Walking dead comic

Last night, while the Visual Effects Society presented their awards for this year, Visual Effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull and Stan Lee (left) received special honorary awards: Stan Lee was awarded with the VES 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award while Douglas Trumbull was honored with the Georges Méliès Award.

A you may know, Méliès was a famous French illusionist and film maker, best known for two prominent movies featuring early visual effects: The Impossible Voyage (1904) and A trip to the Moon (1902), which became famous for its iconic image of the moon, having a human face and receiving a bullet like space capsule in the right eye (which is also the VES societys official logo).

Trumbull was responsible for special effects on Stanley Kubricks 2001: A Space Odyssey, Spielbergs Close Encounters of the third Kind and Ridley Scotts Blade Runner. Trumbull, not a fan of computer generated effects, recently returned to work after a 30 year hiatus to contributed to Terrence Malicks The Tree of Life, which is currently up for three Academy Awards. Working with chemicals, paint, fluorescent dyes, smoke and liquids, all the scenes in outer space were created by hand, giving the film a special feeling and resembling Kubricks epic classic from 1968.

Paramounts first full length CG animated feature Rango (animated by George Lucas ILM) became the big winner and received four awards, followed by Rise of the Planets of the Apes which won in two categories. The cinematic trailer for Blizzard Entertainments Video Game Diablo III: The Black Soulstone was favored above Framestores work on Coca Colas Siege commercial in the category Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated commercial or VG trailer. The creative team of Nicholas S. Carpenter, Graham Cunningham, Chris Thunig and Taka Yasuda won the prestigious award for their incredible work (check it out that the bottom, including the full making of).

Below: from storyboard to fully rendered final scene. Rango won 4 awards in the categories Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated Feature Motion Picture, Outstanding Animated Character (for the character of Rango), Outstanding created environment (Main Street Dirt) and Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in an Animated Feature Morion Picture 











ILM also scored In the category Outstanding models in a  feature Motion Picture. The Special Effects team of Tim Brakensiek, Kelvin Chu, David Fogler and Rene Garcia won with Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon for the creation of their Driller Decepticon character. ILMs other team consisting of Giles Hancock, John Hanson, Tom Martinek and Scott Younkin received an award for Outstanding Created Environment in a Live Action Feature motion Picture for their extensive work on the Chicago location 155 Wacker Drive for Transformers DSOTM.




Above: Driller character conceptualised by Josh Nizzi for Dreamworks. Go for his official site to have a look at his amazing robotic designs or check out his tuts on robot design at Gnomon.

Foxs prequel to their 1960s Planet of the Apes franchise Rise of the Planets of the Apes received an award twice: the team of Daniel Barrett, Florian Fernandez, Matthew Muntean and Eric Reynolds received the award for Outstanding Animated Character in a Live Action Feature Motion Picture (for the character of Ceasar) while Dan Lemmon, Joe Letteri, Cyndi Ochs and Kurt Williams received their award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects-driven Feature Motion Picture.



For the full list with all the winners go to the VES Awards offical site. Below you can check out the winning cinematic trailer for Diablo III The Black Soulstone, which won over Coca Colas Siege. It is followed by the making of, which will shave an hour off your life, so be warned!

First season episode titles are:

Episode One: Days Gone Bye
Episode Two: Guts
Episode Three: Tell it to the Frogs
Episode Four: Vatos
Episode Five: Wildfire
Episode Six: TS-19