CG Garage

Afonso Salcedo had just stepped off the plane at LAX when Chris wrestled him into the CG Garage booth to record this podcast. Afonso's arrival in Los Angeles is another giant leap in a daring transatlantic career which has taken him from the graveyard shift on the VFX of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban to working with one of the world's biggest movie stars. In this podcast, Afonso tells h...

Since the mid-90s, Greg Lynn has pioneered the use of technology in architecture. When the rest of the industry was using formZ, Greg was experimenting with non-architectural software such as Alias and Maya, using nurbs and fluid sims to create radically different, organic designs. He's seen masters of the set square become mouse-and-keyboard amateurs and happy accidents become established techniq...

Through his globe-trotting career, softly-spoken Cris Blyth has helped give the world Worms, flashed James Cameron and jumpstarted Kenya's visual effects industry. In this frequently hilarious podcast, he tells Chris his fascinating story. After spending his childhood programming Commodore computers, and a surprisingly fruitful excursion to the Philippines, Cris worked on then-cutting-edge FMV seq...

This week, Chris goes behind the scenes at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects. Founded in 1997, this Hollywood-based establishment has grown to a thriving and crucial part of the effects industry, with over 400 students picking up the skills which will land them hot jobs on games and movies. In this podcast, Chris is joined by Eric Miller, the school's Chief Technology Officer. His job is to ensu...

As a child, Andy Wilkoff spent his childhood pulling technology apart and reading comic books — and he's been lucky enough to follow these obsessions into his career. He picked up his first VFX gigs on the TV series Star Trek: Voyager and Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles, then worked at Digital Domain on commercials and movies including X-Men; I, Robot; The Day After Tomorrow and Stealth....

The Animatrix , Liquid Television , Ren & Stimpy - there have always been blips of mature content on the animation spectrum, but never anything like Love, Death & Robots . This new anthology kicks open the doors for adult storytelling in the medium, taking Tim Miller and David Fincher's unique influences, and letting over 14 studios run wild through topics like racism, war, free will and human nat...

Film and art have fascinated Loic Zimmermann from a young age: he drew all the time and built rocket ship sets in his back garden during his childhood in rural France. His fascination drew him towards studying CG at university, then onto work for innovative game studio Quantic Dream, and his clever method of getting the perfect tattoo won him a job at Luma Pictures in Los Angeles. As well as worki...

Known as "eSports Mom" — or "CoD Mom" — Kim Meltzer, the CEO of KidKesty Productions, is an unsung heroine of the professional gaming industry. This competitive and lucrative business can whisk kids from their bedrooms to stadiums and make them millions in a short space of time, and in this podcast, Kim tells Chris how she reassures parents that their children are in safe hands — while helping upc...

Digital Giant is using new technology to make it easier and faster to create photorealistic digital content. Joining Chris this week are the company's Operative Dallas Carroll and VFX Supervisor/Partner Felix Urquiza, who go in depth on the way the company has been set up, and how it's doing things differently. CG car work is notoriously finicky. The challenge of making vehicles look real — as wel...

Robh Ruppel has been on Chris's most-wanted podcast guest list for a long time — and it's not hard to see why. This talented designer, concept and visual development artist has a wealth of knowledge and experience, which makes this podcast utterly enthralling from start to finish. Robh tells Chris about his adventurous career so far. From his early movie experience at effects shop Boss Film Studio...

Andrew Maximov has a vision for how to change the gaming and CG industries from the ground up. His Promethean AI is a super-smart piece of software which allows designers, developers and artists to create and populate environments simply by asking for them via voice or text. It neatly cuts out the fiddly, time-consuming parts of the CG creative process, and allows users to get straight to the fun...

This week, Chris is joined by the versatile talent of John Hewitt. As a child, John was addicted to sketching and drafting everything he saw on TV, and this drove him into automobile design. After helping out on Schwarzenegger movie Eraser, John moved into visual effects and his impressive IMDb page includes credits on Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Star Trek Beyond and Alice Through the Looking...

