Tag Archives: 3d animation

EMMY WINNERS GIVE KUDOS TO THECGBROS CGINSIDER PODCAST

Using an Animated Avatar of Himself, Digital Media Professional, Bill Johnston, Co-founder of the Popular TheCGBros YouTube Channel, Earns Praise for His Performance in a Video Podcast Preview Provided to a Special Panel of Members of the Voice Acting Academy.

SAN DIEGO, CA, 2021-Jan-06 — /REAL TIME PRESS RELEASE/ — TheCGBros, a Third-party aggregation YouTube Channel becoming an integral part of many short films’ release strategies, conducted a highly successful beta test of the first episode of their now-in-production podcast series, TheCGBros CGInsider Podcast. Bill Johnston, co-founder of TheCGBros YouTube Channel with his brother, Shaun Johnston, delivered the program content solo, in “talking head” format, but future episodes will see participation from Shaun and from influential guests, as well. Of special interest is that, although Bill spoke as himself, he did it through the novel medium of an animated avatar, possibly a first in the industry. The avatar was designed and executed by co-founder, Shaun Johnston.

The program content is intended for consumption by people with a wide variety of tastes and interests, especially fans of short videos. The subject matter will also be of general interest to students of CGI as well as both entry-level and professionals in the field. The premiere episode in the podcast series was released to the public on TheCGBros YouTube Channel at Midnight January 5, 2021. The series will be rolled out on other streaming platforms weekly on Tuesdays.

The test episode, which runs approximately 20 minutes long, is entitled “What is CGI?” Podcast titles scheduled for the remainder of January include: “Can You Describe the Different Jobs That Relate to Creating a CGI Film,” “Are There Examples of Current CGI in Films That Are So Well Done That They are Undetectable?” and “How Can I Get a Job in Gaming?”

The venue used for the test was an online weekly meeting of the Voice Acting Academy’s “Conductors Club” (VAACC.) The VAACC is a membership support service open to voiceover talent at all levels of experience for the purpose of helping them to advance their voiceover career and to help them get more work. Membership in the VAACC includes weekly live coaching sessions directed by Voiceover Guru, James Alburger, who says that the monthly cost of membership is a lot less than the usual cost of a single hour of private coaching. ConductorsClub sessions are conducted using Zoom, a cloud-based peer-to-peer software platform app that allows virtual video and audio conferencing, webinars, live chats, screen-sharing, and other collaborative capabilities. Information on VAACC is available at https://voiceacting.com/conductorsclub.

The test involved a three-member panel of long-time members of the VAACC. Participating in the test were James Alburger, Tom Daniels, and George Asteri. Senior member of the panel, James Alburger, of San Diego, author of the book commonly used as a required text in college-level voiceover classes, “The Art of Voice Acting,” now in its 6th edition, asserted, “That’s really nice. Very interesting, very thorough, very effective.” Alburger is an 11-Time Emmy® Winner for Sound Design, and owner of The Voice Acting Academy and CIGMA Media. He is also an Engineer, Voice Acting Coach, and Executive Producer/Director for Film, Video, and other media. Alburger operates the websites VoiceActing.com and at cigmamedia.com. Panelist Tom Daniels averred, “That was awesome. Very informative and entertaining. It held my attention all the way through. What surprised me most was that the first use of computer generated imagery dates all the way back to 1958 in the Alfred Hitchcock film, Vertigo.” Daniels is an Emmy®-winning Voice Actor/Executive Producer who lives in Massillon, Ohio. You can listen to Tom’s sound demos here TomDanielsVoiceDemos and reach him at tomdanielsvoice@gmail.com. The third member of the panel, George Asteri, opined, “That was an excellent summary and gave a really good understanding of CGI. It really informed me.” Asteri, who lives in Saginaw, Michigan, has been acting for his entire life. As a Shakespearean trained actor, Asteri has performed on stage with such notable stars as Christopher Walken in Richard II, and Nicholas Pennell in Richard III. He has also played leading roles in many stage plays, including Shakespeare’s Hamlet. As a voice actor, Asteri has voiced national, local and cable commercials, shared his narration talent with a large Michigan school district film production, narrated for audiobooks, and has made several recordings for Internet clients. Asteri operates a website at https://www.GeorgeAsteri.com where he has provided his email address and telephone number.

