One of Hollywood’s hottest producing duos turns to Troika to rock its theatrical debut

Troika Design Group, a strategic branding and design agency for media and entertainment companies, has been tapped by Polsky Films, an independent feature film production company, to produce its signature logo animation. The production tag debuted at the LA premiere of Werner Herzog’s “The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” starring Nicolas Cage. more

CHICAGO—Hybrid production studio Vitamin applied its distinctive touch to The Story, the latest music video from Maroon 5 and director Bob Carmichael, which uses hundreds of still photographs and a blaze of animated graphics to tell the tale of the band’s recent world tour. more

Recreate holographic effects with just a few clicks

San Francisco, CA, November 17, 2009 – Red Giant Software has released Holomatrix, a new After Effects plug-in that lets you control your reality and offers a new dimension in effect generation. Many science fiction feature films and TV shows feature holographic communication and interfaces. Red Giant Holomatrix allows you to easily recreate that effect with just a few clicks. The package includes 30 presets that turn ordinary footage into animated sci-fi holograms, mimics bad TV reception and creates realistic looking digital signage. more

‘Slumdog Millionaire’ Oscar winner turns to leading Mumbai DI house for speed and quality

Mumbai, India post and DI house, FutureWorks, has just completed post production of a music video promoting The One Drop Foundation (http://www.onedrop.org) on its Quantel Pablo and Genetic Engineering systems. The video, directed by Deepak Ghatani for Contiloe Films, features a song performed by Oscar winning composer AR Rahman. The whole post production process was completed in just one day, from loading the RED-shot footage into the Pablo using the new RED Rocket to carrying out the conform, color correction and production of deliverables. more

Digitally Enhanced Faces of Assassin’s Victims Haunt Viewers in Commercial for New Ubisoft Release

Digital Domain forces viewers to stare deep into the faces of the freshly deceased in “Eyes,” a television commercial for “Assassin’s Creed II,” the new third-person action-adventure video game from Ubisoft. Directed by Andrew Douglas of Anonymous Content via ad agency Cutwater, the spot demonstrates Digital Domain’s expertise in working with the contours of the human face. But instead of creating a fully computer-generated version à la The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Digital Domain applied digital production techniques to give the live-action actors a haunting, hyper-photorealistic quality. “Eyes” breaks Nov. 9, 2009. more

Blur Studio recently completed a ten-spot series of commercials for Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers via Young & Rubicam, NY. The campaign is entirely computer generated and was directed by Blur’s Leo Santos.

This work represents the campaign’s fourth season featuring the adventurous animated Goldfish characters, and is the first time the campaign presents a progressive story arc spanning 10 commercials. At the end of Season 3, “Gilbert” is separated from his friends when he gets sucked up by a vacuum cleaner. Season 4 is dominated by the search for Gilbert by his Goldfish pals. more

Boutique visual effects studio Ingenuity Engine has collaborated once again with director Joseph Kahn on a futuristic new music video for R&B singer Chris Brown’s track “I Can Transform Ya,” the first single off his forthcoming album Graffiti (due Dec. 8). Ingenuity Engine created a VFX-intensive and hyper-stylized world for the video, which premiered Oct. 27th and features Chris Brown, producer Swizz Beatz and rapper Lil Wayne as they deconstruct and shapeshift into sports cars, armored tanks, helicopters and other objects. more

New York, NY - A hi-tech home is not just for Bill Gates anymore. Todd Broder’s B3 Productions, along with New York marketing agency Campfire, has created a technology-centered home makeover special called My FiOS Home as part of Verizon’s branded entertainment campaign. Mechanism Digital was the chosen studio to design and produce a graphics package and 3D pre-visualizations for the show, which are now airing on the FiOS1 channel in New York and New Jersey. more

Flexible parameters of new Pan and Zoom 2 freebie enable the effortless creation of stunning photo animations inside both Apple and Adobe host applications

Boston, MA – November 10, 2009 – Noise Industries, developer of visual effects tools for the postproduction and broadcast markets, announced that it has released an update to its popular freebie generator plug-in, Pan and Zoom. The intuitive controls of the new Pan and Zoom 2 plug-in enables users to easily create stunning Pan and Zoom effects, a photo animation style made popular by cinematographer Ken Burns, without a single keyframe. The new release also boasts motion blur to generate the best-looking animations at any frame rate, and a bonus transition, which allows editors to use the same photo animation techniques to move between two clips. more

SpeakeasyFX Delivers “Abby’s Flying Fairy School” Computer-Generated Series for TV and Web

For the first time, a 3D animated series is part of the “Sesame Street” television program. The program’s 40th anniversary season debuted today, including computer-generated (CG) segments delivered by SpeakeasyFX and made with Autodesk Softimage software from Autodesk, Inc. (ADSK: NASDAQ). The series features a digital version of the favorite Muppet fairy-in-training, Abby Cadabby. “Sesame Street” is the longest running children’s program on television. more