Everything you thought you knew is wrong. On almost every exterior shot you see on TV, the background is filled in via green screen. Watch this video and have your mind blown . [ That's How It Happened via Kottke ]

CGChannel uncovered this fantastic ’80s vintage documentary that details the three-month process behind HBO’s iconic pre-movie intro. Grit your teeth past the corny “Illusion!” song. It’s worth it to see how special FX were made “with computers” before CG. [ CGChannel ]

Put simply, Avatar is the most visually fantastic film I’ve ever seen. It will be hailed as the groundbreaking 3D release of its time while setting a new standard by which all blockbusters are measured. Yes, it’s that good. I’m not going to talk about plot (or that I thought to myself, Dances with Wolves in space more than once).

Directed by Niko Tziopanos, and azzparently starring a wholalotlot of Harry Potter’s Death Eater wannabes, this advertising for Central China Television has me completely mesmerized today. I just can’t have enough of that ink-in-water effect. [ Likecool ]

About six months ago, Michael Bay approached Digital Domain , the Academy Award winning special effects company behind movies like Benjamin Button , Titanic , and the The Fifth Element , with a last minute request. He needed a closeup. ( WARNING: Minor Spoilers Ahead ) Digital Domain was already working on some secondary characters for Transformers 2 while George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic building the main robots like Optimus Prime. Yes, Transformers 2 had such a big budget that DD was hired just to ride shotgun. One key moment of DD’s handiwork depicts the transformation of a girl named Alice—played by actress Isabel Lucas—into a lethal robot. The main shot, seen above, uses digital techniques like advanced particle simulation (physics) to tear 10,000 pieces of skin away from a girl’s body—the kind of high-concept graphics that require lots of software know-how, and computers to do incredible amounts of heavy lifting.

This video purports to be of some unknown creatures in the sewers under Cameron Village in Raleigh, North Carolina. It’s probably some early viral marketing for a movie. But! What if it isn’t? Oh god, what if it isn’t?? [ io9 ]

“It was really hard, it was really slow, it was really tedious, it was really expensive. And then next time we do it it’s going to be less difficult, and less slow and less expensive.” That’s what Ed Ulbrich , Executive VP of Production at Digital Domain told me about designing the 100% digital head seen in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button —a challenge he justly refers to as the “Holy Grail” of special effects imaging. In case you were interested in a few more specifics regarding the process, Ulbrich’s TED talk from a few months back is quite revealing. Despite the ludicrously complicated methodology (conveniently abbreviated during TED), Ulbrich can’t deny that human recreation will democratize like every other in the special effects industry, like morphing. “In 1991 when I saw Terminator 2, it blew my mind