dERIVATIVE – The Making of the Film

Made of shapes, colours and a bit of story, dERIVATIVE is a short film I’ve directed for a wonderful Mixpoint Studio in Prague. It follows through a row of visual transformations and is likely to be more a work of motion design than classical CG animation. The project was a months-long effort and this time I had a chance to personally craft every single pixel of the final film – what has really helped me is a compositing-centered workflow which I’d like to talk about in this tutorial. 

FLOW – The Making of the Film

FLOW is a short art film I’ve started mid-summer at Mixpoint – a post-production house which kindly bears with me as their resident CGI director. Few images like those Juno photos got me seriously captivated at the time; I was also deep into commercial tabletop photography with their thick, vividly textured imagery of mixing liquids of all sorts – a grossly overlooked form of art. On top of that, there’s been a bunch of technical stuff I was looking to play with for ages, so here’s the resulting mix, shaken and stirred for your viewing pleasure (and then over-compressed beyond any of my control):



And below I’m diving into the making-of details:

Procedural Bestiary and the Next Generation of CG Software

In the previous essay “Procedural content creation F.A.Q.” I’ve claimed that it would take few months to assemble a full-scale creature generator. So I took those months and did it – introducing Kozinarium v1.0 v1.5:

Procedural Creature Generator from Denis Kozlov on Vimeo.

Procedural systems I’ve been developing during the recent years served different purposes, not the least one being exploration of how far one can go in formalizing the visual art, expressing its language in machine-readable terms. “Quite far” is the answer I’ve got, and today I’d like to share my vision of the next generation of artistic tools which could empower anyone to render their imaginations with almost the ease of thought. But first, let’s take a look at how these procedural systems are made.

Procedural Content Creation F.A.Q. - Project Aero, Houdini and Beyond

I’ve finally found the time to put together a long-requested video demo for Project Aero and would like to use this opportunity and answer some of the questions I’m often hearing in its regard.

Procedural Aircraft Design Demo from Denis Kozlov on Vimeo.

What is Project Aero?

Project Aero is the software I’ve developed for rapid design of aircraft concepts. The video above demonstrates its main features.

 What does “procedural” mean?

In a wider sense it means “automated” - created algorithmically by a computer (rather than manually by a human operator or sampled like a scan or a photograph). Here are the good places to learn more:

CG|VFX reel 2015

CG|VFX reel 2015 from Denis Kozlov on Vimeo.


My reels tend to become shorter and shorter. Here goes the new one – a generalist's reel again, so I have to take the blame for most of non live action pixels – both CG and compositing. With only a couple of exceptions, the work has been done in Houdini and Fusion predominantly. Below follows a breakdown describing my role and approach for each shot.

Evaluating a Particle System: checklist

Below is my original manuscript of what was first published as a 2-piece article in issues 183 and 184 of a 3D World magazine. Worse English and a bit more pictures are included. Plus a good deal of techniques and approaches squeezed between the lines.

Part 1

Most of the 3D and compositing packages offer some sort of a particle systems toolset. They usually come with a nice set of examples and demos showing all the stunning things you can do within the product. However, the way to really judge its capabilities is often not by the things the software can do, but rather by the things it can not. And since the practice shows it might be not so easy to think of all the things one might be missing in a real production at a time, I have put together this checklist.

Flexible enough software allows for quite complex effects 

like this spiral galaxy, created with particles alone.

On Anatomy of CG Cameras

Anatomy of a CG Camera

The following article has first appeared in issue 180, and was the first in the series of pieces I've been writing for a 3D World magazine for some time now - the later ones should follow at a (very) roughly monthly pace as well. These versions I'm going to be posting here are my initial manuscripts, and typically differ (like having a worse English and more silly pictures) from what makes it to the print after editing. Try to enjoy.

CTU's Faculty of Mechanical Engineering video

Double no: No, I didn't forget about the next part of a typography article and No, I didn't lie claiming it will take a while... And while a while continues, here is a piece of recent work I accomplished with the guys at DPOST Prague.



Czech Technical University 150th Anniversary from DPOST Prague on Vimeo.

Aside from wearing both Director's and Art-Director's hats, I've spent quite some time with hands on material here, taking the 3D work into Houdini to design the cubes effects, animate and render.

CG/VFX showreel 2013

Here goes my new demo reel showing some projects I had a pleasure to work on in the span of the last few years. I shifted focus from compositing to more 3D/VFX work compared to the last reel from 2008. There are also more of the interesting shots left behind this time, but I do believe in brevity when it comes to presentations.


3D/VFX show reel 2013 from Denis Kozlov on Vimeo.


A breakdown following:

Tips for a better showreel

3D/VFX Showreel 2013 is coming

I have recently finished my fourth demoreel  and it crossed my mind to share what I’ve learned about compiling showreels for computer graphics artists (and often even postproduction studios). It is nothing new of course - just my summary, tried out and struggled through. My older reels are intended to serve as illustrations for both some concepts and mistakes, as I’m going to share them in the following posts.

I noticed different people have preference for either a word “demoreel” or “showreel”. In general, those seem to be interchangeable with more flavor of a finished work being showcased as implied by “showreel”, and “demoreel” stressing rather a demonstration of certain skills or techniques as discussed here. But if you’re struggling to pick a particular word - don’t struggle, do pick - any.

