Toy Story 3: Death By Monkeys
How we made an exploding swarm of red plastic monkeys.

J.D. Northrup
Pixar Animation Studios

Nuit Blanche
Making a hyper-real fantasy world for the short film "Nuit Blanche".

Marc-André Gray
Stellar Scene

Tangled: The Pixels Behind the People Behind the Pixels
Two real-time days of rendering are compressed down to a single 
second by animating the resource usage of the render queue on "Tangled".

Ramon Montoya-Vozmediano
Walt Disney Animation Studios

Percy Jackson: Fire-Breathing Menace
Digital FX artist Jeremy Hampton explains how the fire-spewing hydra in "Percy Jackson & The Olympians" came to have such dangerous breath.

Jeremy Hampton
Digital Domain

Toy Story 3: Mr Potato Head, Moneybags, and Coins
The first shot of the movie sets up the playtime fantasy of how 
Andy used to play with his toys.

Tristan Ikuta
Pixar Animation Studios

Tangled: How to Control Naughty Hair
How we controlled Rapunzel's hair when she fights an intruder in 
the tower with her hair.

Hidetaka Yosumi
Walt Disney Animation Studios

Loss of Control on Approach: Colgan Air, Inc., Operating as Continental Connection Flight 3407, Bombardier DHC-8-400, N200WQ, Clarence Center, New York, February 12, 2009
Demonstration of how the National Transportation Safety Board uses accident data to create an accident-reconstruction animation to explain the circumstances of an accident to the public and entities responsible for implementing transportation safety improvements.

Christy Spangler
Alice Park
National Transportation Safety Board

Cool Shading Study
A small shading and lighting project to learn more about RenderMan's depth-of-field and bokeh controls.

Ariel Chisholm
Texas A&M University

The Tower Waterfall on Disney's Tangled
Creation of the "Tangled" waterfall, from artist concept to final CG imagery.

Andrew Selle
Michael Kaschalk
Walt Disney Animation Studios

Toy Story 3: Bridge Explosion
The exploding railroad-trestle bridge in the opening sequence.

Eric Froemling
Pixar Animation Studios

Snowflower
Creation of a flower growing up through melting snow in two days.

Mark Wrabel
Lumen3D

Prep and Landing: Snow Effects Animation
Snow falls in every way imaginable, and everyone has a slightly different recollection of it. After a snowboarding trip, I created the snow system for "Prep and Landing".

Kevin Lee
Walt Disney Animation Studios

Cool Concept Art
A series of digital concept paintings that explores non-verbal visual narrative construction. The hypothesis is that there are compelling kinds of narrative that can be communicated and understood visually but not communicated or understood verbally.

Ariel Chisholm
Texas A&M University

The Fate of the Apollo 13 Crew Might Have Been Much Different Than Originally Thought
Technically accurate animation of the Apollo 13 mission leads to discovery of an alternative, grave outcome when flight data are re-examined using up-to-date analysis software.

Ed Gee
Glenn Warrington
Kel Elkins
Branden Coker
Analytical Graphics, Inc.

Tangled: Forest Environment
How do we create and render a lush forest and complex characters 
with fur and hair? How do we gain control of light and shadow shapes 
in the middle of the forest where trees block out most of the sunlight and 
skylight?

Josh Staub
Walt Disney Animation Studios

Toy Story 3: Force Field & Transporter Effect
How I created a force-field effect for Slinky the Dog.

Mach Kobayashi
Pixar Animation Studios

US Airways Flight 1549: Hudson River Crash Animation With Flight Data
US Airways Flight 1549 crash simulation using actual flight data provides further insight into the event.

Kel Elkins
Glenn Warrington
Analytical Graphics, Inc.

Prep and Landing: Area Lights With Animated Shadow Blur
Master lighting Timmy's house: developing the light setups for the backgrounds, which were used later for shot production.

Hans-Joerg Keim
Walt Disney Animation Studios

Scrooge Rockets
Scrooge blasts into the night sky on a candle snuffer in "The Ghost of Christmas Past".

Scott Wirtz
ImageMovers Digital

Toy Story 3: Woody's Fiery Death
Woody and the toys head toward certain death in a junkyard 
incinerator.

