CG Garage

Mikki Willis joined Chris at THU festival for this surprisingly philosophical and anthropological podcast. Mikki had established himself as a music video director, with a career beckoning in feature films, when he found himself at the site of Ground Zero on September 11, 2001. The horrific events of that day caused him to completely re-evaluate his life and his career. From that terrible experienc...

It's hard to imagine what games would be like without "Half-Life 2." Released in 2004, Valve's sci-fi shooter set a new precedent in game design, marrying realistic characters with an involving story which propels the player through awe-inspiring environments. As a concept artist and character designer at Valve, Moby Francke was a driving force behind the game's groundbreaking look and feel. He fo...

Eric Stultz currently serves as a Principal and Design Director at Gensler's LA offices. He's worked on some epic buildings, such as the Shenbei Arena in Shanghai, Costa Rica's Convention Center, and the proposed Farmers Field NFL Stadium in Los Angeles. As Eric and Chris discuss, architecture is at something of a turning point. While films and games are always looking for something new, architect...

Steve "Spaz" Williams and Mark Dippe's story is Hollywood material in itself. The pair found themselves working at ILM to create the watery creatures in James Cameron's "The Abyss," and they worked with the director again on the menacing liquid metal T-1000 in "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." But the crux of their story comes behind the scenes at Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park." The pair were met...

Any film buff will know the name Stan Winston. The special effects legend created the titular monsters from "The Terminator," "The Thing," and "Predator." He was a key player in Hollywood's transition from practical to digital effects in the early 90s, and he constantly pushed the boundaries of his craft. Sadly, Stan passed away in 2008, but his legacy lives on through a formidable collection of b...

Many people think of a Hollywood director as someone who's egotistical, brash and shouty. That's not the case with Brenda Chapman. The artist turned writer turned director comes across as humble, unassuming and honest in her conversation with Chris. And maybe her personality has had a big part in her success as a director of "The Prince of Egypt" and "Brave," the latter of which made her the first...

Globetrotting concept artist Igor Knezevic has seen it all. Born in Yugoslavia, he left after the country was torn apart by war in the early 90s. He worked on East German construction sites, and then found his way into the gaming industry. As he moved around Europe and the US, he saw the evolution of the internet and the pop of the dotcom bubble, before settling in LA for a job which involved inse...

No podcast this week but I figured I would give people a preview of some of the amazing ones we have that will be coming up soon.  

Out of home printed advertisements, such as billboards, are a genre of CG unto themselves. The resolution of the images can reach 15K or 20K, far beyond the 2K or 4K of media. As technical director at production company Taylor James, David Wortley knows the subject intimately, as well the challenges of generating thousands of HD PNGs for online car configurators, and creating pharmaceutical advert...

Darin Grant's hugely important career in the visual effects industry has been one of choices. When he started at Digital Domain in the early 90s he had to choose between its gaming and visual effects departments. He discusses the differences between the Perl and Python programming languages. And, in his role on the committee of the Academy's Scientific and Technical Awards, he has to jostle the me...

Director David Chontos has brought his unique vision to a number of projects, including bonkers Coca-Cola advertisement "The Happiness Factory," trailers for games including "Clash of Clans" and "ReCore," and his atmospheric short film "Sisters." His next project, Kismet, takes him into virtual reality via a spookily accurate fortune teller. In this podcast, he talks to Chris about the golden age...

Roland Emmerich has carved a career for himself in Hollywood as the guy who destroys cities and envisages the end of the world. In films such as "Independence Day," "The Day After Tomorrow," and "Godzilla," he depicts aliens, climate change and giant lizards wreaking havoc around the world. He's often overlooked as a major force who completely changed the sheer scale of Hollywood movies. Fellow Ge...

The visual effects industry is packed with people from the field of architecture, including our own guru and podcast host Chris Nichols. But Andy Waisler is a rare exception: after beginning his career in architecture, he was hired by Digital Domain to apply his knowledge to movies such as The Grinch and The Time Machine. But then he returned to architecture to hone his skills. He's an incredible...

