It’s spring and post-production minds are busting out all over with a typically all-encompassing range of projects; the weird, the wonderful and the invisible.

Some of the industry’s best and brightest shared the gritty details of recent post-production and effects efforts and they appear to have all the bases covered. The time-tested classics were there – aliens, explosions, adrenaline-addled acts of derring-do, rendered in new and inventive ways – as well as the classics-to-be – caged musicians, peripatetic tattoos and, naturellement, talking dogs.

Also in this report:

Krech transports tattoo, factory p. 16

First pal/widescreen series goes to the dogs at Supersuite p. 17

Airwalk extravaganza at Rainmaker p. 18

CGI ante up at Cinar Studios p. 19

A chilling number of poltergeist effects at Northwest p. 20

All-CG aliens land at John Gajdecki p. 21

Buzz lands Yo-Yo Ma in jail p. 22

Eyes strives for best of both worlds p. 24

Network: Ole! p. 25

Animators at TOPIX Computer Graphics and Animation in Toronto have created a psychedelic-sixties throwback for the opening credits that act as a kind of pre-story to the new Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy movie opening April 12 across North America.

The first minute of the eight-minute opening is a choreographed series of lines and colorful concentric circles, a theme carried throughout the movie, that move fluidly across the screen. For you physics buffs out there, formulas become atoms become molecules resulting in the shiny, gold Prozac-like happy pill called Gleemonex; which explains why ‘happy objects’ like 3D pinwheels, toy airplanes and yellow duckies float through the screen.

All this accompanied by a funky bass rhythm written by Craig Northey of the Odds.

A wipe reveals the first scene where other titles follow camera moves through the frame towards the audience creating a ‘fluid, episodic’ effect, says designer/ director William Cameron.

The objects were designed on Corel Draw while Auto Desk 3-D was the tool of choice to create video composites. Cameron and designer/animator Fay Grambart used Discreet Logic’s Flint and Flame to animate, composite, and render the film at high resolution for cinema release. Film recording was completed at Cine-BYTE Imaging.

The whole project took about six weeks, says Cameron, the final eight days of which were spent rendering all the layers, about 600 frames, at high resolution.

topix is usually involved with television broadcast production, and Brain Candy is its first opening credits project for the cinema, although it has done large-screen commercials.

And now for something completely different. topix is currently negotiating with two publishers in the u.s. for worldwide distribution of Something’s Fishy at Camp Wiganishie for cd-rom, says topix owner and president Chris Wallace.

It’s still in its prototype stage, but the story is written out, and sound, graphics and special fx are complete. Initially the game didn’t run fast enough and, along with programmer Michael Hull at Apostrophe, a faster game engine was created; a service currently being shown to Fox and 7th Level of Monty Python’s Complete Waste of Time fame.

The game has an artificial intelligence feedback loop that reacts to how it is being played, nine layers of sound as the mouse moves around the screen, and a 2D playing ground mixed with 3D visuals such as when the player is quickly shuttled to their chosen destination.

Camp Wiganishie is targeted to children aged four to 12. ‘Forget the teenage years,’ explains Wallace, ‘they’re too cool.’ But the older kids out there will have a blast because the game’s appealing on two levels a la Pee-Wee Herman, with all the obvious absurdity and eye candy of his Playhouse combined with hidden sexual undertones, says Wallace.

Kids’ entertainer Al Simmons lends his voice to the music and conversation throughout the game. And besides the intricacies of the campground waiting to be explored, expect some miscellaneous mischief including a haunted outhouse, a giggle fish, and even a shift in time periods to a prehistoric, medieval, Egyptian or futuristic campground.