CG Garage

Angie Jones' passion for character animation has fuelled a career that's taken in some of the world's biggest movies and games. Beginning with the groundbreaking videogame Oddworld: Abe's Oddyssey , she's gone on to animate a variety of characters for Stuart Little 2 , X2 , Freddy vs. Jason , Stealth , Pan's Labyrinth , Red Dead Revolver , Bloodshot , Fortnite , and many more. Angie is full of hil...

An epic career deserves an epic podcast. During Garman Herigstad's 35-year journey in CG, the Houdini wizard has traveled to over 30 countries and worked on everything from real estate commercials in Bangkok to Disney videogames and Hollywood movies. At the same time, he's taught at prestigious institutions, including Savannah College of Art and Design and Gnomon, and he even completed his most re...

Mio Markovic's creative, production, and tech skills have resulted in some of the best animated TV series of recent years, including Voltron: Legendary Defender , Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous , and Fast & Furious Spy Racers . But Mio didn't just jump into animation: he had already risen to a high level in the advertising industry and, like Chris, had worked on large-scale architecture projects....

Over the past five years, Love, Death & Robots has completely resculpted the landscape of animation, feeding Netflix viewers bite-size chunks of violence, sex, and gore. Supervising Creative Director Jerome Denjean is a key player behind-the-scenes, giving Love, Death & Robots' talented directors the freedom to execute their visions (literally!) while ensuring that each episode fits in with the se...

VFX supervising Stranger Things is the latest in a series of remarkable achievements for Justin Mitchell. After trying his hand at acting and lighting, Justin moved into animation and VFX, scoring credits on Charmed and Final Destination 2 . In 2008, Justin joined Scanline VFX, where he's worked on a succession of incredible projects, including 2012 , Super 8 , Iron Man 3 , Tomb Raider , Cosmos ,...

Mike Romey, has an incredible talent for uniting the creative and technical aspects of productions. Before he'd even landed a full-time job, he'd already animated an advertisement, set up a curriculum, and created an interactive CD-ROM for a laser printer (yes, this was definitely the 90s). Then, his career took in successively bigger projects, from planetarium shows and Time Square electronic sig...

Isaac Irvin's incredible VFX industry adventures have taken him across countries and over oceans. From enthusiastic beginnings at Texan TV stations, he moved to Scotland to work on TV series and game cinematics, before returning to the States to flit between studios including Digital Domain, Method, Marauder, and Psyop on projects such as Speed Racer , Iron Man 3 , Robocop , and more. Today, Isaac...

As an executive at Disney in the 90s, Bob Bacon witnessed the rise of CG, supporting the production of increasingly big-budget blockbusters, including Beauty and the Beast , Mulan , and Lilo and Stitch . He then joined Elton John for Gnomeo and Juliet and moved to Paramount for The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge out of Water . Now, Bob is Head of Studio at Virtue Animation, a Web3-based company inspired...

Sean Devereaux has fulfilled his childhood dream of making movies, and he started and sold a software company along the way. After being inspired by a viewing of The Wizard of Oz , Sean got a break at Digital Domain thanks to fellow alumni Jonathan Egstad. After working on movies including How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Vanilla Sky , he returned to Boston to found Zero VFX, which has created s...

After getting on-set experience for a Canadian TV series, Mathew Giampa picked up compositing roles on White Noise 2 , Sucker Punch , Journey to the Center of the Earth , Green Lantern , and more. He then moved up to progressively more challenging VFX supervision work on The Joker (yes, there were visual effects in that movie!), Black Widow , The Suicide Squad , and the Cowboy Bebop TV series. Mat...

Thinking about starting your own VFX company? This week's podcast guest, Marc Morissette, has done just that. After gaining experience and friendships at Digital Domain on projects including Peter Pan and Ghost Racer , Marc returned to his native Canada to form his own studio, Cluster. The company has taken on a variety of CG work, from a VR version of the Universal Studios globe for The Mummy to...

This week Scott Kirvan shares his unique and in-depth understanding of the VFX pipeline, from on-set supervision to rendering the final frame. While working as a VFX programmer at Blur Studio, Scott developed Brazil R/S, the early ray-tracing renderer used on Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Sin City . That's not all — he also VFX supervised movies including Swordfish and Jeepers Cre...

