Qualityville stop motion

In keeping with the last posting, this is also from a stop motion commercial. It was for a Qualityville Products TV spot created at Cascade Pictures in about 1970.

Cascade Pictures was a major provider of visual effects, stop motion and cartoon animation for commercials for (I believe) the late 1950s through the mid 1970s. 

I was fortunate enough to work there and get a terrific real world visual effects education.

Ogg and the Pink Baby Dinosaur

This is a frame from the first commercial I was paid to work on; my first professional job in 1969 at Cascade Pictures. This is from a Kellogg’s Cocoa Krispies cereal commercial featuring a caveman named Ogg. (His wife was “Kell” … for Kell-Oggs.)  These characters were used until about 1975.  (see link below)

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“The Magic Treasure”

“The Magic Treasure” is one of those obscure little films that few have heard about and even less has seen. It was conceived in about 1969-70 by David Allen as a stop motion production of “The Selfish Giant” by Oscar Wilde. Through 1970 and 1971 dialog was recorded, sets and puppets were constructed and production began shooting in October, 1971. Part way through production a cartoon version of “the Selfish Giant” was released.

David Allen with puppets of the Giant and the villagers.

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50 most influential visual effects films

VES 50 most influential visual effects films

One of my students asked for a list of visual effects films to look at during the break between quarters at school.  

I directed him to the Visual Effects Society (VES) and their list of films.

 http://www.visualeffectssociety.com/documents/ves50revelfin.pdf

 This was their list on May 10, 2007.  We have had a few new VFX films since ’07.  Do you agree with this list?   If not, what are your choices?

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Digital vs. physical Jem’Hadar

In the last posting I shared images of the Jem’Hadar cruiser model. RKW asked for some comparison shots between the physical model and the CGI model used on DS-9.

Physical model from episode, "Ties of Blood and Water" (Gary Hutzel, vis efx supervisor)

As you could see from the photo above and next below, the physical model was pretty good looking and would have been used as long as possible on the series.

Physical model from episode, "Call to Arms"

With season 6 episode  #546,  “Valiant,”  we were forced to create a CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) version of a Jem’Hadar ‘Battleship.’  The main reason was compelled by the story. If possible we would have used the physical model for both the cruiser and the Battleship, with the scale of the model being the only difference. Read the rest of this entry »