CG Garage

Kevin Reste is a font of knowledge for companies looking to improve their creative initiatives and campaigns. Beginning his career with mocap for the Rock Band video games, Kevin's natural people skills and technical confidence have helped him secure work for companies including NBC Sports, Sony Music Entertainment, and WWE, as well as giant financial and pharmaceutical corporations. Chris catches...

Jonathan Rothbart's illustrious career in VFX includes credits on everything from Men In Black to Superman Returns and The Predator . He was a founding member of John Knoll's Rebel Mac Unit at ILM, he established The Orphanage, where he delivered the HUD shots for Iron Man , and then became a sought-after VFX supervisor for movies including Deadpool and John Wick: Chapter 4 .  In this in-depth pod...

Ted Lasso became a surprise hit for Apple TV+, blending comedy and drama in just the right way — and it contained a surprising amount of invisible VFX, from set extensions to turning local soccer pitches into international stadiums, complete with cheering crowds. In this podcast, Chris meets James MacLachlan, the VFX supervisor behind the show. James talks about how his love for bringing stories t...

Andrew MacDonald's adventurous career packs as many twists and turns as a Hollywood movie. Coming from humble origins in the north of England, Andrew moved to London's Soho district to begin his career in optical effects, before getting into VFX and being lured to Hollywood to work for big VFX companies, including Digital Domain and Method. In this rollercoaster of a podcast, Andrew talks about th...

Apple TV+ miniseries Five Days at Memorial shines a light on a disturbing true story of a New Orleans hospital flooded during Hurricane Katrina. In this podcast, the show's VFX supervisors — returning guest Eric Durst and newbie Matt Whelan — reveal how they recreated New Orleans circa 2005 and added invisible effects that would earn the show an Emmy nomination. Eric and Matt talk about how they w...

What if the 1969 moon landing catastrophically failed? That's the question artist Halsey Burgund poses with his "Moon Disaster" project, which makes use of AI technology to envision then-president Richard Nixon delivering an alternative speech to be used in the case of emergency. In doing so, Halsey draws attention to the fact that such a speech existed and was never broadcast, as well as the ways...

Recorded at a high-tech facility in Chaos' plush new offices in Sofia, Bulgaria, this week's episode checks in with Vladimir "Vlado" Koylazov, Chaos' co-founder. Chris discovers more about Vlado's new role as head of innovation, and how the company is embracing recent technological developments to make it easy and efficient for customers to stage and render scenes. Vlado also shares his thoughts o...

Much has changed since Chaos launched Project Lavina in 2020. Remote working has become the norm, real-time workflows have become increasingly prevalent, and GPU power has accelerated. In response, Lavina has evolved into Chaos Vantage, a real-time ray-traced rendering engine tailored to the needs of today's VFX and arch viz artists. Simeon Balabanov, Chaos Vantage's product manager, talks through...

Hanno Basse has been a guiding hand behind the scenes of the modern entertainment experience. At 20th Century Fox, he pushed HDR into the movie experience at home and in theaters, and he helped the entertainment industry adopt cloud computing via his role at Microsoft Azure. Today, Hanno is bringing his expertise to Digital Domain, where he serves as CTO. In this podcast, Hanno reveals how advance...

Terrence Masson's students are probably the luckiest on the planet. The computer arts lecturer draws on 30 years of experience in the industry, from working on innovative movies including True Lies and Interview with the Vampire , helping create South Park 's progenitor in CG, and retooling the original Star Wars trilogy for its 1997 reissue. In this podcast, Terrence talks through some highlights...

Michelle Munson's passion for internet technology took her from streaming video over LAN to founding data transfer company Aspera. Now, she's launched Eluvio, a Web3-based content distribution system that makes it easier and cheaper for producers to share media while giving consumers fair access to a high-quality product with added extras. Michelle discusses Eluvio's partnership with Warner Bros,...

After being inspired by Star Wars to pursue a career in entertainment law, Joshua Lastine helped with clearances on everything from American Idol to The Man in the High Castle to Midway to the Hulkbuster armor in Avengers: Age of Ultron and weapons for TV series Echo 3 . Today, Joshua runs Lastine Entertainment Law, which drafts bespoke agreements for everything from YouTube videos to big-budget m...

Marc Simonetti's dreamy visual style has made him a big name in sci-fi and fantasy art — but what does this mean in the age of AI? In this podcast, Marc tells Chris how it feels to have your name used as an AI art prompt some 400,000 times, and what it's like to see your name attached to artwork that isn't yours. But it's not all bad — Marc delves into the advantages of AI art and how it might put...

