John Textor caused an uproar with his comments about free student labor providing up to 30% of the workers in Digital Domain Florida. We speak with him about this and his view on our 'broken' industry in this exclusive interview.

This week we talk to The Hunger Games visual effects supervisor Sheena Duggal about the Gary Ross film, which looks set to become a blockbuster hit based on the Suzanne Collins novel.

This week we speak to Dashing Founder and Creative Director Robert Moggach about the effects and CG environments created for a group of Hyundai spots.

Our VFX supervisor Oscar special talking to nominees from all five VFX-nominated films for this Sunday night's Academy Awards - proudly sponsored by Side Effects Software.

We talk to Kimball Thurston from Reliance MediaWorks about Lowry Digital's Sci-Tech Oscar - and we pay tribute to film restoration pioneer John D. Lowry who sadly passed away this week.

We talk to Rhythm & Hues about their pioneering work on the popular Coca-Cola polar bears TVCs that began airing in the 90s.

We talk with Matt Madden, Vice President of Production & Development and performance capture supervisor at Giant Studios about motion capture.

This week we are at SIGGRAPH Asia. In part one, we examine renderers and renderfarm management including V-Ray 2.0, MI, RenderMan, Maxwell and 3delight in Nuke. In the second half of the show we focus on rigging with Seema Gopalakrishnan who was the rigging & pipeline lead on Clone Wars at Lucasfilm Animation Singapore.

In this week’s fxpodcast we talk with the President of the Art Directors Guild, Tom Walsh. The Art Directors Guild recently announced a stepped up effort to represent previs artists and that they are now seeking to represent artists doing matte paintings. This announcement raised some eyebrows among visual effects people who see this as [...]

VFX sup. Rob Legato joins us for a discussion of the visual effects in Martin Scorsese's Hugo.

We talk to VFX supe. Michael Owens about 'J. Edgar' and his long history working with director Clint Eastwood.

Erik Nash, visual effects supervisor from Digital Domain, joins us to talk about work on the film Real Steel.

For our 200th fxpodcast episode, sponsored by Sohonet, we are proud to explore the success and future of the four biggest effects houses in London: Double Negative, MPC, Framestore and Cinesite.

As part of our ongoing series talking to the world's best colorists, in this episode we have a discussion about color correction with Steven Scott from EFILM.

Recorded live at IBC 2011 in Amsterdam, a roundtable discussion about the show with John Montgomery, Simon Blackledge and Jeff Heusser.

Mike Seymour talks to Dr Kari Pulli at NVIDIA about the area of computational photography, what we have learnt from mobile device cameras and what we might expect if DSLRs embrace this new area of cutting edge research.

We discuss the bridge collapse sequence in Final Destination 5, with vfx by Prime Focus. Recorded in Vancouver, we talk first with VFX supervisor Chad Wiebe and then CG supervisor Todd Perry.

Dan Lemmon, vfx supervisor (WETA Digital) discusses their brilliant animation work on Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Ian Failes, John Montgomery, and Mike Seymour cover SIGGRAPH 2011. Plus, interviews covering Cinema 4D, 3DS Max, and the upcoming release of Houdini 12.

In this show we speak to NYU professor Ken Perlin, Oscar winner, researcher and educator about his development of Perlin Noise and about his work today in computer user interactions.

Mike Seymour has a frank discussion with Peter Doyle, Senior Supervising Colorist, about Harry Potter 7: Part 2. Mike had spoken to Peter in 2009 about his work on the Potter series, and it was one of our most popular fxpodcasts. This time Peter explains how he creatively created key looks.

To kick off Potter Week at fxguide, Mike Seymour has an in-depth discussion with Greg Butler, visual effects supervisor at MPC London, about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.

We go in depth on the mermaid sequence in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides with Ben Snow from ILM.

We catch up with Steve Roberts, CEO of eyeon, for a state of the union update on their flagship Fusion compositor, as well as discuss image tech issues facing the industry.

We speak with Kelly Port, Digital Domain VFX Supervisor, about their work on the ice giants in Thor

We talk to Lou Levinson from Laser Pacific about Saving Private Ryan being restored via Baselight.

A mobile version of our annual NAB podcast as Mike Seymour, Jeff Heusser and Jason Wingrove invite you into their post NAB chat.

A young girl is institutionalized by her abusive stepfather. Retreating to an alternative reality as a coping strategy, she envisions a plan which will help her escape from the mental facility. Each of these 'retreats' was pretty much handled by a different effects house. We speak to Animal Logic about their role.

With the release of Rango, Industrial Light & Magic embarks on its first full-length animated feature. We talk to animation director Hal Hickel about bringing the film to life.

This week in the lead up to the Oscar Weekend, we speak with Shaun Tan, co-director of The Lost Thing which has been nominated for Best Short Animated Film. This film is an act of love, taking a small team 9 years to complete.