Eddie Smith is a MacGyver of the VFX industry. Over his career, he's figured out how to unveil the president as the bad guy for G.I. Joe: Retaliation, explode characters into cubes for Tron: Legacy , destroy planets in Ender's Game , all the way up to some spoiler-ific effects for Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore . Eddie's weapon of choice for VFX is Houdini, SideFX's versatile node-bas...

Originally from Bulgaria, Ioanna Ivanova was inspired by Pixar and Tangled to pursue a career in CG. Having studied at Bournemouth University in the UK, she subsequently moved to London where she works for INK, the inventive creative studio that's rendered everything from funny furry planes to amazing Maseratis. In this inspirational podcast, Ioanna talks about the importance of networking and mee...

There's a surprising amount of tech in Laika's movies. The Portland, Oregon-based studio still makes use of its intricate hand-crafted stop-motion techniques, but it's increasingly augmenting them with CG elements, 3D printing, and even virtual production. Jeff Stringer, Laika's director of production technology, reveals the advantages of combining the physical and the digital. Jeff also talks abo...

Adam Sidwell is pioneering a new generation of entertainment. His CG career began working with Chris on I, Robot , and he went on to create effects for movies including King Kong , Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End , and Warcraft: The Beginning . Now, Adam has taken his modular approach to VFX into real-time to create AR, VR, and online content featuring Justin Bieber, The Weeknd, and Kaska...

CGarchitect has become a massive part of the global archviz community. The all-in-one site incorporates LinkedIn-style job listings, the latest industry insights, and a super-smart AI-powered gallery that curates impressive renders from thousands of submissions. And now, CGarchitect has become part of the Chaos family. In this podcast, Chris is joined by CGarchitect founder Jeff Mottle as he prepa...

Darin Grant is back! And a lot has changed in the three years since the Animal Logic group chief technology officer and general VFX genius last recorded with Chris. As always, Darin offers expert industry insight into the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on working from home, cloud computing, and how digital content is created and consumed. Darin also details his role as director of the Electronic...

Is Huxley the new Star Wars ? This week, Chris chats to Ben Mauro, the film and game concept artist who single-handedly created Huxley , a comic book set in a richly detailed post-apocalyptic sci-fi universe. Thanks to the power of NFTs, Huxley has evolved beyond the pages of a graphic novel into something far bigger, with a film from Marvel producer Avi Arad in the works, plus trading cards, a po...

Joining Chris for this week's podcast is Matteo Santoro, an energetic, enthusiastic, and versatile filmmaker who might just be revolutionizing the way movies are made. After graduating from art college, Matteo created opening titles and VFX for film including The Incredible Hulk , Aliens vs Predator - Requiem , and X-Men Origins: Wolverine . At the same time, he created his own sci-fi IPs, includi...

Judith Crow has seen both sides of the effects industry. After developing an enthusiasm for coding, she worked her way into Digital Domain, where she pioneered visual effects for Interview with the Vampire , Apollo 13 , Titanic , and Fight Club . Then, she switched sides and took on a role with Houdini developer SideFX. In this podcast, Judith talks about everything from her early days in communit...

This week's podcast guest, Barbara Ford Grant, is particularly inspirational. Barbara's pursuit of fine art led her into VFX, where she worked her way through companies including DreamWorks Animation, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Digital Domain, Walt Disney Studios, and immersive art platform Meow Wolf. She carved an enviable career path during this time, from digital artist to chief technology offic...

Founded by Christoph Bolten in 2007, Recom Farmhouse has become a go-to studio for automotive and product shots. The London-based studio has provided head-turning CG and retouched imagery for companies including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi, while indulging in off-beat passion projects such as a moon motorcycle and an update of Back to the Future's Delorean. Christoph and managing director Richard...

After being inspired by Star Wars to pursue a career in VFX, Andrew Orloff became a technical director on South Park and worked on Joss Whedon's (un)holy trinity of Buffy the Vampire Slayer , Angel , and Firefly . After founding Zoic Studios, he's gone on to serve as VFX supervisor and creative director on some of TV's biggest shows, including Once Upon a Time , The 100 , Fringe , and For All Mank...