Barbara Robertson

Longtime Computer Graphics World contributing editor Barbara Robertson recently received the top prize by the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) for her feature entry in the Trade category. The ASJA awards honor the outstanding nonfiction work produced on a freelance.
Longtime Computer Graphics World contributing editor Barbara Robertson recently received the top prize by the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) for her feature entry in the Trade category. The AS...

2021
“How did they do that?” may not be your typical reaction to scenes in an animated feature. But consider this shot with two characters from Disney/Pixar’s latest film Soul: A tall stick figure, a “counselor,” is trying to catch a “soul,” a small, soft three-dimensional character with a big round head and almost no body. The counselor is also 3D, but looks like a partially shaded, partially transparent line drawing with a Picasso-esque face. His nose and mouth point in one direction, his e...

2020
To the legions of visual effects artists, animators, and filmmakers who have been inspired by and have followed his footsteps, Ray Harryhausen, stop-motion pioneer, visual effects creator and filmmaker, needs no introduction.
Or, does he?
“The thing that most stands out about Ray Harryhausen and is the most difficult to convey,” says filmmaker John Walsh and pauses, “is he didn’t invent stop-motion animation. Willis O’Brien did that with King Kong and Mighty Joe Young. But Ray stands apa...

The venerable visual effects studio Industrial Light & Magic began 2017, its 41st year, with its artists receiving 16 VES Awards nominations, three VES Awards, four Annie Award nominations, two BAFTA nominations, and three Oscar® nominations for work accomplished last year.
The nominations and awards include those for best achievement in visual effects, outstanding effects simulations, compositing, animated effects, character animation, environments, virtual cinematography, modeling – just ab...

“I was pulled to cinema and movies like a moth to the flame.” —John Nelson
One foggy night in June, John Nelson was driving near Santa Monica when he spotted a soccer game in the distance.
“I pulled over and started taking pictures of the soccer players in the fog, backlit by the lights,” he says. “That’s me with a camera. I’m constantly taking pictures. Thousands. Wherever I am. The camera is part of my body. When I look through the lens, I’m thinking but not thinking. I find the composition...

2018
The surprisingly quick success of Marvel’s first Spider-Man comic in 1962 has led to more than 50 years of comics, cartoons, books, video games, TV series and films. IMDb alone lists more than 1,000 Spider-Man titles.
None of these are like the latest, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, an animated feature from Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures Animation and Marvel Entertainment – and that was the intention.
Developed by writers/directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The LEGO Movie, ...

2017
At their best, visual effects smoothly blend science and art, technology and storytelling, technique and artistry. Thus, it’s no surprise that visual effects supervisors at the top of their game embody the same elements. Supervisors like Stephane Ceretti.
From freezing Gotham City in Batman and Robin to bending New York City in Doctor Strange, Ceretti’s career path has taken him through some of the most creative and technically challenging visual effects: The Cell, The Matrix Reloaded an...

2019
Studios creating a live-action blockbuster might cite more than 1,000 visual effects shots in the film, perhaps even 2,000, including some sequences in which everything – environments, effects, actors – is digital. These sequences are like animated films within the live-action film. But people rarely think in terms of the opposite – that is, they rarely think of animated features in terms of “visual effects.”
“When people who don’t know the animation industry hear I’m a visual effects su...

Actors performing while balancing head helmets fitted with cameras pointed at their faces may be an odd sight, but it’s a common one on film productions when those actors play characters that become CG.
The motion-capture gear allows the “CG characters” to interact with live-action actors on set, directors to direct them, the director of photography to light them, and camera operators to frame them. It has helped make the integration of CG characters into live-action films seamless, and it’s ...

Marvel’s Black Panther powered into theaters with a record-setting box office and high fives from critics for the story, fully-realized characters, and overall, thought-provoking vision. Ryan Coogler of Creed and Fruitvale Station fame wrote and directed the Disney release, Marvel’s first black superhero film.
Black Panther stars Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa/Black Panther, a newly crowned King of Wakanda. Wakanda is a secret, technologically advanced African nation that harbors and leverages ...

All winter, I stared at my magnolia tree’s bare branches, wishing for spring. Except, when I looked closely, I saw that the branches weren’t bare. While I waited for green leaves and pink blossoms, I saw that silvery tufts and grey-blue rosettes like doilies on my grandmother’s armchair had adorned the branches and tattooed the trunks. Lichens.
Once I became aware of lichens, I saw them everywhere: In spots where nothing else thought to grow. On fences, trees and rocks. Green, blue, yellow, r...

Once again, the skilled artists working at Pixar Animation Studios have exercised their expertise in computer graphics, animation, and storytelling to raise the art of CGI filmmaking with a colorful, unique, heart-tugging, joyful, and memorable film. The venerable studio’s 19th animated feature Coco takes place during one day and night, a time known in Mexico as Dìa de Muertos, the Day of the Dead. If you think a one-day timeframe confining, you underestimate Pixar.
Disney•Pixar’s Coco center...

Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One sends movie audiences into a dismal future. But who really cares when it’s possible to escape a dreary existence anytime by entering a virtual playground called the OASIS? In the OASIS you can become anyone you want in a world you create. The movie takes off when OASIS creator Halliday (played by Mark Rylance) dies leaving behind a challenge: Find his Easter Egg and win control of his fortune and the OASIS. And thus, a massive treasure hunt begins. We follo...

Wes Anderson’s set his stop-motion film Isle of Dogs in Japan, where, supposedly for health reasons, Mayor Kobayashi (voiced by Kunichi Nomura) has exiled all dogs to an island full of garbage, including his young ward Atari’s (Koyu Rankin) guard dog, Spots (Liev Schreiber). Produced by American Empirical Pictures and distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures, the film, which went into wide release on April 13, has achieved a 91 percent aggregate approval rating on the website Rotten Tomatoes, ...