Gamera visual effects paper

[Cstand]

[Tom R VanSlambrouck]

[Jim Ballard]

[Robert Saint John]

[Cstand]

[Robert Saint John]

[kiryugoji04]

[Robert Saint John]

[Kaijucast]

[Robert Saint John]

Okay, did some research last night in some of the books I have such as "Gamera 2 Perfect Analysis" and the Shogakukan Gamera 3 book/mook that came out at the time, and others. Here's what I found:

- There is virtually no reference I can find to CG in Gamera GOTU. Not surprising. Wouldn't have been at all common in 1994, especially in Japan.

- In terms of blue/green screen and compositing (optical or digital), G1 used it for about 25% of its VFX, G2 about 50%, and G3 about 75%. I think. I'm not at all skilled in deciphering kanji heavy technical text!

- CG was lightly used in G2... some shots with a jet fighter, VFX such as beam weapons, sky flares, particles and such. I didn't find anything to indicate wireframes were ever made for Gamera or Legion.

- A great deal more was done digitally for G3, and models and animation seem to exist for all of the monsters (but not all of their stages), jets and effects.

- I couldn't find a single explicit reference to particular software by name. But one good picture appears to be Alias|Wavefront as it looked at the time on an SGI box. It has a very "UNIX/Iris look" to it (see below).

- OTOH, I found a completely outside reference in a 1999 AXIS Digital Visual magazine (Japanese) that seems to indicate the the most popular applications in Japan at the time were Softimage 3D, LightWave 3D, 3D Studio MAX, AfterEffects, DV-Rex, Trinity, Mirai, Electriclmage, and Shade.

That's it, I'm afraid. I haven't reviewed the DVDs to see if any of the behind the scenes sections have any more information that will help. I've scanned and uploaded two pics from the Shogakukan magazine, the section on CGI in G3. They're big (1MB and 500kb), so I'll only keep them up for a few days. Grab 'em if you want them!

[Robert Saint John]