From the age of two, Colin Aguiar has been fascinated by music. It's an obsession which has paid off: over the past 20 years he's scored numerous projects and worked with mentor Mychael Danna on films including Life of Pi. His talent caught the attention of Construct director Kevin Margo who called on his abilities to create an experimental score for his groundbreaking short film. In this podcast,...

When Kurt Lawson isn't assembling effects for some of Hollywood's biggest movies, he's in backcountry California creating astonishing long-exposure shots of the natural landscape. In this engaging podcast, he tells Chris how teenage experiments in visual effects and Olympus cameras inspired his successful career and awe-inspiring hobby. Kurt and Chris reminisce about working together at Digital Do...

From a young age, Joe Farrell knew he was destined for a career in entertainment. After helping interview musical superstars, he 'tweened for Disney and Warner Brothers animations, moved into commercials at their hedonistic peak, and then traveled to Vancouver and Los Angeles to work as a concept artist, VFX supervisor and compositor on films including Star Trek, The Wolf of Wall Street and Hereaf...

Over almost 25 years, Phil Miller has helped bring products such as 3ds Max, Combustion, Dreamweaver, and NVIDIA's commercial rendering solutions to market — and dabbled in his own software and his original vocation of architecture. Now, Phil has brought his wealth of experience and knowledge to Chaos Group where he serves as vice president of product management. This podcast is a treasure trove o...

Artificial intelligence has gone from sci-fi subject matter to part of our day-to-day lives via assistant services such as Apple's Siri and machine learning which helps 3D artists create better work more quickly. But is this merely another technological leap forwards, like photography or computer-aided design, or a genuine threat to lives and livelihoods? That's the question Chris posed to an expe...

Virginie Bourdin's astonishing career whisked her from a small town in France to art director on blockbusters including X-Men: Days of Future Past, Harry Potter movies, and the upcoming Captain Marvel. In this podcast, recorded at the THU festival, Virginie explains how she's become one of the most sought-after art directors in the VFX industry. Virginie talks about her work on the otherworldly vi...

Few people have seen the rise of VFX like Kelly Port and Matt Butler. Over the course of 25 years, they've risen from digital artists to VFX supervisors at effects powerhouse Digital Domain. The watershed moment for both was their work on Titanic , and they discuss the million-dollar computers used to generate the 2TB of effects in the film. Of course, software and hardware have moved on a great d...

Games have compelling narratives worthy of Hollywood movies — so it should come as no surprise that cinematic talent is swapping cameras for controllers. Joining Chris this week are two men who've made the leap and now work on EA's blockbuster Madden sports franchise. Producer Robin Cowie went from Nickelodeon idents to box office phenomenon The Blair Witch Project , which taught him how to tell a...

This is the 200th CG Garage Podcast — and the first Martini Giant spinoff episode. To commemorate reaching this huge milestone, Chris, Dan and Erick look at films about reaching huge stones: Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey , and Peter Hyams' sequel 2010: The Year We Make Contact . The first is a true masterpiece of cinema, with Kubrick employing then state-of-the-art visual effects, smart...

One of the best things about THU is having so many world-class experts in one place — something Chris took advantage of when he assembled this panel for a discussion on digital humans. The superstar lineup consisted of digital Rembrandt Ian Spriggs, CG pioneer Paul Debevec, ILM's chief re-animator Hal Hickel, acclaimed anatomy artist Scott Eaton, and Naughty Dog lead character artist Frank Tzeng....

You may not have heard of Donna Smith — but she's one of the most important players behind the scenes in Hollywood. Over the course of almost 40 years, she's been instrumental in the production of 157 movies, including Raging Bull , The Terminator , Back to the Future , Jurassic Park, Schindler's List and The Matrix . She's also the first woman to serve as President of Physical Production and Post...

Recorded at THU, this week's podcast guest is ILM Animation Director Hal Hickel. Inspired by Star Wars and Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion work on King Kong , Hal became an animator on hugely successful California Raisins advertisements of the 1980s. Despite initial reservations, Hal switched clay for computers on Pixar's breakthrough CG movie Toy Story , then moved to ILM for the Star Wars prequels...