Incredibly interesting tools developed by Image Engine in Nuke for work on District 9 as shown by Shervin Shoghian, compositing supervisor at Image Engine.

Click image to watch High-Bandwidth version.
Low-Bandwidth Version (iPhone)

The amount of tools they developed, with the amount of people they had working (around 90), in the amount of time they had to do it, is extremely impressive. And another reason why anyone interested in vfx/animation/film should definitely take a very hard look at Nuke.

[fxGuideTV]
[Image Engine]

Sarah de Gaudemar (aka Sarah Meyer) pays a visit to the KCAI animation department to discuss the work she had done on the latest stop-motion epic from Laika, Inc. A little film called Coraline.

Sarah talked about working under the scrutiny of the one and only Henry Selick and her specific roles on the project. Her main responsibility was the cat character, along with other characters that would appear in these scenes, as well as multiple other bits and pieces, such as Coraline hand close-ups, tests and development for things like bed covers, Coraline’s toys, etc.

Everyone is always excited to have Sarah visit because she is just a die hard animator, she knows what people that share her interest want to see so every time she visits everyone’s motivation level shoots up a notch. Thanks again for taking the time to stop by Sarah!

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I just had the opportunity to check this out, and I must say I was very surprised to see something like this, and there are some things I definitely like and some things that just don’t quite fit. Still, going back to re-work something like this is quite an undertaking, and I have found that I really like some of the changes, the overall color scheme shift really does change the mood of certain parts of the film. And the new audio is absolutely phenomenal in most cases.

From what I have heard, the changes were mainly motivated by Oshii himself.


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As an animator that absolutely loves both the original, the sequel, and the the series, I have to say I find some of the enhancements to be extremely well done. The only thing out of the entire thing that really bothers me is the recreation of Motoko in CG for the opening. It was done in a way that actually looks quite nice and it seems to make sense as an opening, but I definitely believe it would have looked better with enhancements on the compositing or re-done 2D animation (only the extended falling sequence would have had to be re-done) to better fit the new environments.

Something that is fantastic though, is how some of these changes have improved the cinematography, like many animated films of its time, Ghost in the Shell definitely suffered from the panning “moving” camera and immediate stop syndrome, having that alone taken better care of here is a great improvement for me.

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And as far as the environments go, I am a huge fan of the Interface and Environmental stuff that was done in Innocence, so I find the change to the opening score sequence to be quite an improvement. Something about the orange that really gets me, and it really works well for this world.


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Something that always bothered me about the original audio was that all of the English voice actors, except for the Puppet Master, were kind of lame, while all the Japanese voice actors, except the Japanese Puppet Master, were fantastic. This version uses the Female voice actor who played Haraway (woman with short white hair) in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. I think Project 2501 works a little bit better as a female actually, although maybe a certain type of distortion in the voice or something would have added a little more. But it definitely makes more sense to me to have this self-aware entity taking on a voice that actually suits its current shell.

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Again, I think with a re-work of CG Motoko, you would have a truly excellent re-telling of this story, the animation is already there, it is just the look that is present in the rest of the film that is missing there.

If I get crazy enough, I may say copyright be damned and do everything I can to re-create those CG versions of Motoko in a well composited 2D handrawn form, with the new environments.

I now have a side-project that will always be in the back of my mind. . .what do you all think?

Everything aside though, I must admit that I am a little nerdy for this whole thing, I really love the new orange look, many of the changes make it a better film for me, but my reasoning is pretty biased and specific. I am interested in what other people think, I am sure a lot of people will really hate the CG opening Motoko stuff, but all in all I don’t think it was done poorly, it just causes some of the emotion to change a little too much.

I still haven’t got to see The Sky Crawlers, and it looks like Oshii is going to be a Samurai film next about Miyamoto Musashi, awesome, there is a Teaser Site already up for that.

UDPATE: Just finished watching the entire new film, and I must say, I really do think it is an improvement, the overall feeling that evokes is just stronger, the overall look, the sound, the characters, and everything else just seems to work better. I highly recommend checking it out.

[Pretty good overview of the changes made]
[Wikipedia]

i love wikipedia more than you do:

Wikipedia – List of Animated Feature Films

also check the bottom of the list for more categories, and hey if you know one that isn’t on the list, or is in red, add to it, that is how wikipedia works, or how it should work.

this is looking very interesting, from award winning short to Tim Burton produced feature film distributed by Focus Features:

9 – Apple HD Trailers

here is the original short:

I am really liking the character’s I hope this turns out to be a good one. Check out Shake Acker’s site. While the animation in the short seems a little limited, there seems to be a big improvement in the feature trailer. The timing in the original short is a little odd too, some moments just seem to take way longer than they should and there isn’t much subtlety. Excited to see this one though.

[Apple]