News and info about the animation & vfx industries
Introducing the Foundry’s Katana
I am very pleased to announce that CG Masters is adopting Katana into its production workflow beginning May 2019. Katana is a lookdev and lighting management tool from The Foundry that radically simplifies the management of geometry, materials, textures, and image...
Find Your Fifty – New Blog by William Vaughan
Finding life balance as a digital artist "One Step...and then the next gets you where you're going." - Sister Creep When I was younger, people would ask me what I wanted to do for a living and I always had the same response; "I don't want to lift heavy boxes for a...
CG Masters Students on the Set of Deadpool 2
Advice from VFX industry veterans CGM students get to do a lot of cool things. We tour production studios, learn to shoot, discover all the interesting disciplines of 2D and 3D production, but none quite as awesome as this. 5 CGM students were invited to the set of...
The Trouble with Overtime
Why Overtime in VFX and Animation is a Really Bad Idea. I can’t help smiling (on the outside) when I discuss this topic with certain visual effects production people, especially the managers who haven’t had to do 12 - 18 hours straight busting their brain at a...
The Effect of a Solar Eclipse on Shadow Quality
As the solar eclipse of August 21st 2017 approached, I was thinking about the effect it might have on shadows. After all, the size and shape of a light source has a significant effect on shadow quality, and the size and shape of the sun was going to change...
How a Scrappy little 3D Animation & VFX School helped NASA
Working with NASA - Dreams do come true Always dreamed of working with NASA? Us too. Earlier in 2017, students at CG Masters were given the opportunity to 3D model, 3D print and build a scale model of a NASA Mars Rover concept vehicle. It was the chance of a...
VFX & Animation Industry: Calling all Canadians!
Vancouver's Expanding Job Market for VFX & Animation For Canadians, there is no better time to get into the exciting film visual effects and animation industries. New immigration rules limit the ability of studios to hire foreign junior (entry level) artists and...
Why higher pixel count does not mean better pictures.
When we moved from standard definition to HD, I was very happy. There was a noticeable improvement in image quality. With SD, pixels were sometimes visible and images were soft. HD provided far better resolution. When we moved to 4K, I was a little confused...
Make Bad Art – Guest Blog by William Vaughan
“All art is an intensely vulnerable gesture, and it is made with no small amounts of risk, and fear.” – Steven Erikson I was recently working with a large group of designers with years of traditional and digital illustration experience that were extremely new to 3D...
No. I Won’t do your VFX for Free.
As our reputation for vfx training grows, we get more and more calls from various people asking us to do complex visual effects and animation for free. After all, students don’t expect to be paid. They need experience, right? And what do they do in the evenings when...