Automata Visual Effects Review

Movie - Automata
released - 2014
Director - Gabe Ibáñez
Cinematography - Alejandro Martinez
VFX - Wordwide FX

starring Antonio Banderas & Birgitte Hjort Sørensen, Melanie Griffith, Dylan McDermott, Robert Forster and Tim McInnerny, Automata is a movie about the incidents that takes place in a near future not far away from us.

it's 2030 & the sun's high radiation has killed almost all the human population & the remaining gather into safe areas & build robots called pilgrims.  The movie has these pilgrims throughout the story & the sandy visuals are all thanks to the magic of visual effects.

Worldwide FXs team delivered more than 800 Computer generated visual effects shots which included CG environments, CG set extensions, holograms, painting out puppeteers & some robot creatures work.

more than 100 of the pilgrims were built with different variations and stages of damage. these animatronic models were then shot on green screen where possible & CGI models were used in some shots where the models were not smooth enough to pull the visual effects or jumps & actions that required.

Jumanji - VFX review

Movie - Jumanji
released - 1995
Director - Joe johnston
Cinematography - thomas ackerman
VFX - ILM (Industrial Light & Magic)
Practical / Animatronics -  Amalgamated Dynamics

Jumanji is a board game, which has magical aspects to it with which the players & the world gets affected with each roll of the dice. the movie uses many practical & CGI shots as most of this magical world includes Animals running around in the world spelled by magic. 

The Lion that everyone thought real was indeed full animatronics with a human inside! this video show how much work and concentration went in to create such a feet! the final product on film is unbelievable!

The CGI Wasps & the Monkeys in film are fully CGI as they had no interaction with the human characters on set. ILM team did an outstanding job hear with the computer generated work!

The stampede scene which has Rhinos, Elephant's Zebras running through the city demolishing cars & other structures feel a bit CGI by todays standards, it was nothing short of a WOW factor at the time. the creatures move a bit blocky at some point's but the entire shot is believable when added with crumbling cars and moving shots.

The Animatronics built by Amalgamated dynamics is hown here where Robbin william fights with the giant prehistoric crocadile. a full scale animatronic crocodile is built which Robin williams gets on and interacts with. 

RIP Robin williams, the Actor who had a tragic death is a talented individual who is known for his iconic roles, as a comedian and if I recall correctly a guy behind the game spore

As of writing this small piece I found out that a sequel to the original Jumanji is being worked on! it features the Rock, kevin hart, jack black & Karen Gillan, and is scheduled to be released december 2017