We are pleased to announce an official partnership between Vancouver Film School and The Foundry, a world-leading innovator in visual effects technologies. The UK-based company has established itself as a critical partner to major feature-film studios and post-production houses worldwide, including Sony Pictures Imageworks, Walt Disney Studios, Weta Digital, The Moving Picture Company, Framestore, and Digital Domain.
The partnership will give students of the Animation & Visual Effects programs educational licenses for Nuke, the company’s high-end compositing system, based on The Foundry’s award-winning technology.
Visit the official site for more information on Nuke by The Foundry.
Brad Keys (r) and Matthew Miner at a Vancouver game jam. Typically Game Design grads are at VFS for one reason and one reason only – to make great games. And that’s exactly what they do, at companies like Radical, BioWare, Ubisoft, and Relic. Occasionally, though, they want to stretch their ideas and abilities to other aspects of gaming. Enter Game Design grad Brad Keys and Foundation grad Matthew Miner with their Unity analytics service, Lumos, released through their company, Rebel Hippo. Lumos, currently a free service, allows Unity game developers to easily monitor their games and player base. It was awarded $25,000 from the University of Waterloo’s VeloCity Venture Fund. We caught up with Brad to find out how he came to be on this side of the games industry. How did you decide on an analytics service over making a game? I find that when I’m developing a game there are a lot of moments where I say, “Man, I can’t believe there’s not an easy way to do this”. And game analytics was one of those moments. My friend Matthew Miner and I saw that there weren’t many analytics solutions specifically geared towards games. So we went for it. Our goal now is to make great tools so we can make better games. The biggest challenge was trying to architect a way that would ensure that we could offer the service at a price that compares to other analytics solutions out there. But like you say, since there aren’t many comparisons available, it’s tough for us to say how many features we need to offer before it’s worth people paying that money. Right now we’re actually offering it for free and getting as much feedback from developers as possible, so we can get it to a point where developers are happy enough to really want to pay for our service. Unity has made it possible for developers to produce fairly high-end, graphically-sophisticated games delivered through web browsers. Do you think the industry is headed away from platforms towards web-based services? I think 3D on the web is certainly picking up fast. The Unity web player install base has grown exponentially over the past couple of years. I don’t think that the industry is headed away from platforms, though. I just think it’s expanding to reach an even wider audience. Lumos offers developers real-time analytics. It’s a service that can track various bits of information about a game’s player base. This includes hardware, software, player decisions and accomplishments, and how regularly they play. It can also provide developers with information about errors that occur while people play their games. And we have a feedback system that allows players to communicate directly with developers, to submit bug reports or just give general feedback about the game. The best part about the service, in my opinion, is that it requires no coding to use. You can simply drag and drop it into your game. Thanks, Brad! Matthew, the other half of Rebel Hippo, is looking to move onto Lumos full-time come September, while keeping an active hand in filmmaking, game development, and software design. Look out for great things from these two!
Louis Cox – Visual Effects Artist Congratulations! Update: Looks like we missed Jamie Bowers who worked as a Texture Artist.
Held each year by cgCoach, the 2011 CGSA finalists were heavily composed of VFS alumni, as we recently noted. We’re ecstatic to announce that the Student of the Year Award stays in the hands of a 3D Animation & Visual Effects grad. Last year, it was Maximilian Gordon-Vogt. This year it’s Andrew Juano for 0 Gravity! Fellow 3D grad Aldo Martinez was also honoured with a Special Mention for his piece, Gliese 851. This year, the global competition also introduced Studio Internship Awards in cooperation with a number of high-profile visual effects companies around the world. For the Canada Internship category, VFS grads came out on top again: both Andrew and Aldo will receive an internship placement at Prime Focus, Image Engine, or MPC. Winners were chosen from over 150 submissions and will share with the Finalists a total prize pool of over $50,000 and 18 studio internships. The judging panel spanned the upper echelons of the visual effects industry, including representatives from Pixar, Double Negative, and Dreamworks. Visit the VFS YouTube channel or check out Andrew’s and Aldo’s winning pieces below. 0 Gravity by Andrew Juano Gliese 851 by Aldo Martinez
Film Production grad Alberto Gomez was honoured last week when he won the Hello, Future Music Video Challenge. With nearly 600 submissions, filmmakers around the world competed to create the most visually impressive music video for one of three Moby tracks from his new album, Destroyed. Announced at the Saatchi and Saatchi New Directors’ Showcase at Cannes, Moby himself was part of the final jury that selected Alberto’s entry (embedded here) as the winner. As part of his prize, Alberto will be offered the opportunity to work on a project for Saatchi and Saatchi, the competition’s co-sponsor and a globally-renowned advertising agency with a client list that includes Toyota, T-Mobile, and General Mills, to name a few. Congratulations, Alberto!
