It’s a funny thing about the Visual Effects specialization in 3D Animation & Visual Effects: since visual effects are all about combining real footage with CG creations, our students regularly blow up, knock down, or otherwise destroy Vancouver, from the landmarks to the back alleys.
With that in mind, we’ve put together a selection of student VFX reels in a map of Downtown Vancouver. Click each location to find out more and see it getting blown to pieces!
View VFS Students Destroy Vancouver in a larger map
VFS’s acclaimed Makeup Design for Film & Television program will be at Booths 400 & 401 at the Canadian Makeup Show in Vancouver. VFS faculty, alumni, and students will be demonstrating makeup design techniques such as prosthetics, injury simulation effects, hair laying, and more! Head of Department Stan Edmonds will be there, as well as instructors Elissa Frittaion, Felix Fox, and Gideon Hay. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from the pros! Tickets to the Canadian Makeup Show are on sale now! VFS Makeup Design Also, don’t forget about VFS’s Summer Intensive Programs, featuring five days of Makeup Design lectures, demonstrations, and hands-on time (July 13th – 17th). The class size is small and seats are bound to fill up quickly. To find out more and to register, visit vfs.com/summer2009.
That’s where Digital Design grad Antonio Suarez‘s story begins. After VFS, he returned to Panama and continued refining his skills. Now, all his hard work is really starting to pay off. Antonio’s graphic design and photography work is currently being exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Panama as part of the 2nd Panamanian Graphic Design Collective. Spanish-speaking readers can check out the exhibit’s website here; English-speaking readers can learn more in this article from the Panama Star. Antonio has also posted photos of the exhibition on his blog. If that wasn’t enough, Antonio’s work was also recently showcased on the Behance Network’s MotionServed.com, a website that exhibits “fresh works from leading creative professionals.” Congrats on your success, Antonio!
Armed with an inspiration package that included a foam heart and two character descriptions, the team scrambled to put the film together in less than three days. Their efforts garnered awards for Best Actress (Lauren Martin, Acting), Best Director (Darren Borrowman, Film), and even Best Use of Rain. They were also nominationed for Best Writing (Bob Woolsey and Andrew Menzies, Writing), Best Actor (Tom Belding, Acting), Best Sound, and Best Film. Click here to see the trailer for their film, “Pier Pressure.” “I like to think of our film as a Noir-edy,” says Darren Borrowman. A graduate of the Film Production program, Darren took part in a few VFS 48 Hour Film Festivals and had a great time. After leaving school, he set a goal of making one film a month for a year… He ended up making 15. “I have made it my goal to learn something new from every film that I make. Past lessons have included: ‘keep it simple,’ ‘have all the cast and crew available for the entire weekend,’ and ‘don’t make a split screen perspective film with only one camera, acting as director and editor in a 24hr period.’ Some things just don’t work.” Other VFS grad team members included: Josh Guitard (Film), Steve Tyrrell (Film), Jordan Ewan (Film), and Cynthia Gao (Makeup Design). Congrats, everyone!
This ‘short film event’ whittles a long list of applicants’ pitches down to just six, who receive equipment, funding, support, and just eight days to make a short film. Crazy 8s is a proven springboard for young talent, so it’s always great to see VFS grads involved. 60 contenders were recently narrowed down to 11 semi-finalists, and two of those – Julia Niendorf (Single Roll) and Willy Lavendel (The Man Who Never Laughs) – are Film Production grads. We’re rooting for them as they enter the next round! Meanwhile, the whole thing is being covered in a series of behind-the-scenes video podcasts, crewed by recent Film grads Nick Kelly (interviewer), Mike Russell (camera), Andrew Gust (camera), and Max Marois (location sound). The first episode is on the Crazy 8s site now, with more to come. Stay tuned!
