Top Stories special effects
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Gizmodo Australia Visits Lucasfilm, Meets Star Wars FX Guru Dennis Muren
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Gizmodo Visits Skywalker Sound: Samples, Fruit Bats And Phillip Island Penguins
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Giz Interviews Weta Digital's Effects Guru, Joe Letteri
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Exclusive: How Tron Starred A Young Jeff Bridges
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BOOM! How Comic Book Sounds Become Movie Sounds
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Interview: The Man Who Really Built Iron Man
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The Real-Life Tony Starks Behind Iron Man 3′s Amazing Armour
For as advanced and as lifelike as CGI effects have become over the last decade, physical props are still the bedrock of modern special effects — especially in movies about a guy in a robotic suit. Gizmodo recently sat down with two of Iron Man 3‘s effects masters, Shane Patrick Mahan and Lindsay MacGowan of Legacy Effects, who have worked on the groundbreaking effects of classic films like Terminator 2, Avatar and Monster Squad, as well as Chris Townsend, the film’s Visual Effects Supervisor, to find out how much of Iron Man is really real. SPOILERS AHEAD!
How Jurassic Park’s Fearsome Robo-Rex Got Its Skin
It’s one thing to make a giant, robotic Tyrannosaurus Rex. It’s another thing entirely to make it look remotely real. Granted, a robo-rex is awesome in its own right, but it’s just not quite the flavour of monster fit for a film like Jurassic Park. And so it was practical effects to the rescue yet again with a carefully applied dino-skin.
How You Build A Full-Size Animatronic T-Rex
Jurassic Park was awesome. Jurassic Park in 3D is awesome layered on awesome. And the tech behind the scenes? You can probably see where this is going.
What The Special Effects Look Like In The Walking Dead
Unlike other shows who sneakily add special effects without you realising, The Walking Dead is so overtly gruesome and bloody and gore-y that we’re completely aware that what we see is being spiced up with visual effects. Warning: Video contains spoilers.
How Jurassic Park’s VFX Wizards Brought One Of The Largest Dinosaurs Of All Time To Life
In shots where they were seen walking, Jurassic Park’s resident brachiosaurs were realised with ground-breaking computer animation. But, for shots when the film’s human characters interacted with them high in the trees, the brachiosaurs were brought to life with complicated animatronics created by Stan Winston Studios.
How Jurassic Park’s VFX Team Brought Those Spitting Dinos To Life
The original Jurassic Park came out 20 years ago. While the VFX industry has shifted more towards computer-generated effects since its release, it’s still awesome to see how some of the film’s practical effects were realised.
What Movies Look Like Before Special Effects
New tumblr alert: Before VFX. It’s a revealing collection of pictures that show what movies look like before any sort of visual effects are added. This basically means it makes every movie, even Oscar-worthy movies, look completely ridiculous. The magic of the movies!
The Incredible Creation (And Destruction) Of An Entire City In The Avengers
Almost a third of The Avengers may have been set in New York, but as this video from Industrial Light & Magic’s YouTube channel shows us, hardly any of the filming took place in the Big Apple itself. Since actually filming in New York would have been difficult — what with the many road-blocking restrictions and the city generally looking down on setting their streets and/or citizens on fire — almost everything had to be digitally recreated.
How ILM Turned Mark Ruffalo Into A Gigantic Green Hulk
Industrial Light and Magic has been in the visual effects game since the original Star Wars. And if you need any further proof that they’re still one of the top FX shops on the planet, here’s another look at the work they did to bring the Hulk to life in The Avengers.
How ILM Created The Hulk For The Avengers
ILM or Industrial Light & Magic or the wonderful CGI wizards who create visual effects that are better than real life just gave a look behind the curtain of its fantasy shop to show us how they created the Hulk in The Avengers.
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