I loved The Mummy back in the day... although it hasn't held up very well.
If I were home and dying of the flu in bed, I wouldn't use the last of my strength to get up and change the channel if The Mummy Returns came on, right up to the point where the Scorpion King appears. That's some fugly VFX work. The folks from Corridor Crew agree. On one of their days off, they decided to do something about it.
Image via YouTube Read the rest
Now *that* takes some real ducking talent. Read the rest
Immortal Masks make a lot of masks, prosthetics and horrific creatures we see in films that later end up haunting our dreams. This video shows exactly how they do it. Read the rest
Stranger Things special effects producers Paul and Christina Graff explain the season two VFX of the Upside Down, the demodog Dart, and that shadowy motherfucker from the finale.
Here's an unusual opportunity for a hardcore Star Wars fan. An authenticated, screen-used segment of the original Death Star (yes, from 1977) can be bid on through eBay.
In partnership with Hollywood Memorabilia, this exclusive screen-used, sectional piece of the Death Star was featured in Star Wars: Episode IV and utilized for special effects. After filming, much of the Death Star was lost, but this authentic piece was discovered and salvaged. Very few of these pieces exist, and has remained mostly uncirculated with the Star Wars community, until now. The prop was kept by an ex-ILM employee for the next 37 years, and stored in a safe for the last 4 years.
This nearly two-foot-long piece of Star Wars history is expected to "sell for upwards of six figures," though the current bid is just over $10,000. Bidding ends June 3 and a letter of authenticity is included in the sale (I would hope so!). Read the rest
I'd say things peaked in 1968 with 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Vernon James Manlapaz uses a variety of methods to create these videos of weird beasts and animated objects that hint at our augmented reality future.
Japanese actor Haruo Nakajima who rocked the Godzilla suit in a dozen movies died on Monday at age 88. Above is the last video of Nakajima as Godzilla for a 1983 photo shoot. Read the rest
YouTube user Ginger Beard created this illusion of a floating bird by capturing the video at 20 frames per second, the same speed at which the bird flaps its wings. Read the rest
Ridley Scott pauses his iconic in-camera chestburster scene in several places to show the tricks he used to make it so memorable. Read the rest
Star Wars: Rogue One director Gareth Edwards tells the fascinating backstory behind Darth Vader's brutal stroll down the hallway in Rogue One. (Wired)
And if you missed it yesterday, check out the Star Wars: Rogue One ending flow into A New Hope beginning.
Israeli makeup magician Ilana Kolihanov created this wonderfully creepy optical illusion. See more of her incredible work on her Instagram feed.
Adam Savage visits with Weta Workshop's Richard Taylor for a glimpse of the mecha-geisha masks, animatronic amazement, and far-out fabrication that brought the new Ghost in the Shell film to life. Directed by Rupert Sanders and starring Scarlett Johansson and Pilo Asbaek, Ghost in the Shell hits theaters in a month. Trailer below. (Tested)
Enjoy this "creature featurette" with director Gareth Edwards and Creature Effects Supervisor Neal Scanlan introducing us to the strange characters in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
Boing Boing pal Adam Savage (MythBusters, Tested) tours the incredible prop collection of Peter Jackson, producer of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, District 9, and the forthcoming The Adventures of Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun. One of his favorite pieces? An original Hal 9000 faceplate! That is quite the wunderkammer, Mr. Jackson! (Tested)
In this video essay by Kristian Williams, the story of the biomechanical beasts from the mad mind of H.R. Giger, surrealist painter and designer best known for his work on the special effects team behind the film Alien (1979).
Researchers at Stanford have developed face-capture technology that can alter pre-recorded videos in real-time on low cost computers. In other words, you can make George W Bush or Donald Trump appear intelligent.
Read the restWe present a novel approach for real-time facial reenactment of a monocular target video sequence (e.g., Youtube video). The source sequence is also a monocular video stream, captured live with a commodity webcam. Our goal is to animate the facial expressions of the target video by a source actor and re-render the manipulated output video in a photo-realistic fashion. To this end, we first address the under-constrained problem of facial identity recovery from monocular video by non-rigid model-based bundling. At run time, we track facial expressions of both source and target video using a dense photometric consistency measure. Reenactment is then achieved by fast and efficient deformation transfer between source and target. The mouth interior that best matches the re-targeted expression is retrieved from the target sequence and warped to produce an accurate fit. Finally, we convincingly re-render the synthesized target face on top of the corresponding video stream such that it seamlessly blends with the real-world illumination. We demonstrate our method in a live setup, where Youtube videos are reenacted in real time.