While every installment of The International Make-Up Artist Trade Show is a grueling, fast-paced competition, the Los Angeles edition must feel particularly so, occurring as it does near the heart of the North American movie machine. To win in Los Angeles means winning in front of a huge industry audience. So it must be particularly gratifying for Makeup Design for Film & Television grads Carolyn Williams (pictured left) and Carly Wolk (pictured right), and current student Cornel Zueger, to have been selected to compete in 2011. In what is becoming a trend for Makeup Design warriors, VFS alumni crowded the podium, with Carolyn and Carly taking first and second place in the Character/Prosthetic category. Check out their winning entries below, and visit the Makeup Design Facebook page for images, video, and more. Congratulations, everyone! Update – We Did It Again! As we recently posted, Makeup Design for Film & Television students and alumni were treated to a special visit from Make-Up Artist Magazine Publisher/Editor-in-Chief, Michael Key, where he unveiled the seven VFSers who were chosen to compete in the 2011 Vancouver IMATS student competitions. It was a fun, nail-biter of a weekend that saw two Makeup Design graduates draw high acclaim from industry judges. This time it was Leah Wilburn (pictured left) who took home the top prize, while Carly Wolk (pictured right) took the podium again for a third place finish.
Pictured left alongside Relic Recruiter Kelly Gies (centre) and Producer Greg Wilson (right), Andres will join the company behind Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising for four months where he’ll be neck-deep in work. He recently answered some of our questions about what this internship means to him, and any lessons he learned from his team-based final project, Tank’d. What does it mean to you to receive this opportunity? Andres: Relic is one of the best studios out there, so the fact that they chose me for this opportunity is an immense honour. My class is full of amazing people, and several of those applied for the internship, so I knew the competition was going to be fierce. Being selected not only means that they are confident in my abilities as a game designer, but they want me as part of their team. What drew you to games in the first place? Andres: I’ve been a computer geek for as long as I can remember, and as such, as I was always tinkering with my computer trying to squeeze an extra frame per second or two out of any game. At first the engineer in me was mostly interested in games as a driving force behind graphics technologies, but over time the gamer inside of me took over and I started focusing on games as an experience, rather than a piece of software. This is precisely what brought me to VFS. After finishing my Bachelor’s Degree in Systems and Computer Engineering, I knew a lot about the underlying technology behind games, but I felt there was still much to learn regarding the design of fun and compelling games. Unlike other schools that focus on game programming or production, what I liked about VFS was that it focused on design, which is exactly what I wanted to learn more about. What were the biggest challenges during the development process for Tank’d? Nevertheless, having such a tight production cycle, we were forced to make tough decisions regarding what would make it into the game and what would have to be cut. The most significant example of this was early in our production, when we ran into some complications using UnrealScript and how gravity is handled. We knew given more time we would be able to solve the issue, but unfortunately time is precisely what we didn’t have. We sat down and assessed the current status of our game. We had no time to lose, so in the end we decided to design around our limitations, and keep the core of our game intact. What are you most looking forward to doing at Relic? Andres: The opportunity to put in practice everything I’ve learned over the past year. Throughout our year at VFS we’ve learned everything from analogue game theory down to scripting enemy AI behaviour. Our final project is a great taste of what it’s like to work in a development environment and it gave us an amazing opportunity to show what we’re made of, but I’m looking forward to see how a real world development environment works and how it differs from our experience with our final project. Best of luck at Relic, Andres!
First, Entertainment Business Management students gave us visually stunning adaptations of HP Lovecraft’s spooky fiction. Then came Homer’s Odyssey and “Steampunk Neverland“. Now, we’ve got a compilation of stories dubbed “Psycho Princess,” inspired by squeaky-clean tales of enchantment. Check out what EBM students and their many VFS collaborators (obviously including Makeup Design for Film & Television) are brewing for the next volume of the most original interactive digital publication anywhere…
The Vancouver Fire Fighter’s calendar is legendary, and for the 2011 version Robyn did it all, from the makeup to the design of the calendar itself. “It took a lot of work but the calendar was a huge success,” says Robyn.”The firemen involved did many promotional events selling the calendar, and it raised over $60,000 for charity, including the BC Children’s Hospital and the Burn Fund.” Well done, Robyn!