Bill, when asked to describe his company’s vision for entering the wildly-expanding, somewhat chaotic podcast marketplace responded, “Well, we believe that mounting up a podcast series not only continues, but builds on our long-standing mission, which from Day-One has been to curate the highest quality professional-level CG content from around the world, as well as to provide insights and inspiration to our two main constituencies: the producers of video content and the consumers of that content. Simply stated, we help the second group — the consumers — by providing them with high quality video content, and we help the first group — the producers of video content — or as we call them,‘New Media Producers,’ by providing them access to a ‘destination site’ where members of the second group can come and discover their works. And by destination, we mean, specifically, a proven, well-established place, with a great reputation for streaming quality videos, where people who love our content know they can come to see outstanding videos that were created with the ‘blood, sweat, and tears’ suffering (not to mention loss-of-sleep) of artists with great talent but with little-to-no prospects to obtain timely significant Media Reach on their own. The proof is in the pudding — as we speak, we have more than 3.5 Million subscribers to our channel; that number is increasing by approximately 40,000 per month, and we are averaging more than 20 million views per month. And, we’ve aggregated almost 1.25 Billion views since we launched our channel. These statistics don’t tell the whole story, of course, but they put us, according to SocialBlade, the social media statistics website that tracks and measures growth, near the top 4,000 in YouTube subscriber ranking and near the top 3,000 in YouTube video view ranking.”

Responding to a further question, “How, specifically, will your podcast series contribute to the accomplishment of your mission,” Johnston explained, “As a forward-looking company in the entertainment business, we’re always on the alert to detect changes that are happening in the entertainment marketplace. What we’ve seen is a growing trend that people want more engagement with great Internet sites that they have gotten to know and have grown to love. Given the rapid increase in the number of podcasts available in the marketplace, we figured a podcast would be a great way, not only to meet our fans’ desires for a higher level of engagement with us, it would also be a great way for us to enhance the value we can add to providing curated videos to our viewers. We are also creating the company infrastructure necessary to support a fan club. We think that will provide even more of the engagement
that fans want.”

Bill Johnston is an established Digital Media Professional with 22 years of experience, the last 18 years within the console-gaming industry. There, he has been involved in Creative Direction/Supervision, Project/Team Management, Dynamic Simulations, and Fluid Dynamics involving Rigid Bodies and Soft Bodies, Particles, and Sprites. He has also managed the production of cinematic FX animation for industry leaders such as Activision/Blizzard, Sony Computer Entertainment of America, and Bungie. He has specialized in in-depth work in the areas of Pre-Visualization, Pre-Rendered FX/Cinematic Cut-Scenes, Promotional Projects and Real-Time Future-Gen FX for Game Environments. Johnston has worked on more than 45 AAA game titles played on personal computers, as well as on Sony’s Playstation, and Microsoft’s Xbox consoles. The titles include, among others, game series such as the CALL OF DUTY,DESTINY, RESISTANCE, UNCHARTED 2, LAIR, WARHAWK, GOD OF WAR, and SOCOM 3. He is currently working on another high-profile game franchise creating FUTURE-GEN FX for next-gen Platforms.

Shaun Johnston is a professional CGI artist and animator in the video games industry with over 27 years of experience, with a broad background in creating 3D animation including previsualization, VFX, and cinematic sequences for PC and Console game trailers, and in-game Cut-Scenes. Today, he is a full-time 3D Animator. He has worked for several industry-leading video game companies including Sony Computer Entertainment America, Gearbox Software, Sony Online Entertainment, Daybreak Game Company. Shaun has also worked on numerous game titles including the billion-dollar Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMO) franchise EVERQUEST, the Guinness World Record-holding FPS PLANETSIDE 2, and one of first successful battle royale games, H1Z1.

About TheCGBros (Johnston Media Group, Inc.)
TheCGBros was founded as an informal partnership on August 20, 2011 by brothers Shaun Johnston and William Johnston. When the founders decided to operate the business in the form of a corporation, the assets of the “partnership” were absorbed by the new company, including all existing logos and other branding marks. Their company, Johnston Media Group, Inc., a California Domestic Corporation, came into being on August 12, 2014. The company’s corporate filing status is listed as Active and its File Number is C3701917. The company’s mailing addressis 2127 Olympic Parkway, Suite 1006,Chula Vista, CA 91915.

The mission of the company is “to curate the highest quality professional CG content from around the world, as well as to provide insights and inspiration to our two main constituencies: the producers of video content and the consumers of video content.” Simply stated, “we help consumers of video content by providing them with high quality video content and we help the producers of video content by providing them access to an audience at a ‘destination site’ where the public can discover their works, thus giving the New Media Producers timely, wide, and deep, Media Reach. The company’s website can be reached at thecgbros.com; and their YouTube Channel at youtube.com/TheCGBros.

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Media contact:

William Johnston, II at cmo@thecgbros.com

Logo:

TheCGBros logo

Effekt-Etage Creates Innovative iPad App

Seemingly real paint samples that react to movements of the iPad, leather that you can actually touch as well as see, and individualised image content in many app areas. A new benchmark for innovation, interactivity and customer communication.

BMW Individual, the most exclusive way to drive a BMW, is now available as an interactive experience on the iPad. Thanks to an innovative user interface, this unprecedented virtual product catalogue enables a breathtaking experience of BMW Individual, the BMW premium range.

The app commissioned by BMW M GmbH and developed by Effekt-Etage had a simple aim: to fully exploit the interactive potential offered by the iPad medium in an innovative way, thus creating a new benchmark. The app developed by Effekt-Etage is set to establish a new trend in the category of interactive product magazines.