In the last of our series on the tech behind the major studios, we switch gear to facial animation and Dr. Mark Sagar of Weta Digital. Mark is a back to back 2010 and 2011 winner of the Sci-Tech Award (Scientific and Engineering Award) from the Academy. At Weta Digital he has directed the development of the performance driven facial animation system for Avatar and King Kong.

We speak with Ken Ralston, Senior Visual Effects Supervisor of the Oscar-nominated Alice in Wonderland , about the movie, Sony Pictures Imageworks' tech and creative resources, and his career in general.

We talk with Tom Sito about the history of animation unions and how that history applies to efforts to organize Visual Effects artists. Sito is an animator and the author of DRAWING THE LINE: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson .

We talk with Robert Neuman, Stereo Supervisor from Disney, about the in house tools they use to achieve their award winning Stereo Feature films. Part of our fxpodcast "Tech behind the films" series.

Continuing the technical tools behind the big companies series that we started last week, we talk to Ben Snow of ILM about his career and the development of the energy conservation lighting model - as most recently used on Iron Man 2.

We talk with Paul Franklin, vfx supervisor from Double Negative, about the in house tools they use to enhance their pipeline.

We talk with Steven Poster, National President of the International Cinematographers Guild, about the cinematographers relationship with visual effects, color correction, digital cinema, unions and more.

Brian Green, Character Supervisor from Pixar, joins Mike Seymour at Siggraph Asia to talk about Toy Story 3

We speak to VFX Sup Angus Bickerton about the visual effects in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

We speak with Visual Effects Supervisor David Vickery about Double Negative's role in making the actual magic in HP7 and sims in general.

We speak to Framestores's Christian Manz about the amazing character animation of Dobby and Kreacher.

Chris Bond of Thinkbox Software gets us up to date on their Krakatoa and Deadline products, and discusses some of the underlying tech.

Many have talked about visual effects companies creating content, Greg and Colin Strause have done it with their film Skyline. We talk with them about the challenges and the technology that enabled them to do this.

We speak with Geoff Mark, former Special Visual Effects Governor for the Academy, about the organization and its reach.

We chat with Gareth Edwards, director, DOP and sole vfx artist of the indie film "Monsters".

Matthew Unwin joins us to talk about a spot for Drench, he was on set and did the flame work on the spot that features a Rubik's Cube like treatment on a human head

The crew is together in Amsterdam for IBC and go over stuff they saw at the show. Also simulcast as the fxphdod podcast.

We speak with Matt Aitken, Visual Effects Supervisor Weta Digital, about the Universal Studios Hollywood 3D attraction.

Our Inception coverage is in two parts. Click through for a detailed discussion with the team at New Deal Studios by Ian Failes. And also to access our in depth podcast with Visual effects supervisor Paul Franklin of Double Negative in London. We have delayed publishing both as they contain heavy spoilers on what must be one of the year's best films.

We revisit Scott Ross and put him in charge of the global Visual Effects Industry, at least for the duration of the podcast.

A technical chat about Pixar film production along with some history dating back to the MIT Media Lab and Thinking Machines.

We speak to one of the most successful female vfx supervisors, Sheena Duggal, about the Sex and the City 2

Jeff and Mike talk about commercial post with Rob Moggach, creative director at Dashing Creative Collective.

Casey Steffen, founder of Steffen Vfx, talks about his company's work on scientific graphics for the medical, health, and entertainment industries.

VFX Supervisor Ben Snow details some of the work ILM did for Iron Man 2, including some hardcore cgi lighting techniques.

We talk to the team at Scoundrel FX about their effects work on the mini series The Pacific. Scoundrel did over 600 shots and helped bring to life one of the most hard fought battles and periods of the Second World War.

Our annual lively discussion of what grabbed our attention at NAB. Mike, John and Jeff are joined by Jason Wingrove, Dave Edgar and Mat Graham. Also, interviews with Red Giant and Assimilate.

We continue our labor series talking with Tom Walsh, president of the Art Directors Guild.

Bruno Nicoletti, co-founder of the Foundry, on the tech behind their program of accelerating plugins for GPUs.

Andy Hendrickson, Brent Burley and Dan Candela join us for a technical discussion about Ptex, a high quality, optimized texture format and filtering library that Disney has made Open Source.

We talk with Paul Debevec who along with Tim Hawkins, John Monos and Mark Sagar were presented a Scientific and Engineering Oscar for the Light Stage.

Lee Stranahan has ignited a serious conversation about the treatment of visual effects workers with an open letter to James Cameron in the Huffington Post. We talk to him about the reaction.

Steve Hulett of The Animation Guild joins us again to discuss visual effects and labor issues.

In part 3 of our series on Avatar we talk with Dana Batali from the Pixar Renderman team and Christian Kaestner, compositing supervisor from Framestore.

John Knoll, ILM vfx supervisor, on collaborating with Weta and stereoscopic for "Avatar".