Jason Johnston
Bill Polson
Pixar Animation Studios

The Princess and the Frog: Evolution of a 2D Layout Shot
How we set the scene for the "proposal" moment, with one day to go before the screening.

Jean-Christophe Poulain
Walt Disney Animation Studios

Satellite Collision Visualization: Technically Accurate Depictions of Debris Breakup and Evolution
This video demonstrates the approach trajectories of the Cosmos 2251 and Iridium 33 satellites prior to impact, as well as a statistical breakup model with an example of propagated debris tracked several days after the event.

Kel Elkins
Ed Gee
Branden Coker
Jason Martin
Ed Mackey
Analytical Graphics, Inc.

Gargoyle: A Rigging Study
The challenge was to create a "cute" character model and rig. The gargoyle was an interesting project, since it was both biped and quadruped, and had a flight sequence.

Megha Davalath
Texas A&M University

Bill Polson
Pixar Animation Studios

The Princess and the Frog: Magic Memory Smoke Bubbles
The villain taunts our heroine, Tiana, by materializing "discouraging" visions in ectoplasmic memory clouds.

James Mansfield
Walt Disney Animation Studios

Partly Cloudy: the Opening Fly-in Shot
The lighting setup for "Partly Cloudy". Every kind of character and effect in the film appears in the very first shot (the last to be completed).

Tim Best
Pixar Animation Studios

MADCAT: Graphical All-on-all Conjunction Assessment for Objects in Outer Space
The conjunction-assessment visualization tool used to determine when objects in space are at risk of colliding with each other.

Glenn Warrington
Kel Elkins
Ed Gee
Analytical Graphics, Inc.

Tangled: Flynn Tied Up
How a specific shot on "Tangled" deals with 70 feet of Rapunzel's hair.

Hubert Leo
Walt Disney Animation Studios

Rendering the Mandelbulb
This presentation identifies problems and solutions for rendering a Mandelbulb animation.

Robert Graf
Texas A&M University

Percy Jackson: Taming the Hydra
Animation supervisor Erik Gamache explains why that giant creature doesn't just eat those darn kids.

Erik Gamache
Digital Domain

Prep and Landing Effects: Coffee With Cream
EFX setups created for a coffee cup and a can of whipped cream.

Ian Coony
Walt Disney Animation Studios

Ratatouille: Rivers of Rodents
How a malfunctioning agent brain gave rise to the frenzied rat-swarm 
behavior in "Ratatouille". Rats pour through a ceiling, run from a 
shotgun-wielding granny, and procedurally bounce off furniture without 
physics simulation.

Paul Kanyuk
Pixar Animation Studios

Princess and the Frog: Almost There
The main character's fantasy of someday owning a great restaurant in New Orleans is based on the artistic style of the Harlem Renaissance.

Eric Daniels
Walt Disney Animation Studios

Clock Tower
Scrooge witnesses the effects of the Ghost of Christmas Present aging, until he's merely dust in front of the clock tower.

David Shirk
ImageMovers Digital

Prep and Landing: Gingerbread Scanner Effects
The elves use a handheld holographic projector to measure the 
space under the tree for Santa's gift.

David Hutchins
Walt Disney Animation Studios

Up: Master Lighting for the Kevin Babies Sequence
Master lighting the first portion of the epilogue sequence for "'Up", where Carl, Russell, and Dug say their farewells to Kevin and her babies.

Farhez Rayani
Pixar Animation Studios

Painting Watercolor in Photoshop
Trying to find a way to create a watercolor look that would 
mimic an Art Nouveau print.

Lisa Keene
Walt Disney Animation Studios

Untitled Lovestory: The 3D Previs of a Feature Film
A second-time director, a student VFX supervisor, and a DoP locked themselves into the director's apartment for three months and created a 3D previs for the feature film "Untitled Lovestory". They had no clue how to do it, hacked themselves through the jungle of 3D apps, and created 100 minutes of animated 3D previs.

Peter Koller
KOP 11 Filmproduktion

Peter Hacker
Filmakademie Baden-Würrtemberg

Marcus Stotz

Thomas Strasser
Eidolon Entertainment

Not a Ball Pit: Shredded Trash on Toy Story 3
The shredded trash conveyor belt, with a challenge from the 
director on what it should NOT look like.

David Ryu
Pixar Animation Studios