Tyler exemplifies an unsung part of the Digital Design curriculum – interactive design. So much more than just ‘design for coders’, it’s actually an incredibly broad, forward-thinking, and experimental stream that marries the technical and creative sides of design, with results that are often astonishing. Tyler’s own final project,which you can see on his portfolio site, is an “alternative way” of displaying information, “where data changes visually over time and users interact with it.” It was work like this that made Tyler the Canadian UX Blog’s Design Student of the Month while he was still at VFS. Earlier this month, Tyler spoke to a packed house of aspiring designers at our Digital Design Open House. But we wanted to dig even deeper and find out more about what got him to where he is. Tyler, let’s start with the most open-ended question imaginable – your professional journey. What’s your origin story? Before VFS, I hardly new what design was. I was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where I spent a large part of my time split between city life – if you can call Saskatoon city life – and being a farm kid, playing in wheat fields and herding cattle. Leaving high school, I was unsure about what I wanted to do career wise, so rather than enrolling in a post-secondary school, I entered the workforce. After a few years of cooking in a restaurant, I decided to further my education, going back to school. That resulted in a rather short stint of university, at which point I realized I didn’t really want to do what I was studying. So I started looking around at other opportunities, and that is when I came across VFS. A little less than a year later, I moved out to Vancouver to participate in the Foundation Visual Art & Design program. What drew you to Foundation? Did you have a strong idea of what you’d eventually be pursuing? Foundation for me was the result of talking to the VFS advisors. Originally, I wanted to enroll in the 3D program, but while talking with them, they introduced me to the idea of taking the Foundation program first. This was suggested because prior to VFS I had no experience in the art and design field, so it was a great opportunity for me to be introduced to a wide variety of skills and form a strong base on which I could build from when I did take the 3D program. Luckily for me, I listened to their advice, because while taking the program, I realized that 3D was not the right field for me, but rather it was the design classes that I really enjoyed. What can you say about the transition from Foundation to Digital Design?
A quick note of congrats to recent Writing for Film & Television grad Cal MacLean, who was named a quarter-finalist in this year’s Scriptapalooza! Cal made the grade in the semi-annual TV writing competition with his House MD spec script ‘Doppelganger’. Well done!
A new media frontiersman of sorts, Kalangis stressed the importance of building online communities before traditional television series are launched. “There are more people online than there are watching conventional television,” he said. “So, how can we get people interested in the material before [the series debuts]?” Using vlog clips from CBC’s Being Erica series, which were made available on YouTube one month before the series launched in January, Kalangis explained the process of building online communities through viral videos, and how useful they are in reaching younger audiences. With the success of online properties like The Motion Show, he convinced his superiors to acknowledge the changing demands of younger viewers: “If you’re not going to capture this audience on radio or TV, you can do it here… Because they’re not watching CBC right now.” Kalangis brought it all back to the growing need for the industry to have skilled professionals who understand traditional film and television production issues (such as negotiating with unions, distributors and broadcasters), and how they apply to the ever-changing world of online media.
The setup almost doesn’t matter: a war-torn future (that would be the 40,000) and spacefaring races at war with each other, from your standard Space Marines – the focus of the single-player campaign – to Giger-esque Tyranids, elfin Eldar, and brutish Orks. Scan DoW2‘s credits and you’ll see a lot of VFS alumni. From Animation & Visual Effects, Senior Artist Ian Cumming, Lead Animator Nathan Hocken, and Artists Claire Roberts, Allan Dilks, Jefferson Takahashi, and Christine Hubbard. From Sound Design for Visual Media, there’s Dialogue Editor Allan Levy. From Game Design, Designers Francois Chaput, Mike Wilson, and Brock Robin, and Assistant Producer Mbuso Radebe. Game Design alum Francois, who graduated in early ’07, took time out of his busy schedule to talk about designing Dawn of War II, walking in the popular tabletop game’s considerable footsteps, and reinventing the RTS. Hi, Francois! Thanks for taking the time to talk DoW2. First of all, how does it feel now that the game’s out? Honestly, it feels pretty good. Reviews have been great, and sales have been strong, which obviously makes all the hard work feel worth it. But really none of that matters in comparison to when my brother in Manitoba calls me to tell me how much he loves the game, and that he’s skipped a few online Halo 3 matches he had planned just to play DoW2 instead. I was responsible for the creation of boss battles in DoW2, and their implementation. This was a lot of fun, even though I felt as though I would have needed more time. It was a tough challenge, but one that forced me to improve as a designer as well, one that brought us a wealth of feedback – good and bad – from the community, reviewers and friends, and I look forward to putting what we’ve learned to use in the future. I was also involved in many of the gameplay meetings as well, and contributed to things like the pacing of the game, how the game played out on the battlefield, and even what archetypes each of the squads would follow. Warhammer 40K is pretty huge, with a rabid fanbase, novels – everything. Were you a player of the tabletop game? What was it like, as a designer, to translate a property like that into a video game experience? Honestly, I had never played the tabletop game. Nor had I read any novels, or codices, or anything on this universe. The only exposure I’d had prior to Dawn of War II was the original Dawn of War games and expansions,which I was playing before my interview at Relic to familiarize myself with their works other than Company of Heroes. In fact, the only exposure to tabletop Warhammer was when I bought some wood elf models to use in my D&D games. So first thing I had to do was understand the tabletop fanbase, and what they tend to like. Then I had to do the same with the original Dawn of War‘s fanbase. I did a lot of reading, a lot of research, I read so many forums, reviews, fan work and so on. So all that to say that it was very tiring, but very inspirational and challenging. I feel now as though I have, in a sense, lived the universe and time that everything takes place in, and if I could change anything, I would only want to do it again the exact same way as I did it before, only to experience it all over again. DoW2 has been getting a lot of praise for its single-player campaign – although it gets away from what one might consider the traditional RTS model of base-building and so on. Even the notion of bosses – it’s not unprecedented, but it’s still sort of unusual. As a designer, how do you handle that challenge of meeting gamers’ expectations while trying to do something new?
