hard to believe that we are this close to an edit of the film, it doesn’t seem completely real. I did a rough count of the number of major visual effects shots in the film, and the number I came up with was 425! Yes, I know I am crazy, but where’s the fun with no challenge? Very soon I will be starting to work on the actual visual effects for each shot, which means I should start posting some cool things. Stay tuned!

-mark

My name is Mark Sniffen, and I co-wrote and am co-directing a film titled “Elysium,” with my friend Andrew.  It is my goal to populate this blog with news and information regarding my experiences throughout the entire process of creating this film.  The film is a science fiction space epic, and as it might seem, requires a hefty amount of 3D animation and compositing.  As a film student focusing on those two areas of study, I will be creating and compositing close to 100% of the visual effects that will appear in the film.

Currently the film is in the post-production state.  Andrew and I started writing the script early in the summer of ‘08.  Preproduction, which included casting, some CG modeling, set construction, etc, started in that fall and lasted until the end of February ‘09.  Almost all of the principle photography was shot during my 10 week spring semester, and thankfully we had to push only one shoot into the summer.  Andrew and I started editing soon after the last shoot, which also involved me creating CG animatics for the scenes that take place in space.

The story revolves around a man, a fighter pilot, who must face a great evil that lurks in space.  That is all I will say at the moment.  Check out the film’s website: www.elysiumthefilm.com for the awesome teaser and a slightly better description.

Since I am going to be working solely on the visual effects, I will be using this blog as an outlet for any interesting problems, solutions, or techniques that I come across during the creating of this film.  I will probably drop some random treats from time to time, set photos, a humorous clip from on set, and I might even make some guides or tutorials for specific problems that I overcome.

It is my hope that this will become more than a place for me to archive the process of creating this film, so be sure to comment, critique or ask questions as you wish!

-mark