Just dropped by HouseSpecial – your jaw!

The Alchemist’s Letter from HouseSpecial

Some very good looking work involving a lot of talented artists that will no doubt make the film fest circuit.  Excellent to see HouseSpecial come out guns blazing and continue the rich animation tradition forged by Vinton and LAIKA /house.

Cardboard Castle has been keeping busy, and have a new reel and fresh batch of VFX heavy spots.  Check out the environment work on these spots for East Boston Bank:

EBSB – Manufacturing from Cardboard Castle on Vimeo.

And the breakdown:

EBSB – Manufacturing – VFX Breakdown from Cardboard Castle on Vimeo.

Check out the latest reel and freshened website:

Cardboard Castle 2015 Reel from Cardboard Castle on Vimeo.

Taking the bus from CBC’s Boise ‘hood down to the heart of Division at Bent Image Lab, the team there had an animated piece catch my eye lately – this bit for the recent Nirvana documentary has a nice feel to it:

“Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck” (animated sequences by Stefan Nadelman) from Bent Image Lab

Kudos to animator/director Stefan Nadelman on that one.  Unknown if any of those were inspired or directly lifted from actual Cobain artwork.  The reviews of the film have been stellar.

Making our way up north to lovely St. Johns, we have the boys at Refuge VFX showing off some work outside of their typical bread and butter Grimm fare.  This BTS details some of their work on the film Last Knights.

Related, here’s an extended look into the mind of Refuge owner Fred Ruff over on Allan McKay’s VFX podcast.

Here’s an in-depth BTS from Hinge Digital showing some architectural renderings of the Portland Center Stage Armory, using the real-time tech from Nvidia’s Iray render engine.  Not hard to see how this arch viz exercise could be applied to all sorts of environments and VFX situations, as we move into more virtual and augmented reality scenarios.

NVIDIA “Photo vs CG using Iray & VCA” – Behind the Scenes from Hinge Digital on Vimeo.

On a lighter note, here’s some chuckle worthy fare from Hinge of the 2D animated variety.  Snow knows nothing!

Last but not least, we head across the river to HiveFX, who are busy finishing up another season of Grimm but promise a fresh website and updated reel coming soon.  In the meantime, have a look at this fun spot that company heads Jim Clark and Gretchen Miller put together a while back for Columbia Bank:

Columbia Bank – HIVEFX from GreenRubino on Vimeo.

Obviously the style had to be a bit safer than the average after-hours Grimm gore gracing the airwaves these days.  Any chance to have some fun while doing what we love is a chance taken!   And helping out a local business that has obviously helped them in the past was a nice touch.  Grimm continues to be the gift to Portland that keeps on giving, and HiveFX has the skills to deliver top notch shots on each show they’re awarded.  We’ll all be looking forward to that new site and reel!

Keep those gears turning, Portland!