One of the most fascinating aspects of V-Ray is the way people react when you tell them many of the images in the IKEA catalog are created with 3D software. It's a definite wow moment, and people are often more impressed by than V-Ray being used in Hollywood blockbusters. Behind IKEA's use of 3D is Martin Enthed, the company's Development and Operations IT Manager. Martin's love for computers bega...

Tristan Salome and Matthieu Labeau of Nozon, hang out with us during Siggraph 2016 to talk about Presenz. The application allows for 6 degrees of freedom of pre-rendered content. The application now works for V-Ray and is in closed beta. This podcast gives people an insight as to what this application does and how it can fit into your needs.

As one of the biggest advertising agency in the world, Saatchi & Saatchi has to have an intimate understanding of the products it sells. It's even located its LA offices just across the street from Toyota's offices, possibly so it can have first-hand access to car designs before they hit the road. Michael Wilken, Saatchi and Saatchi LA's director of 3D, joins Chris for this fascinating podcast. Bo...

In 1979, George Miller's directorial debut Mad Max shocked cinema audiences around the world. It existed at a perfect intersection of blockbuster and Australian new wave cinema, knitted together with a punkish spirit and comic book aesthetic. Its sequel, 1981's The Road Warrior, heightened the action and established Max as a true action hero, while 1986's Beyond Thunderdome explored the fringes of...

Two time VFX nominee and member of the Academy, Bryan Grill of Scanline VFX speaks to us about his impressive career working from the ground up to be one of the top people in the field. His long career at Digital Domain and Scanline have been blessed with many great stories. He recently finished supervising Independence Day: Resurgence.

Regular listeners will recognize Executive Producer  Lisa Beroud 's name - she served as producer on a number of movies with Chris at Digital Domain, including TRON: Legacy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Oblivion. But, more than that, she made the intense working environment a lot more pleasant by employing masseuses and laying on decent food. Lisa's career began as a freelance producer in...

  Herzog & de Meuron is an architecture firm best known for its incredible glass and steel structures such as the Beijing National Stadium, The Perez Art Museum in Miami, and the Allianz Arena in Munich. The Swiss company has also dramatically repurposed existing space to create London's Tate Modern and Serpentine Gallery. But within Chaos Group, the company is more famous for its exhilarating and...

Sally Slade. It's got to be one of the best names in the industry - as Chris remarks, she sounds like a superhero. But the similarities don't end there - her career has been the stuff that makes origin stories, from her beginnings in a small fishing village, to her acquisition of superpowers (She can speak Japanese! She understands CSS!), to fate intervening and yanking her from a transpacific fli...

It goes without saying that Disney is a huge, multinational corporation with fingers in an increasing number of pies: Lucasfilm and Marvel Studios have both been incorporated into the Disney umbrella, and it runs everything from cruise ships and TV channels. An interesting offshoot of this is Disney Research . Headquartered in the Swiss city of Zürich, it specializes in creating computer graphics....

Of all the podcast guests thus far, Richard Edlund 's got to have the most amazing voice. He sounds so bassy and gravelly that he could certainly pick up a second job as a trailer voiceover guy. Not that he'd need to. As he explains to Chris Nichols, his story includes throwing depth charges off battleships, designing Star Trek's alphabet, driving San Francisco cable cars, making experimental movi...

While at FMX 2016 we spoke to Jonas Skoog from  Bläck Studios  located in Stockholm. He was also one of the speakers for V-Ray Days. He tells us about the great work being done at the studio, and how they have created a coalition of VFX studios to maximizes and load balance their resources. Jonas is also the Character Lead at Bläck and tells us about his passion for digital humans.

Two graduates of the  Filmakademie ,  Andreas Feix and Francesco Faranna, talk to us about working on their short Citipati . It was nominated and won a VES Award this year. They also explained to us the unique and interesting education that they got which puts them in the middle of production and prepares them for the real world of post.