The transition to the next generation of consoles, particularly the Xbox One and PS4 has after 8 years unleashed a new power to game developers worldwide, and new heights to expectations from games. Come for an exclusive, inside look under the hood and see how the visual effects team at Infinity Ward tackled this challenge. New technology was added to the engine to allow for much higher fidelity in destruction sequences. And several film techniques were adopted to help raise the bar. Lead Visual Effects Artist David Johnson and Senior Visual Effects Artist Alessandro Nardini will present their work on their latest blockbuster work: Call of Duty: Ghosts.
When: 7:00pm Thursday January 23, 2014
Where: VIFF’s Vancity Theatre 1181 Seymour Street (@ Davie)
Doors: 6:00pm (for Industry Mixer 19+ Only)
Online sales are open until midnight on January 22nd, with any remaining seats available at the door.
Members– $10 (Login to purchase advance tickets or become a member now )
Tickets for groups and non-members will be open to the public on January 6, 2014.
Non-members – $20
Group – $15 (5 or more)
**There are no physical tickets to pick up. We have a list with the purchaser’s name at the ticket desk at the event. If the purchaser is not attending OR you have a group of people and want to have them enter on their own, please contact us with the names and purchaser information. Thanks!
David Johnson
David is currently working as the Lead Visual Effects Artist at Activision/Blizzard’s Infinity Ward studio. David started his career in 1994 as a colorist at CST technology colorizing cartoons and film. He studied animation and special effects at Santa Monica College’s Academy of Entertainment Technology. David has work in games, film, web and television but has been dedicated to games since 1999. David has worked on over 15 games including some of the top selling franchised of all time including Halo 3 and the Call of Duty series. David is on the Board of Directors of the Visual Effects Society and was the recipient of a VES award for his work on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. He is published as a contributing author to the book “Introduction to Game Development” for which he wrote the chapters on modeling and effects.
Alessandro Nardini (2nd of July 1976) is an Italian VFX artist who spent most of his career serving the film industry. He started in his own country driven by a strong passion and an unprecedented curiosity for everything related to the magic he was seeing in special effects movies since he was very young. After years spent in the creation of commercials and music videos in Italy for some of the major post production houses, he decided to try the international experience finding a job as a Lead 3D Artist for a small VFX company in Vancouver. Since then, he hasn’t worked in his home country and his resume started to include some of the most prestigious studios in the world: The Moving Picture Company, Animal Logic, Dreamworks Animation, Digital Domain, The Mill, Rhythm & Hues and Prime Focus World to name a few. He went to learn and serve their projects, always driven by a strong passion for VFX. Alessandro’s skills culminated when he was recruited for the realization of the VFX for Roland Emmerich’s blockbuster “2012” at Sony Picture/Uncharted Territory. Within a crew of extremely talented artist from all over the world he realized some of the most cutting edge destruction VFXs ever made. His work became a point of reference for other film destruction sequences that followed “2012” for years. Since the beginning of 2013 he was recruited by Activision/Infinity Ward to work on his first video game: Call of Duty Ghosts to help raise the bar in real time destruction sequences. Since then he is as happy as ever and has also become a video game lover!