And here’s a new profession doomed to extinction thanks to the wonders of new technology: pyrotechnicians. Those fireworks’ magicians will very soon be substituted by people such as Joshua T. Nimoy, algorithm masters or as they like to call themselves “software artists”.
Remember Tron Legacy? Well, he’s the one who massively contributed to those flashy blue neon special effects we all watched for just over a couple of hours. He spent half year writing the software to generate such visual effects working at Digital Domain with Bradley “GMUNK” Munkowitz, Jake Sargeant, and David “dlew” Lewandowski.
Big part of Joshua’s works for Tron Legacy was done using Adobe software and Cinema 4D. The rest of it got written in C++ using OpenFrameworks and wxWidgets. But for this film also Digital Domain’s CG artists were able to port Joshua’s apps over to Houdini for further evolution and better rendering than OpenGL could ever provide. (the rest of the images from Joshua’s work for Tron can be found on his page).
We just keep seeing what new software artists like Joshua or Matt Pyke can do and we’re instantly captivated.
But Mr Nimoy has done something else besides these luminous special effects. You all probably remember IBM’s data baby from last year right?
Yep, he was behind that too, and behind this Buick ad, or this ad for LG… Just like traditional animators new software artists have to earn their daily bread through advertising. So while we keep getting more of his stuff you can spend a few hours on his portfolio page.
