Wednesday, August 29, 2012
The Mill NY launched its "Drawing Under the Influence" series
this week. Tapping into the illustrative and creative talent of the
Design Department, each month a team will let their imaginations
(and chalk) run wild and create a mural for the entire office to
appreciate. The inaugural session featured Art Director, Brian
Gossett and Junior Designer, Aran Quinn joining forces to create a
little Aztec artistry.
"The general idea came from my recent trip to Mexico City. I was
really inspired by the Aztec culture and arts so this mural is our
take on that. Aran's run with the theme and done some cool cacti
and kick ass interpretation of Aztec symbols. Our styles blend well
together. This has been fun." shares Gossett.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
What do legwarmers, neon, side-ponytails and Mill NY have in
common? The Mill NY's Summer party! Celebrating all things 80s, it
was a night re-living our youth with 80s classics on the boom box,
hoola hoop contests and beer pong. The highlight of the evening
involved us flexing more than our creative muscles with a limbo
contest. Everyone got into the festive spirit and revellers were
even treated to "celebrity" appearances from Richard Simmons, "DMC"
of Run DMC fame and Barf from the movie 'Spaceballs'.
Full gallery in all it's glory here
and rad mad 80s cool points go to anyone who can name what species
of animal Barf was?
Monday, August 20, 2012
Last week The Mill NY co-hosted "The Deep End", a joint event
fromThe Mill and Sound Lounge with co-sponsorship by Mashable and
Microsoft. On Tuesday night, some Advertising and Editorial elite
gathered for a topical discussion focusing on the future of
advertising, social media, and how to get consumers engaged. The
talk was followed of course, by cocktails and hors d'oeuvres,
befitting of the trendy location. Ad men David Rolfe, head of
integrated production at BBDO, and Marshall Ball, digital
strategist at Wieden + Kennedy, along with Lauren Drell, senior
editor at Mashable, kept the discussion alive and interesting, with
their take on innovative recent work, why it captured the buyer's
attention, and what it takes to run a successful campaign in the
digital age. A great night, thanks all who came along and stirred
up the debate!
Friday, August 17, 2012
Siggraph may be over for another year, but the whilst the
memories (some fuzzier than others…) are still fresh, here is a
round up of the highs, lows and the themes that still have debates
raging across The Mill offices.
Alongside 10 attendees from the New York, LA and London offices,
Will Cohen (Managing Director/Executive Producer, Mill TV &
Film) took to the stage for a "behind closed doors session". To
encourage free flowing debate, attendees had to abide by a strict
no-recording no-tweeting rule. Talking on The Business of The
Business Will joined a diverse panel from VFX Industry in LA and
elsewhere covering off movies, commercials, TV and games.
From behind the elusive closed doors Will reveals, "A huge star
turn in the form of a talk by controversial Digital Domain Chairman
Jon Textor really helped focus the mind on the future of our
industry and what problems companies were experiencing. This was
reinforced with a very inspirational talk from former PDI
founder/entrepreneur and college lecturer Carl Rosenthal who
touched on similar themes."
Round-Up - Vince Baertsoen, co-Head of CG, New
York
Siggraph 2012 was great for meeting people and working with
everyone from all the Mill offices. Overall the talks were very
interesting with some great tech, and some good software releases.
However my favorite part was meeting with seniors from different
backgrounds; talking about the VFX industry in general and
exchanging opinions on how it is evolving.
1 Top Talk: "Computational Plenoptic
Imaging" where we could discover Light-field and trillion frames
per second cameras. A great future in film-making is yet to
come!
2 Best party: Mill one (obviously!)
3 Top Food: Water
Grill
4 Highlights: The visit on the Friday
after Siggraph, to ICT (Institute of Creative Technology), and a
glimpse at the great research over there! There was also some great
software releases, like the new version of Massive v5.0 and
Realflow 2013.
Round-Up - David Fleet (Joint Deputy Head of 3D), Sid
Harrington-Odedra (Head of Maya Development) , Jonathan Wood &
Jacob Gonzales (3D Artists), London
Siggraph was awe-inspiring. We were all first-timers and
instantly want to go back now that we are clearer on what level
each type of talk is based at.
1 Top Talk: Sony Pictures Imageworks: The Untold
Story of "The Amazing Spider-Man" provided amazing insight into how
they made up the day and night New York cityscapes, including
numerous sequences that went fully CG. LAIKA's ParaNorman:
The Fusion of Stop-Motion and CG in a Zombie-Ridden World also gave
indepth shot by shot detail into creating the Smoke Witch where she
was made physically using various textures to observe exactly
how she might move, then recreated with vfx.
2 Best party: Nvidia, Shotgun & The
Mill
3 Top Food: Nickel Diner
& the discovery of the Bacon Donut…
4 Highlights: The Art and Science Behind Walt
Disney Animation Studios' "Paperman" preview demonstrated an
exciting use of Vector paint programming that created a solid blend
of hand artistry and computer work. We also saw some incredibly
impressive face scanning technology called Faceshift which will
definitely take game play to the next level.
5 Lowlight: The first question following the
incredible Building Disney-Pixar's "Brave": Pencils to Pixels was
someone asking the speakers for a Brave 'desktop
wallpaper'...
The Digital Domain Presents "Making the Steel Real: Moving VFX
Into Production" also suffered slightly from a lack of lighting and
rendering detail.
Claire Anderson, Talent Manager, London, New York &
LA
Having Siggraph in LA on our home turf was a real advantage for
us given our LA office is growing rapidly. It also meant we were
able to host an open evening to showcase our space and the type of
work that we do. It was fantastic to get to meet so many great
people at the booth, and then again at The Mill party on Wednesday
evening (Its always the sign of a good party when the guests drink
the beer dry!) The Digital Domain education lunch at The Farm was
also very interesting. A fantastic year all round for the
exhibition and conference.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Take a look behind the scenes of Sinbad - Episode 6.
Thursday, August 09, 2012
She's obnoxious, loud, brash and about to get what's coming to
her. The Comedy Central Roast of Roseanne Barr airs this coming
Sunday, August 12th. Hosted by Roastmaster, Jane Lynch, the life
and work of the always outspoken "Domestic Goddess" will be
celebrated by celebrity friends and comics and no subject is off
limits!
The Mill NY is also getting in on the act by crafting explosive
visuals for the Roast's promos. "Being a big fan of the
Comedy Central Roast, this was an exciting project to be involved
with," shares Lead 2D Artist, Gavin Wellsman.
"The studio shoot left us with a great palette for the team to
build on. Our background matte painting made for a strong
foundation for Gavin to build up the bulk of the atmospherics and
animated elements for what ultimately became Roseanne's own private
Hell on earth," adds VFX Producer, Jarrad Vladich.
"Roseanne always comes off as a tough lady not to be messed with,
so we used a fiery red grade and a hot environment with flames and
smoke on the ground to create the physical manifestation of that.
It was really fun to make her world outside of the Roseanne kitchen
eerie and hellish," explains Wellsman.
"We also had the pleasure of working on this with Director, Kathy
Fusco, a long-time friend of the Mill," adds Wellsman.
She can dish it, but can she take it? Watch the Comedy Central
Roast of Roseanne Barr on August 12th and see! You can check out
the show's promo here:
Monday, August 06, 2012
Take a look behind the scenes of Sinbad - Episode 5.
Monday, August 06, 2012
Judge, jury and executioner: Check out Mill Film's latest work
on DNA's and Alex Garlands' British cult comic book hero
Dredd!
Release date September 7th
Trailer courtesy of DNA
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