Its various chapters relate interesting facts about the BMW Individual philosophy, paint finishes, fine leather upholstery and other equipment options. In addition, users can create a virtual vehicle according to their preferences and view the finished result in a Visualiser.

The app is the first to achieve a near-realistic representation of paint finish samples in a virtual environment. In part this is due to Effekt-Etage’s high-quality 3D renderings, which perfectly communicate the BMW Individual paint finishes’ special appeal. In addition, the virtual paint finishes react to movements of the iPad, so the user has the actual impression of moving a real-life paint sample in relation to a light source. This virtual reality effect has also been implemented for the leather samples, allowing the user to leaf through them and touch them.

The interactive capability of this app means that almost every product image can be interacted with, creating a virtual environment that allows users to experience the look and feel of the various equipment details for themselves.

Another outstanding feature is the way the app combines the product information and vehicle configuration processes.

The conventional approach involves the user finding information about products and features such as paint finishes, equipment etc. in a physical catalogue, or on the web. They then begin a separate step of vehicle configuration in a Configurator, beginning with a default vehicle. The BMW Individual app goes one step further by combining these previously separate steps. While reading the various chapters, users are already able to bookmark paintwork finishes, leather colours or other features they like. They can effectively configure their vehicle while gathering information, performing both activities within a single process. As a result, the vehicle initially shown in the Configurator already reflects the user’s individual preferences.

Users can of course save “their” dream car, share it with friends and acquaintances on Facebook, file it in their personal photo album, or send it off in an e-mail.

The BMW Individual iPad app comes in English and German, is optimised for the iPad and iPad2, and is available free of charge in the App Store.

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Monkey See Monkey Do – Savanna” – 1.02 App for Apple iPhone® and iPod touch®

March 3, 2011-LOS ANGELES, CA – Smartoonz® has launched “Monkey See Monkey Do – Savanna” 1.02 App for Apple iPhone® and iPod touch®. The App is based on the successful TV Series “Monkey See Monkey Do™”

“Monkey See Monkey Do – Savanna™” is an easy to use interactive fun App for the whole family. Monkey loves interacting with his fans, and with six entertaining screens he can do exactly that! users can play with him, tease him and even take a picture with him.

The new app, developed by Snappsi and produced by Smartoonz, offers fun 3D animation, which is triggered when interacting with Monkey: Users can poke Monkey, tickle him until he asks them to stop, offer him bananas, rock him in his Hammock until he falls, tease him with a fly etc. Talking to Parrot will make him repeat everything user say in order to wake up Monkey… they can also create their own picture with Monkey or his Friends, send it by email, share it on Facebook and save it to Library. Last but not least, users can watch fun clips from the TV show.

Application Highlights:
* Offer Monkey bananas
* Tickle him until he asks you to stop
* Poke him in the head until he falls
* Press the Snake button to invite Snake, touch Monkey’s leg to avoid him
* Create a postcard of you with Monkey. Save and share the postcard with your friends and family.
In App full upgrade:
* Talk to Parrot who will repeat everything you say in order to wake up Monkey…
* Turn your phone to rock Monkey in his hammock until the hammock spins, and Monkey falls…
* Upset Monkey by dragging the fly to his ears, legs, hands and face…
* Create a postcard of you with Monkey or any of his friends. Save and share with your friends and family.
* Watch some fun clips from the TV show.

Device requirements:
* Compatible with iPhone and iPod touch (3G+)
* iOS 4.0 or higher
* 104.0 MB

Pricing and Availability:
“Monkey See Monkey Do – Savanna” 1.02 is Free and available exclusively at the Apple App Store worldwide in the Entertainment category. In App full upgrade available for$0.99 USD.

App Links:
App Store:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/monkey-see-monkey-do-savanna/id418137429?mt=8&ls=1
Monkey See Monkey Do website : http://monkeyseemonkeydo.co/
In-Game Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/smartoonz
Screenshot:
http://monkeyseemonkeydo.co/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/iPhone-Screenshot11.png
App Icon: http://monkeyseemonkeydo.co/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/MSMD-AppArtworkweb.png
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MonkeySeeYou
Twitter: @monkeyseeyou
Smartoonz website: http://smartoonz.co

Contact info:
For press inquiries, promo code requests, and any other questions, please contact
support@monkeyseemonkeydo.co

Monkey See Monkey Do™ is a colorful, upbeat CG animated kid’s series which encourages children to engage with the show’s characters through dance. The show is successfully broadcasted by major TV channels, including Playhouse Disney LATAM, PBS Kids Sprout, France 5, TVA, TVO, Knowledge, Minimax, Hop!, PBS Thailand.

Contact Details: Smartoonz LTD.
10717 wilshire boulevard, suite 405
Los angeles, ca 90024
Tel. +13235225747
Website: http://smartoonz.co
Email: yuval@smartoonz.co