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After a deadly earthquake destroys his home in Peruvian rainforest, a young bear makes his way to England in search of a new home. The bear, dubbed "Paddington" for the London train station, finds shelter with the family of Henry and Mary Brown. Although Paddington's amazement at urban living soon endears him to the Browns, someone else has her eye on him: Taxidermist Millicent Clyde has designs on the rare bear and his hide.

Here are some of the questions and answers with the VFX artist Christian Kaestner who worked in this film.

1.- What was your general approach to the visual effects?

A few years back, we started working closely with the director, Paul King, and his team to shape and develop Paddington’s film debut for the big screen. Countless sketches, animation and render tests were part of our early involvement with this adorable, furry little bear. In our London office Pablo and Andy spearheaded the creative development, assisted with the shoot planning and of course the VFX shoot supervision. Additionally, Tim Webber got involved in the shoot as second unit director. After the filming had wrapped, we started to narrow down the edit by blocking out scenes based on previs that we’d worked out with Paul King. At this stage both our London and Montreal facilities were involved with layout, blocking and animation. At the same time were also finessing the character and photorealistic look of Paddington.

2.- Pablo Grillo talks about the challenges of working with such an iconic character. Did you feel the pressure too?

Bringing any CG character to life in a believable way is always a challenge, but taking on such a famous, well-loved and established character like Paddington makes it exponentially harder. We obviously wanted to stay true to the character and not create something from scratch that the audience wouldn’t be able recognize. At the same time, there was no live-action version of Paddington that we could match to. The creative process became an in depth exercise in character development, working closely with the director and even Paddington’s creator, Michael Bond, to ensure that we translated this wonderful character to the big screen to everyone’s satisfaction. We are very pleased and proud of how we were able to bring Paddington to life.

3.- How closely did you work with practical and special effects on set to integrate the animated character into the scene?

Framestore worked very closely with Paul King, the director of photography, Erik Wilson, and the art department to ensure we could really integrate Paddington into every scene. We carefully looked at all the shots and the vision that Paul had for the scene. We discussed in detail what was the intention and how we could combine the live-action photography and CG character most efficiently. This obviously was a huge benefit for us and the project because we could plan carefully, helping the budget distribution. We could bring all our experience to the table and work out how we might save a little here and there, enabling us to concentrate on sequences or shots that were really important to Paul. Paul’s vision for Paddington was hardly a full CG visual effects extravaganza – quite the opposite. We wanted to be clever about the shoot, get as much as we could in camera and focus our visual effects efforts on the star of movie: Paddington. One of the great examples of combining practical on-set work with Paddington’s character is when Paddington is licking Judy’s face in the kitchen. It was much more visually effective for us to shoot the licking of the face as a practical effect and animate to Judy’s performance, rather than creating this from scratch in CG.

4.- So did you keep CG environments to a minimum?

I wouldn’t go as far as saying there was no digital matte painting or CG work in the movie, but for the most part environments and set augmentation were supportive in nature and hopefully as invisible as possible. We built partial medium-distance CG for some of the Natural History Museum environment and combined it with digital matte paintings of the London skyline. Additionally, we used Nuke’s particle system to dress in the snow here and there, to enhance the on-set snow and provide consistency throughout the sequence.

By: Andrea

Resurce: http://cinefex.com/blog/paddington/

Almost every film has used the green screen to make the film work. This method helps you to shoot your actors in front of the green screen and in the post- production, the editors can change the background.

This helps a lot in movies because if the director wants the actors being in an environment impossible to get or that it doesn’t even exist, it can be possible with the green screen.

It’s very easy how it works. First, the special effects department paint or cover everything in the stage they don’t want in the shot like the walls of the stage and the marks of green or blue. Then, the actors act and do their papers in there while filming with the camera. After they are done filming, the post production editors take the footage from the camera and open it on an editing program. There is a tool on the program which let you take out the unwanted colors, it’s called “Key light”, which in this case would be the green or the blue. The actors need to make sure they are not wearing that color because then that part of their costume will be transparent on the shot, there is ways to get rid of that but it takes more time and money. After you removed the green or blue colors, the editors can add whatever background they need, it can be a video or a picture. Sometimes you have to go very detailed into the Keying part because sometimes the edges look very rough that the editors need to adjust it so it looks as real as possible.

