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Behind the scenes of the film's biggest beasts.

The post Tips & Tricks for Creating Fantastic Beasts From the Artists of ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Find out how Double Negative created a battle sequence between skeletons and invisible creatures in Tim Burton's latest film.

The post ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children’ Goes For the Harryhausen Touch appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

The studio won an Oscar this year for its vfx work on "Ex Machina."

The post VFX Firm Double Negative Is Shutting Down Its Singapore Studio appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

The two companies combine staffs into a worldwide workforce numbering over 525 artists.

Disney's 'Big Hero 6' and 'Feast' both won Oscars tonight.

While the Academy still hasn't released a shortlist for the visual effects category, we identify the frontrunners in this year's Oscar race.

There are big developments in the UK animation industry in the wake of a much-heralded tax break received by the British animation industry that went into effect last year. Sarah Smith, the former creative director of features at Aardman Animations, is setting up a studio named Locksmith Animation. She bills it as the UK’s "first high-end CGI feature animation studio," and it is focused on creating a long-term slate of films for worldwide distribution.

I still haven’t seen Andrew Stanton’s John Carter, but that didn’t lessen (and perhaps enhanced) my enjoyment of this nifty character animation reel put together by Emanuele Pavarotti, who worked on the film at Double Negative. Pavarotti has organized the reel nicely to give a sense of how his scenes progressed from video reference to blocking to final animation, and finally, FX/cloth/compositing passes. He even drops in comments throughout the reel to explain how certain shots evolved. Emanuele has recently been working at Blue Sky Studios on Epic and the forthcoming Rio 2.

David Carkeet, author of From Away, will appear at these upcoming events:

April 7 (Wednesday), New England Independent Booksellers Association meeting, University of Southern Maine, Portland, Maine

April 8 (Thursday), 7:00 p.m., Phoenix Books, Essex Shoppes and Cinema, 21 Essex Way, Essex, Vermont

April 17 (Saturday), 11:00 a.m., Kingdom Books, 283 East Village Road, Waterford, Vermont

April 24 (Saturday), Tables of Content (authors' dinner), Rutland Free Library, Rutland, Vermont; information at http://www.rutlandfree.org/.

April 26 (Monday), 7:00 p.m., discussion of Double Negative with Bear Pond Books Mystery Book Group, 77 Main St., Montpelier, Vermont

Margot Harrison of Seven Days reviews David Carkeet's From Away in the current issue: " From Away is one of those books you’ll like a lot or not at all by the time you’ve finished the first paragraph. If you like it, as I did, Middlesex author David Carkeet's novel will make you laugh. Repeatedly. Not for nothing does it come with an approving blurb from quirky-mystery king Carl Hiaasen, or another — from Publishers Weekly — that likens it to the Coen brothers’ movie Fargo. It’s a good comparison, because From Away is a lumpy but well-spiced gumbo of local color, serious drama and silliness. Like the Coen brothers, Carkeet is less interested in plots than in people and the stupid things they do: His protagonist deserves to stand beside the Dude in The Big Lebowski as a fellow with a knack for changing the tone of every situation he lands in. While From Away isn’t flawless, it’s an original, unlike anything else in its genre."