“Future Frames” itself is pretty cool: a schedule representing a huge variety of work created at post-secondary film schools from across Canada, aimed at grades 10-12, followed by an educational Q&A. We’re thrilled that A Trick of the Wind and its creator will be there. Sprockets runs from April 18 to 24, 2009. Tickets are on sale, and are available at sprockets.ca. You can also check out the Future Frames lineup right here.
Join Us at the Canadian Makeup Show
at the Canadian Makeup Show
April 4 – 5, 2009
10am – 6pm
PNE Agrodome
Vancouver, BCDigital Design Grad Exhibits Work in Panama
As you
discount travel, cheap travel, discount cheap travel usa might already know, VFS students come from all over the world to study in our beautiful city. Many return home afterward, bringing with them a greater understanding of their craft and creative potential.Grads Bond in The Rain
Since Vancouver is famous (in Vancouver) for its winter rainfall, it’s only fitting that a group of VFS grads, ranging from Film Production, Writing, Makeup Design and Acting, should bond together in the 2nd annual Raincity 72 Hour Film Noir Competition.Crazy 8s ’09 Underway, VFSers in Tow
Crazy 8s, the long-running, Vancouver-based initiative for supporting emerging filmmakers, is underway again – and VFS is there, in more ways than one.An Interactive Designer’s Reinvention
Tyler Egeto‘s come a long way from the Prairies. The Foundation Visual Art & Design and Digital Design grad’s trajectory has taken him from, well, essentially flipping burgers in Saskatchewan to Vancouver, where he now works as a designer at visual communications and interactive design agency Mod7.Grad a Scriptapalooza Quarter-Finalist
EBM Hosts New Media Talk
Yesterday afternoon, Entertainment Business Management students had the chance to learn about cutting-edge new media marketing techniques from a top expert on the subject, John Kalangis, Executive in Charge of Original Interactive Arts & Entertainment at CBC Television (now, that’s a title!). A seasoned filmmaker (Jack & Jill, Love is Work), Kalangis gave an interactive presentation on “The Business of Media,” covering his recent experience building web extensions for such CBC Television series as Being Erica, Heartland, and The Tudors.
“This is what entertainment is now,” he said, as he guided students through The Tudors’ interactive website. “It’s not ever going to be more clear than it is right now.”Designing Dawn of War II
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II. It was met with critical praise when it was released in February and gamers have taken to its fresh answer to traditional real-time strategy gameplay: the game, developed by Vancouver’s own Relic Entertainment (also known for the acclaimed RTS Company of Heroes) has landed at the top of the global PC sales charts. Dawn of War II (or DoW2) has even pleased longtime fans of its source material, a dystopian tabletop wargame so popular it’s spun off a shelf’s worth of novels.
Could you describe the broad strokes of what you were responsible for on DoW2? When readers play this game, what can they watch out for and say, “Hey, Francois did that”?
Eventually the universe became kind of a mindset, and I began to see how things could work as a game. Really, the vision the team had created before I joined the team in December 2007 was very strong and very clear to me, and I was able to contribute to that vision and help it evolve into what Dawn of War II came out.Trick of the Wind Heading to Sprockets
A Trick of the Wind, created by Jae-Hyun Lee in Classical Animation, is going to Toronto. It’s set to screen in the “Future Frames” program at the 12th annual Sprockets Toronto International Film Festival for Children.