Prometheus is now out on DVD/Blu Ray which means new shots for my reel. Most of my work on Prometheus at MPC was environment layout, with some effects and vehicle layout for timing and speeds in the "sandstorm" and "engineer ship launch" scenes. I also did a lot of the layout for after the engineers ship crashes, so quite a bit of working it into shots and setting up composition in line with the VFX supervisor and Ridley Scott's vision.
It was a great welcome back to VFX in London, which could do with a boost right now! Fingers crossed '13 is luckier for British-based effects teams!
PS - Apologies for the poor quality, but I'm trapped in Scotland and all of my regular showreel files are down in London, so I've had to rip my own showreel from the vimeo and recompress using Sorenson. Hopefully I'll be able to sort this out when I'm home at Christmas and can put out a showreel that looks less Sega Master System res wise.
Here's my new showreel containing the comic con trailer shot I worked on at MPC for "Man of Steel" and a few more shots I worked on from "Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists" which is now out on DVD and Blu-ray!
Nick Hanks Showreel 2012 from Spangles on Vimeo.
I'm currently in Cambodia, doing a bit of backpacking between jobs after finishing 6 months at MPC London. I actually did a bit of film research this morning at Ta Prohm Temple in Siem Reap, which was used as a set on Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie who it seems is a bit of legend round these parts!
I also found out the comic con trailer for Man of Steel was released which has possibly the coolest shot I've worked on in it (it kicks in after 1 min 11 seconds on the video below). MPC was great fun working on Prometheus and then with the big guy with a red cape, which quite frankly is a dream come true since I saw Clark Kent and Superman duke it out in a junkyard as a kid.
Anyhow this shot got "daily of the week" from Zack Snyder himself which was pretty damn cool. Layout's a great role, you really feel you're part of the film making process, working with the CG Supervisors on cameras, animation and environment layout, building clouds layers on top of scaled earth below to make the setup as realistic as possible.
The brief on the shot was that we were flying in a jet tracking superman about to break the speed of sound, the only material to work with were some framings from a previs sequence.
We realised we were gonna be having to use some big camera lens sizes of 200mm to 400mm to achieve the shot, with Superman hitting speeds of over 800 mph (I love stats!). Still seeing this on the actual comic con trailer is one of the highlights of my career so far, along with working with the MPC layout crew.
Here's a new reel containing trailer shots I've worked on for Pirates! and the Jellyfish advert I animated for Virgin. There's a ton more material I've got from Pirates that hopefully I'll get permission to ad to the reel. I also had the luck to see the Prometheus IMAX screening the other day in London. Another great film I have been privileged enough to have worked on, it was pretty awesome seeing shots I helped produce in layout at MPC on the biggest screen in Europe!
A commercial I did a bit of animation got released in the UK this week. More technical animation than I've done before, playing around with different hair and cloth settings in Maya to make the jellyfish work.
Here's the latest trailer for "Pirates in an Adventure with Scientists". I spent a good year previs-ing sequences on this with Peter Lord (aka the nicest director in the world) before heading into VFX animation. There are a few shots of the CG Pirate Captains ship that I animated in here too, so nice to see some of my work already up on the big screen.
A friend of mine also had the luck to catch an advanced screening of this last night in Leicester Square, and the good news is it got a heaaaaarrrggghty thumbs up. Can't wait to see it finally!
