Dennis Muren Q&A

[RobertoOrtiz]

Awesome scoop Paul!

-R

[Rebeccak]

Great read, thanks for this! Very much enjoyed the article. :)

[JBoskma]

Nice! Looking forward to this book, such an inspiration!

[T4D]

Excellent read There, Thanks Guys :thumbsup:

[yeoj3d]

Dennis Muren is one of the founding fathers of digital art, a true legend in the field of visual effects. I can't even count how many movie dvds have him being interviewed in the bonus features sections, explaining how they did the effects for the film. In terms of the entire visual effects industry, you can't get much higher on the food chain then Muren, 'nuff said.....

[Little_Buddha]

Great reading. Straight from the Enistein of digital Art.

My humble regards to him. :bowdown::bowdown::bowdown::bowdown:

[Quantium]

I actually met Dennis at SIGGRAPH 05' in LA, and got to speak with him 1 on 1 for a few minutes before the George Lucas Keynote speech. It was kinda cool.:thumbsup:

[JHarford]

Great article.Thanks.
Congratulations on your Lifetime Achievement award. I am very much looking forward to the book.

[criminal]

nice article. lots of critical information.

[GonzaloGolpe]

Cool interview!:thumbsup: and the E.T pic is great! haha

[nmcelmury]

wonderful, wonderful article. he's the man

[Anthonie]

I love the article. Lots of cool info.
But for real when I first heared about his name some time ago, i'd think he was dutch since
his name sounds so "dutchy" to me, but he was born in Glendale in California so I guess I was wrong.

[5sense]

Hi there,
Last week, the Visual Effects Society honored Dennis Muren with a Lifetime Achievement award and the CGSociety was invited to talk with him. After his first Oscar in 1976 for 'Star Wars',
WOW...
awesome article

[hyperSasquatch]

thats a really good read.. its always interesting hearing a pro talk about his views on the industry.

[tinitus]

finally someone is saying what is really going wrong in this industry..man, I was waiting for years to hear someone talking about this!

[SeifoSid]

Nice article, would have liked to see more pics with models, etc...

[BadG3r]

loved it.. im gonna buy his book and put the special to where it belongs ;)

[ap3pilot]

Fantastic article thankyou, and hats off to the ulimate VFX wizard Dennis Muren:bowdown:

[ikuru]

this guys cv is like all the best movies ever made.
not bad.

[scroll-lock]

Thank you for the thread!

[MasterZap]

Ah, Dennis Meuren. I have the deepest form of respect for this guy.

I had a brief chat with him after siggraph 05 where he just had done WotW. His "old school" solution to lot of the effects was just fantastic. No "particle system" crap, go out on the backyard and shoot some exploding bags of flour....

At the panel, Dennis did a "call out" to the CG industry about more 'physically correct' CGI tools. This simple statement of his was a large cornerstone for the current work I'm doing w. new mental ray shaders and stuff.....

/Z

[doctorx256]

Nice info... To put it simple terms, he is the best...

[jng]

Maybe what he is trying to say is that real art is not making things more real but using your own thoughts in your mind's eye to make them different. It's what Brian Taylor of "Rustboy" fame once said when he was creating a grasshopper, the more realistic I made it the less real it looked. So he gave it less a realistic look to make it more alive. So the process is not perfecting your model, or your animation to make it more realistic but to make it different, or more original. That is what art is. Not to be like someone else but to be yourself with all the imperfections. Be handicapped but be yourself in your imperfection. Live with what you have but what you have give a life of it"s own. That"s why some 2d stuff is some much better then 3d stuff. The trick is not to be imfluenced by all that is going on around you and listen to your own intuition. And make mistakes and then follow them instead of so called correcting them because you end up doing what everybody else does. I think of the famous imaging sequence in the film 2001 where nothing is real that you see but everything is done in an original way. It's dated by today's vfx but still inspires one when watching it. That's what art is.

[kmest]

that was awesome....he's the legend....loved that Q&A

[Raul-Reznek]

" the most of any living person making movies" thats all i need to know right there
thx for the article

[siouxfire]

His book is going to be pure gold. That article did what a good effect should do, it left me wanting more and I read it a second time immediately after the first read.

Thanks, Paul.

[JohnnyRandom]

Great Q&A thanks, really looking foward to "seeing" his book. What a phenomenal career, cheers!

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