* Rainmaker builds virtual snacks

Rainmaker Digital Pictures, the Vancouver visual effects house, has its animators at work creating cg Doritos chips and full cg cityscapes for the ‘Doritos 3D’ spot for agency BBDO (Mexico City), which is contracted to launch the product in Central America, South America, and Thailand.

In the ad, which stylistically recalls The Matrix, a pair of live-action chip thieves scale skyscrapers and melt into walls while being chased through the animated city. They eventually jump though a liquid mercury portal into the real world.

Animators Neill Blomkamp and Trevor Cawood are building the virtual environments, while Marc Roth is modeling the chips and portal. The spot involves two days of live-action green screen shooting at The Crossing Effects Studio, with compositing to follow in early April.

In the area of client direct commercials, digital artist Peter De Bay is designing interactive browsers to be composited into monitors by Gary Poole for SkyBiz 2000, a company that sells web sites.

Fox’s pilot for the futuristic James Cameron series Dark Angel marks Rainmaker’s first major hd project. Rainmaker’s designers are creating a digitally shrouded pirate broadcaster, an ‘eyes only’ effect developed by compositor Stephen Pepper under the guidance of director David Nutter and visual effects supervisor Elan Soltes. The 35mm dailies are being transferred to hdcam on Rainmaker’s C-Reality. The effects house will subsequently be working on the hd Fox pilot The Lone Gunmen, an X-Files spin-off to be shot in Vancouver.

Visual effects supervisor Marc Varisco is overseeing in-house effects for the first couple of episodes of the returning series First Wave for Peace Arch. Rainmaker describes Varisco’s creation as a ‘semi-transparent, genetically developed alien organism’ that undulates towards its victims.

Post services are about to begin on Showtime’s Beggars and Choosers and No Equal’s So Weird. In other series news, work has just started on the fourth season of mgm’s Stargate SG-1 and is ongoing on mgm’s Outer Limits and Higher Ground from Lions Gate.

Rainmaker has been awarded the effects for the Shavick Entertainment mow The Man Who Used to be Me. Visual effects supervisor Simon Lacey will be working on time-travel looks. Other mows in-house include Murder Seen from Minds Eye and To Protect and To Serve.

For the big screen, Rainmaker is set to create 20 film resolution explosion effects for the recently completed feature The Whole Shebang. Also in the works is the Franchise Films Kevin Costner-Kurt Russell flick 3000 Miles to Graceland, for which Rainmaker has been awarded lab and post services, entailing digital film color correction, green screen composites, animated transitions, and an animated title sequence.

Other feature gigs include post and effects for mgm’s Anti-Trust and telecine services for Paramount’s Along Came a Spider, the sequel to Kiss the Girls.

* TOYBOX – Lords of the Dance

TOYBOX, the Toronto-based visual effects division of Command Post & Transfer, recently reunited with local production company Red Rover for two new spots for the Whitehall-Robins backache remedy Robaxacet. Titled ‘Mambo Puppet’ and ‘Swing Puppet,’ the ads follow the dancing marionette concept developed by agency Young & Rubicam, and previously featured in ‘Celtic Puppet,’ which Toybox and Red Rover wrapped one year ago.

‘Mambo Puppet’ features a complete Spanish mambo band formed of Robaxacet puppets. As the camera pans the horn section, a trumpet-playing marionette suddenly lurches, grabbing his back. In ‘Swing Puppet’ a marionette couple jive to swing music among other dancers. The male puppet swings his partner hip-to-hip, then through his legs, but when he stands up, he experiences sharp back pain.

The Toybox team, headed by animation director Derek Grime, consisted of lead animator Raymond Gieringer and Shane Glading. Red Rover provided 2D rough animation pencil tests for the motion path of the animated marionettes, which Toybox animators echoed with 3D models using Maya software. Each figure was developed with its own individual ‘skeletal’ structure to help mimic the movements of a musician or dancer.

Toybox next applied a ‘wood-like’ texture to the puppets’ wire frames, then added a floor, making sure the marionettes were casting proper shadows and interacting realistically with the ground plane. Finally, lighting was used to enhance the characters’ individual personalities.

‘Mambo’ and ‘Swing’ are expected to air in mid-April and May, respectively.

* Lost Boys build Andromeda

Vancouver’s Lost Boys Studios is one of several effects houses hired on for the Fireworks Entertainment/ Tribune Entertainment co-production Andromeda.

Going into production locally, the effects-heavy series was Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s final creation. Lost Boys’ 3D animators and compositors are building the ‘star’ ship The Andromeda. The series is scheduled to commence filming in May, starring Hercules’ Kevin Sorbo as the ship’s commander.