“First and foremost: practice, practice, practice,” says Game Design student Chris Fox, when asked how his team prepared for the recent Pitch and Play event. “But aside from the obvious, there was still quite a bit of work to be done. Business cards had to be designed and printed, and portfolio websites had to be designed. It was a mad, frantic dash right up until the moment we took the stage.” For the last four months, Chris has been the Lead Designer and Project Manager for the puzzle-platformer Blokhead, a light-hearted game that also called up on the talents of Annie Dickerson (Lead Programmer/Artist), Mike Domingo (Lead Level Design/Programmer), and Kiley Giguere (Lead Audio Designer/ Level Design). “It’s the most significant night of the year, for sure,” says Chris. “It’s the culmination of all of the long hours, sleepless nights and hard work. More than anything, we were all excited to show off our game and see what people thought.” Throughout development, the Blokhead team maintained a production blog. Check it out here. “We’re taking the sting out of death, making it fun, funny and important. Going against the gamer instinct for self-preservation, we invite you to toss Eyegore gleefully into ice, fire, spikes, and electricity as you travel through the castle.” Tim Wirch (Lead Level Design/Audio Design) and Blackwell Hird (Level Design/Gameplay) rounded out the team. You can also check out their development blog here. Another big hit was Tank’d, a third-person arcade-style tank game. Level Designer Dylan Loney was very pleased with his team collaboration experience. “From day one, our group basically formed around the mentality of being a professional-level development team, and I think that showed off in the final product,” he says. Tank’d team members included Brian Wood Memorial Internship winner Andres Molina as well as David Franco, Jeffrey Shaw, and Alberto A. Braga. To see all of the games presented at the last Pitch and Play (and many more from previous classes), visit the VFS Game Design “Industry Game Vault.”
How to Measure Fun
What are the challenges with making something like this, when there aren’t a lot of comparable products?
Can you give us a quick breakdown of what Lumos offers?Transforming the Summer Box Office
Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the third installment of robots in disguise, hit most theatres at midnight yesterday, and if you weren’t up to watch it you missed the work of thirteen 3D Animation & Visual Effects grads. This crew features a range of graduation years, from back in 2000 all the way up to 2009.
Henri Tan – Creature Technical Director
Chelsea Whittet – Digital Production Administrator
Kelsey Ayukawa – Stereo Roto/Paint Artist
Stephen King – Animator
Cesar Rodriguez Bautista – Digital Paint/Roto Artist
Anna Tonrungroj – Paint and Rotoscope Artist
Daphne De Jesus – Digital Paint Artist
Borae Cho – Pipeline Technical Director
Samson Wong - Integration Artist
Pedram Daraeizadeh – Digital Production Administrator
Serguei Kalentchouk – Lead Character Technical Director
Jooyong Lee – Digital ArtistBack-to-Back Wins for VFS as School of the Year at the CGSAs!
For the second year in a row, Vancouver Film School has won School of the Year at the Computer Graphics Student Awards (CGSAs)!
VFS Grad Wins Hello, Future Competition at Cannes
Makeup Battle: Los Angeles
Tank’d Project Manager Headed to Relic Entertainment
We’d like to congratulate Game Design student Andres Molina as the newest recipient of the Brian Wood Memorial Internship at Relic Entertainment.
Andres: Without a doubt the biggest challenge was time. Having only 4 months to design and fully develop a game means there is almost no margin for error. Thankfully I was working alongside some of the best my class had to offer, so we were always working at full speed towards the next deliverable.A Sneak Peek at Compendium Vol. IV
You can follow the development of each Compendium project by reading the student-run blog at compendium.vfs.com, liking the Facebook page, and viewing photo uploads on the VFS Flickr profile!
Fire Fighters in Makeup for Charity
VFS Makeup Design for Film & Television students and alumni have a history of championing worthy causes. They’ve lent their talents to the Show of Hearts Telethon, and glammed-up military wives on Remembrance Day. Recently, Makeup Design grad Robyn Jenkins made the ultimate sacrifice for charity – taking charge of a shoot for a group of handsome, shirtless firemen.Behind the Curtain at Pitch and Play
Eyegore was another game that was presented that evening to a roomful of industry guests. Here’s how Project Coordinator Larissa McCutcheon describes the twisted side-scrolling platform-puzzler:
“We built the game with accessibility in mind, and spent a lot of time ensuring controlling the tank was fun. That way, even if people only played the first minute, they would still have a good time. Similarly, we made sure combat was intuitive and rewarding. All the weapons feel awesome to use, and its a great feeling when you destroy your first turret. The wall driving is a good way to build off this; it gives our game that WOW feature that people will remember.”