And follow the main rule:

Keep it short. Really. Looking at the big houses' reels I used to feel bad showing less than 3 (at the very least 2) minutes of material. Well, these days I'd say 2 minutes is the absolute maximum for a demoreel. I remember reading that it's the worst shot in the reel you're going to be judged for, and I believe it to be true. So the longer the video – the lower you'll have to put this worst shot threshold. And when it's even the greatest and coolest stuff you're watching for too long you're starting to get tired of it, and great shots do not look so great compared to too many other great shots – pieces of work start competing with each other. The idea of a 3D or VFX showreel as I see it – is to tease, to intrigue, to make an impression. It's not even the first date – it's asking out. Let those people interested ask you for additional examples if they'd need it, but to make it happen – impress first.

In 90% of the cases I saw (way more often than I would've guessed) there was a need for the reel to sell more than there actually is (like when your skills are higher than the shots on your hands), so I tend to consider it a normal situation unless you're an ILM or something. But the cool and funny part of it is that it’s perfectly doable usually. Through edit, music and ...keeping it short. The professional slang expression I've heard for this is “killing your babies” - cutting out the material which you really love for the sake of improving the final result as a whole. It is hard, but it is a skill to acquire and it works. And one way to get there is to keep showing your demoreel to other people and LISTENING to their feedback. If more than one person had the same remark independently – chances are it's more correct than what you think.

Best work first! Good if it's your latest work as well, if not – ignore the latest rule – go with the best. I'm trying to stress the last shot as well, but without sacrificing this rule. What's the sense in postponing the cool stuff, if the viewer will never see it only because she'd turn off your reel since the beginning was not exciting enough?

For the music, I believe in fast, dynamic tracks rather than slow, lyrical and artsy. It helps to involve the audience imho. Fast rhythm also gives more flexibility for cutting. The main thing is not to irritate the viewer though, thus instrumental tracks should be preferred and genre extremes with clichés avoided. Editing the reel is a perfect time to ignore your musical preferences and rather think of what works best with the visual. I found it helpful choosing the music first, otherwise trying to cut at the modular lengths helps picking the sound later. It's also interesting how often it is stated that music is irrelevant for a CG artist's reel since everyone is watching it mute anyway, and at the same time when I tried showing a mute reel to people, the most frequent comment was: “But where is the music?”

Don’t try to tell the story - it usually doesn’t work. If it does - great, but do not let this false goal to limit you and put good work aside. Rather focus on smoother flow between the cuts - visual unity of some sort for neighbouring shots like grouping by technique or color.

And of course the contact data – both at the beginning and the end. Personally, I also like making the reel loopable, although perfectly aware that no one is going to play it on and on except for myself:)

Hope that helps someone and please share any thoughts or useful links you have on the subject.


Here are few from my older researches:

UPDATE: VFXTALK.com looks rather hacked than functioning at the moment, so I adjusted 2 URLs below to preserve them in case it will resurrect, but to make them inactive at least - use at your own risk.

Some forum threads on the matter:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=2&t=31676&highlight=salary

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=2948003&postcount=149

VFXTALK/threads/9014-Top-10-things-to-never-put-on-your-Reel

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=2&t=452666&highlight=things+demo+reel


And a couple of galleries to start

http://forums.cgsociety.org/forumdisplay.php?s=9bbe27ddb22bc1fffef191d55c1f8949&f=154

VFXTALK/forums/146-Demo-Reels!



Next week I plan to start the aforementioned retrospective of demoreels which served me in the past.

Introduction to the Visual Effects industry

Of course, first I should have written about the way I see the world – meaning the parts a contemporary artist in general or a computer graphics artist in particular can take for the career or living (not necessarily the same thing:). However, since mess is just so much more fun, I'd rather share few things I've learned about a particular industry – the almighty Visual Effects.

Almost every time I answer “Visual Effects” to a “What do you do for living?” kind of question, I rush to add: “It's much less cool than it sounds”. Indeed, there is a strong halo of magical appeal around it paired by a lack of understanding the techniques and processes involved. People think of what is commonly shortened to VFX as some kind of a black box, so myths like secret tools, one-button solutions and sensational incomes are born even among artists working in the neighboring fields (like I used to be myself).

At the same time most of the techniques, procedures and mysteries are already unveiled and publicly available. The only thing required is to find a proper reading, which I am daring to suggest here. In two flavors:

First one would be the closest thing there is to a Bible for VFX – The VES Handbook of Visual Effects, published by the Visual Effects Society just a few years back. Contributed to by a plethora of renowned practitioners, it covers all stages, processes and techniques from preproduction to fur rendering in a systematized manner. It is a kind of VFX version of American Cinematographer Manual, if that helps. Of course, the Handbook is not application-specific and does not get down in details to particular buttons and software tutorials (it's only nine hundred pages after all). Still it tells you pretty much everything there is in the field. Amazing. A long time needed must-have for everyone dealing with creating or manipulating moving images. Get it.

This was about how things are done. As for the second flavor of information, I suggest reading White Paper - July 2013 - The State of the Global VFX Industry 2013. This document, issued by the same society, is a follow-up on the VFX Town Hall on Pi Day. It addresses the problems (not technical or artistic, but rather business and careers) the visual effects industry is facing right now. Things are quite opposite to the glamour idealistic pictures a lot of us would have in mind when picking a career path. I know it's a bit of a “yesterday's news”, still believe this information should be spread as wide as possible.

And my last (but surely not least) suggested reading would be the Effects Corner – a blog by visual effects veteran Scott Squires, where he is covering both topics listed above (he actually contributed to both aforementioned publications as well). A great place to start, especially if you don't have access to the Handbook right now (for this particular purpose it’s worth reading the Effects Corner chronologically).

Have a nice reading and good luck to all of us.