By: Andrea

Matte paintings are a painted representation of landscape, set or distant location that allows filmmakers to create the illusion of an environment that is nonexistent in real life or would otherwise be too expensive or impossible to build or visit.

It’s unbelievable how good and detailed this paintings can be. They are well used in movies like King Kong, Star Wars and Marry Poppins. Bunch of really great classic films that are made with these paintings. People out there think that just because the studio makes the movies, they have the budget to travel and shoot scenes in different parts all around the world, but that is not true. Traveling with all the cast, make up artist, directors, cameras, everything the set needs, it’s way to expensive. Sometimes the movies need to be shoot in a magical world or somewhere impossible to get in. There is where matte painters get in action.

Matte paintings have to be very detailed, precise, the perspective has to be perfect, the color has to match, etc. The time for each painting can depend on the difficult of the size of it but it can take from a day to a month.

From the very beginning, the matte paintings where made in a canvas with paint and brushes, the paintings where shoot but as we know they can’t move. Now days, we use digital matte paintings which are made in Photoshop and we can also animate, and put movement in the painting so it looks realistic with the help of After Effects, another grate program used in the Visual Effects world.

By: Andrea

As we all know, Paul Walker died before finishing the film Fast and Furious 7. A lot of people thought they were just going to kill the character in the movie or they were going to replace him with some other actor or they wouldn’t even finish to film, but the director decided not to do that. They whole crew decided to make this film the most important one in Paul’s memory.

It’s actually pretty interesting how they did it to make Paul as alive as it appears in the movie. I was actually pretty impressed that they achieve their goal pretty good. I could notice the CGI work done in the last scene where they look at each other (Paul and Vin) for the last time.

Also, the work they did for all the car crashes and the flying cars from the plane are pretty well made. They actually did it in real life. They shoot the flying cars from the airplane; they shoot the street with all the chasing. It’s really impressive what the studios are able and capable to do.

In my opinion the movie was very well done. The Visual effects in the movie were right on point and they looked pretty real. I hope they win an Oscar for it. It was really impressive.

By: Andrea

A lot of electronic music revolves around some melody, a female vocal sample being looped, and a supreme build up to “the drop”, in which the climax of the song blasts through with some very intensive synths. Mike Gao kicks all those fundamentals in the teeth and plants his explosive mix of electronic and hiphop right into the gaping mouth of the genre and blows the mind right out of it. Migamo is my favorite release of 2015 so far. Right from the get go, you get some heavy kicks and Rhodes melody, which drops into an off-beat slur of synths and colors that gradually enlarges into a bigger and bigger structure of complex time and rhythm. The Neo-80’s feel makes it nostalgic with some analogue bass and synthesizers, but the drums are excitingly contemporary. You can dive right into this album from any song and get pulled into it with ease. The incredible track “Shoemaker” takes odd real world sounds such as a pot being banged and some kung-fu sounding swooshes, and makes a mind bender of a song that is bass heavy and ready for its own twerk anthem. The only gripe is that the contemporary drums might drive off anyone who listens to more standard time signature flows, but that doesn’t stop Mike Gao from creating something unique and grabbing in a world where new ideas are an oxymoron.

Cinema 4D is one of the main programs Visual Effects artist use to create their amazing work. It is demanding to have knowledge about it in the industry. Cinema 4D is a program that helps artist to create character rigs and advanced character animations. With this program it’s easier to add hair or fur to characters, the rendering allows you to take advantage of all computers on your network to help render your animation easier and faster, the program is known for being advanced 3D. Cinema 4D is designed for advanced 3D.

 At the Art Institute we learned it on our Visual effects class, we had to create a castle in Photoshop, then whenever it was ready to go with all the textures and details, we were going to import it into Cinema 4D where we were going to build the castle in 3D and the project the Photoshop picture of the castle into the 3D objects. This kind of work it’s called “Projection mapping” which allows you to see the textures on pictures of your Photoshop file reflected into the 3D objects. It is easier to do a projection mapping than to create the 3D objects and texture every single one of them. It takes time and practice to get to know what the program is capable of but once you get familiar and used to it, it’s very helpful and easier to use than other programs.

 We can see examples in real life of 3D projection mapping, when we go to a concert and they project figures and colors into a building.