Awesome Vfx

Alternative band The Academic used the slight delay in Facebook Live’s video streaming to record and remix their song Bear Claws on the spot. By showing their stream on a screen while they were streaming, they were able to play along with their past selves.

Neill Blomkamp’s Oats Studios picks up where last year’s ADAM left off – as a group of humanoids who find themselves freed from oppression, and searching for meaning after they meet two mysterious strangers. Like Chapter 1, it was created using the Unity engine.

Filmmaker KOJER painstakingly rotoscoped characters and objects from Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro and other Studio Ghibli films, then composited the animation over live footage. The scale is off at times, but we still want to live in that world.

We were really wondering how director Max Ksjonda created the mindblowing visuals in his clip Samoliot for the group 5’Nizza. Well, now we have the answer – it was mostly done in camera, with amazing prop work and rigging which was later cleaned up in post-production.

(Spoilers) VFX house El Ranchito shares some sweet behind-the-scenes footage and effects shot breakdowns for Game of Thrones’ Season 7 penultimate episode, Beyond the Wall. That shot with the bony walker from behind is one of our favorite visuals of the entire series.

The always educational Captain Disillusion takes a break from debunking viral videos and questionable crowdfunding to kick off a new series about the masters of visual effects. The first episode looks at the ahead-of-their-time visuals in the Back to the Future trilogy.

Since we don’t speak Russian, we can’t vouch for the lyrics of 5’Nizza’s track, but we can stand up and applaud the frozen-in-time visual effects in this incredible music video from director Max Ksjonda. We’re dying to see a behind the scenes of how they shot this.

Cats get into all kinds of mischief when we’re away from home, so VFX artist Aaron Benitez decided to strap a GoPro Session action camera onto his cat Prince Michael to see what he does as soon as the boss man leaves for work.

There are millions of trick shot videos on YouTube (and we’ve featured our share of them.) Now, Captain Disillusion is here to burst our bubble – and all of those basketballs, footballs, tennis balls, and golf balls, as he shows us some of the tricks of the trade.

(Gore) These guys may have the world’s smallest guns, but that doesn’t stop them from throwing down. Corridor’s silly, but action-packed short reminds us that it’s not the size of your weapon, but the way that you use it.

Vehicle maker Honda and a team of talented artists pay tribute to the creativity and effort that goes into the production of modern motion pictures, peeling back the layers of the visual effects onion, and reminding us how little of what we see on screen these days is real.

Fernando Livschitz of Black Sheep Films messes with our expectations by swapping out everyday sights with wacky, unexpected, and downright impossible versions. We love the stubby airplanes and the two-wheeled buses.

“Who took these?” A couple has an intense argument. And it’s all because of you. Or at least someone you know. Director Noah Levenson’s customizeable short film uses photos from an Instagram account of your choice. Choose wisely.

YouTuber Buttered Side Down used an array of clever editing, camera tricks, and VFX to make his first-person quest for his lost frisbee far more daunting than it really was. The only thing better than this would be a VR version of the video.

Captain Disillusion takes on yet another internet myth – this time its the guy who claims to be able to aim his tape measure with the precision of a crossbow. With the help of a fan, he yet again illustrates how VFX, camera angles, and editing can make anything believable.

A titan from the game Destiny stumbles onto its most horrific adversary yet – cute, cuddly, and deadly Care Bears. Freaking Rad’s video offers up cool weapons, comedy, cosplay, action, and VFX. (Thanks Grey!)

(Gore) Kaptainkristian highlights what David Fincher so deftly hides: the director’s extensive use of CGI and other digital effects in his films. From the Winklevoss twins to digitally perfected hair, Fincher stealthily bends reality in service of the story.

A battery that lights up. An outlet that’s a plug. A pill that’s a screw. Daihei Shibata has an ongoing series of short VFX videos that show ordinary objects with a twist. They originally aired in a Japanese industrial design show for kids called Design Ah!

The guys from Corridor have a little fun with shadowplay in this clip about a couple of graffiti artists who get more than they bargain for when they try to tag the wrong building. TL;DW: kids, don’t use spray paint.

While we don’t normally think of Saturday Night Live for its visual effects, the show actually requires quite a few of them these days. Take a look at some of the work their VFX artists must deliver under the gun each week, often with less than 12 hours before airtime.

Launched in 1997, the Cassini space probe has been providing NASA with data about Saturn and the moon since 2004. It’s now running out of fuel. Erik Wernquist made this excellent CGI short film to sum up Cassini’s contributions and its final mission.

A report on the plight of visual effects artists. While a single actor can get millions of dollars for a film, VFX studios compete with each other for fixed bid contracts that often end up being unprofitable because of additional expenses from costly revisions. More here.

Want to stage a massive battle, fill an empty stadium, or take on a zombie horde? There was a time that you’d need thousands of extras to pull off such epic scenes, Golaem shows us some of the ways their software has been used to make movie, TV, and video game magic.