From the sifting flour in Bunny's bowl, to an avalanche in Ice Age, the Special Effects team at Blue Sky is charged with bridging the gap between our characters and their environment. What is a special effects in computer animation? Well they are the same as live action. In CGI there are some types of animation that are better achieved through computer simulation, than object posing. We create both the subtle and the spectacular depending on the scene in the movie.

Falling rain, snowflakes, character footprints, a campfire and even embers are a few basic examples of our typical tasks. Our FX team is known for its more sophisticated examples such as the exploding lava geysers in Ice Age.

We are assembled from a variety of artistic and technological backgrounds but we all share one common goal: the love of creating amazing looking special effects! This craft requires a blend of both highly technical and creative skills to do what we do. Since there are no buttons in the software that say 'make it snow' the FX team must often write custom software tools in our proprietary software to construct the desired animated effect.

We are fanatic about details and animation. The actualization of our groundbreaking computer generated aesthetic takes its cues from fundamental animation principles, paying close attention to weighting, timing, anticipation, follow-through and scale to ensure that the effect feels right in the shot.

Our first priority is always to complement the story point that is being made in the scene. Sometimes a shot calls for an effect to feel as it would in 'real life' or a physically correct simulation, such as falling rain or snow. For other scenarios we are called upon to go beyond reality and test our skills, creating either an exaggerated cloud of dust when a character falls, or a poof of dust to be more cartoon like, in order to add humor to a character's clumsiness.

The sky is the limit to what types of effects were might create in our films, and no action is too big or too small for us to figure out. That's partly why being an Effects Artist is so much fun, each shot establishes a bold new challenge to conquer.