Hailing from Detroit, Linden Vennard began his career in visualizing vehicles (of course!). Having established pipelines that turned raw CAD data into sumptuous CG images, Linden became a core part of Speedshape, the VFX studio that specialized in creating visuals for automotive companies. After Speedshape closed, Linden traveled to Asia and Africa before returning to the US to become a freelance...

Here's a masterclass on rising to the top of VFX supervision. Inspired by classic 80s movies, Sean Faden began his career in practical effects for Starship Troopers and The Fifth Element , helped sink Titanic , and became VFX supervisor on movies including A Nightmare on Elm Street and A Good Day to Die Hard . Then he switched to studio-side VFX supervision for Power Rangers and Mulan , the latter...

If recruiters are the unsung heroes of the VFX industry, Stan Szymanski is Superman. This huge film fan began in graphic design and post-production but quickly worked up the ladder into recruitment, via movies including Virtuosity, Independence Day , Starship Troopers , and Hollow Man . Today, Stan's company, Stanleyvision, has become a go-to source for the perfect talent for companies including C...

Jeff Barnes' career has taken him from two Amigas and a VHS deck to the world's most cutting-edge digital display screens. After discovering a love for post-production, Jeff co-founded CafeFX in the early-90s and created VFX for over 90 movies including Flubber, Armageddon, Panic Room, Pan's Labyrinth, Sin City, The Mist, and Alice in Wonderland. Jeff then oversaw DD's 3D pipeline and consulted in...

If digital humans are evolving, Isaac Bratzel is the scientist altering their DNA. Beginning his career as a character artist (because it represented the biggest challenge), Isaac helped create Amelia, a conversational AI with a digital human face, and then went on to establish virtual social media phenomenon Lil Miquela. Today, Isaac is bringing his expertise in AI and digital humans together in...

For the past 30 years, Digital Domain has been ahead of the CG curve, delivering everything from True Lies' CG jet to The Last of Us' desolate landscapes. But what does the future hold for this innovative VFX studio? This week, Lala Gavgavian, the president and COO of DD, explains how it's charting a course through the waters of new technology. Lala talks about how Digital Domain has branched out...

Could Macroverse change the way creative content is created and consumed? In this podcast, Chris is joined by Adam Martin, an assistant director who has worked on productions including Transformers, Dave, and Barry. After growing frustrated with the Hollywood system, Adam co-founded Macroverse to give writers and artists a platform to share their stories and visions. Adam gives a full overview of...

We want some of Chris Browne's energy. This multiskilled VFX supervisor, currently working at Sony Pictures Animation, has helped bring animated series to life, including The Fast and Furious Spy Racers, Kung Fu Panda, and Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous. At the same time, he's devoted his spare time to his own award-winning short films, beginning with "Gibb" at university, alien sci-fi "Beating t...

With John Wick: Chapter 4 , the sleeper franchise reaches a violent crescendo, peppering the rogue assassin's globe-trotting bone-crunching fights with jaw-dropping plot twists. This week, the film's Production VFX Supervisor Janelle Croshaw Ralla, and Prep and On-Set VFX Supervisor Johnathan Rothbart join Chris for a spoiler-free discussion of the movie. Janelle and Jonathan talk about working wi...

Over the course of his career, Sean Looper has gone from humble beginnings as an architectural draftsman to chief technology officer at VFX studio Crafty Apes. Along the way, the pipelines he's built have provided seamless effects for movies including Zathura: A Space Adventure, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Edge of Tomorrow. In this podcast, Sean talks about his career and reveals a natural inclin...

This week, Chris takes a trip to Pandora to delve into the design of Avatar: The Way of Water, James Cameron's latest jaw-dropping cinematic epic. His guide is Ben Procter, the super-talented production designer who specializes in creating vehicles and environments for Avatar antagonists the RDA — to the extent that he thinks of himself as the "bad guy" of the art department. Ben goes into a fasci...

Inspired by scary movies to pursue a career in the film industry, Molly Pabian has worked her way up to head of studio at VFX company Crafty Apes. Along the way, she's worked on over 100 movies and TV shows, including Avatar, Real Steel, Star Trek: Picard, The Last of Us, 1923, John Wick: Chapter 4, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Molly talks about her roles and responsibilities as she'...