Joe Letteri, senior vfx supervisor for Weta Digital, details their mocap/facial capture tech and other aspects of their work on Avatar.

We talk with Michael Taylor about visual effects and the global marketplace as he moves from Los Angeles to Adelaide and Rising Sun Pictures.

Industry pioneer Scott Ross is our guest as we talk about visual effects history and the future of the business.

An in-depth discussion about color management workflow with Brian Gaffney and Dan Lion from Technicolor Creative Bridge

We speak with GenArts' CMO Steve Bannerman and VP of Engineering/Chief Scientist Gary Oberbrunner about the upcoming release of Sapphire version 5.

Alex Wuttke, Double Negative visual effects supervisor, about two main sequences from 2012.

We talk with Ed Ulbrich (Digital Domain) about the newly formed Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) Digital and what it means for artists and companies.

The Previsualization Society was officially announced today to “focus on producing and publishing information and resources to promote effective previs through key activities such as promoting standards, education, workflow development and practical knowledge exchange”. Founding members of the Previsualization Society are: David Dozoretz, Founder, Director and VFX Supervisor, Persistence of Vision (POV) Previs; Chris Edwards, [...]

We geek out with 3D guru Master Zap about linear compositing workflow, separating fact from fiction.

Jeff Heusser talks with Andreas Wacker, founder of INTERDUBS, a clip hosting company for post houses and production facilities.

We talk about creating an acid trip with VFX supervisor Brendan Taylor from Mr. X

An in-depth discussion of color science with Chief Colorist Peter Doyle

For District 9, writer/director Neill Blomkamp turned to a host of Vancouver-based studios, along with Weta Workshop and Weta Digital in New Zealand, to provide alien creatures and other effects for the film. fxguide profiles the work of Image Engine, The Embassy Visual Effects, Zoic Studios and Goldtooth Creative in bringing Blomkamp's vision to life.

For Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, director Michael Bay enlisted ILM and Digital Domain to create several new characters and blockbuster action for the sequel to his monster 2007 hit. Mike Seymour speaks to ILM's Digital Production Supervisor Jeff White in this week's fxpodcast. In our online article, Ian Failes speaks to Digital Domain's Visual Effects Supervisor Matthew Butler and CG Supervisor Paul George Palop about their work.

This week we look at digital and practical effects on Terminator Salvation with ILM and Kerner Optical

An interview with Rob Cook, co-architect and primary author of Pixar's RenderMan

Jeffrey A. Okun, Chair of the Visual Effects Society, sits with us to discuss the mission and latest news from the VES.

A conversation with ILM vfx supervisor Roger Guyett about the film Star Trek.

Director Michael Gracey tells us about filming large crowds for two viral campaigns for T-Mobile.

We talk with friends as well as fxphd post grads and professors about what they saw on the first day of the show. Recorded live at a party sponsored by The Foundry, Sohonet and da vinci.

A conversation with Gary Einhaus, CTO and General Manager of Kodak Digital Cinema, about new technology and research at Kodak.

Rich Hoover, visual effects supervisor on Valkyrie about the complexity of doing such a powerful historical film.

Visual Effects in the movie Australia with artist Peter Webb from Iloura Pictures.

An interview with Simon Robinson, co-founder of The Foundry, to get the reasons behind their decision to reduce prices on Furnace, Tinder, and Keylight sparks for Autodesk.

Conversation with Stu Maschwitz who supervised over 1900 shots for the latest movie from a Frank Miller graphic novel.

We speak to Richard Lambert principle at Fin Design about the award winning commercial for Herringbone

Kids show with very adult tech. Sid the Science Kid from Jim Henson Studios is a remarkable project for the complexity and simultaneous simplicity of its motion capture. fxguide spoke to Steffen M. Wild, Visual Effects Supervisor, Digital Supervisor at Jim Henson Co. for this week's fxpodcast.

A conversation with Bill Roberts from Softimage about version 7 of XSI, which was released earlier this year.

Mike Seymour chats with VFX Supervisor Eric Grenaudier from Stargate Digital about their work on the U.S. television series 'Heroes'.

Mike Seymour chats with Ron Brinkmann, author of The Art and Science of Digital Compositing.

We talk to Jeff Goldman, a vfx supervisor at CafeFX about their emmy nominated work on John Adams

In this week's fxpodcast, Mark Breakspear of CIS (formerly Rainmaker) discusses how Blades of Glory showed his company how fundamentally different the pipeline needs to be for visual effects in comedies. We follow up with more details and background in our online story.

In this fxpodcast we speak with Steve Hulett, Business Representative for the The Animation Guild Local 839 IATSE. This is part of an ongoing series discussing the issues involved in labor laws, treatment of workers and general respect for visual effects in the industry.

Recorded on a rooftop in downtown Los Angeles at our traditional tradeshow Barcamp. We are joined by fxphd members to discuss what they have seen so far at Siggraph.

We speak with stereo colorist Jeff Olm about grading and post considerations for Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D.