Brandon Davis stops by the CG Garage to talk about his very diverse careers. Having worked in CG for nearly two decades, he also happened to be part of Special Forces in the United States Army at the same times that he was making visual effects. Having worked at major facilities like Digital Domain and Weta, he has worked on Armageddon, The Day After Tomorrow, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Godzilla, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and much much more.

Daniel Lay, also known as VFX Soldier, stopped by the CG Garage to talk to his old friends, Christopher Nichols and Stephen Parker, about what is going in his life. We talked about his career, what happened when he was VFX Soldier, why he left the industry, and what he is doing now.

Having known and been friends with David Stripinis for a very long time, this was the first time that I actually met David in person. Having worked on many major feature films including Avatar, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, and Man of Steel, David is a long time VFX industry veteran, having focused a lot of his attention on virtual production, motion capture, and animation, while still reaching outside to lighting as well. He talks about his career, as well as give us his opinion on where he feels the industry needs to change.

Doug Roble has been at Digital Domain longer than anyone else as he was one of the first hires. He is the Creative Director of Software, and has helped develop many major tools over his career there. Having won both a Technical Achievement Award and a Science and Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, he has now  joined the Science and Technology Council. We talk about his career and influences, as well as what he envisions to be the future of computer graphics and Visual Effects.

Alex Alvarez started the Gnomon School of Visual Effects, Games + Animation in 1997 when the industry itself had few resources to find talent. His motivation came from his own frustration of the current education system in the United States, and its lack of support for the arts, or art education. Today, Gnomon continues to be one of the leading schools for Visual Effects by keeping its enrollment small and selective, making sure that they can sustain the demands of a selective industry.

Our second podcast from THU 2105 features two great artists. Jose Alves da Silva and Andrew Hickinbottom. Both have a love of character, have an amazing sense of humor, are great friends, but live in very different styles. We talk about their inspirations, and about our love for THU where we all became great friends.

David Prescott will kick off the first off a series off conversations we had at Trojan Horse was a Unicorn this year in Troia, Portugal. I first met David 13 years ago when we both worked at Digital Domain. We talk about his journey from South Africa to DD and Dreamworks. As a seasoned veteran, David has a great ability to balance logic, perception, reality, and inspiration. These ideas are what led to his talk at THU called: "Perception, Problem Solving, and Finding Inspiration in the Default World."

Blur Studio has always been a good friend of Chaos Group, but we were still lucky to be able to get Tim Miller, one of the founders of Blur, on the podcast. Tim is in the middle of directing the upcoming film Deadpool, due out in 2016. We talk about what it is like to get your first big feature film directing gig at age 50. We also have a very honest talk about running a studio like Blur, a very unique and creative place. Tim has a very different philosophy about how to run a studio which for the most part has been a huge advantage for them. But he is also honest about the mistakes he has made and owns up to them.

While at Siggraph we sat down with Kevin Baillie from Atomic Fiction. We speak about his interesting career starting on the Skywalker ranch, which, after a few extra stops along the way, led him to start Atomic Fiction with his childhood friend Ryan Tudhope. Kevin and his company are not shy of trying new things. While most people think that eventually people will possibly be rendering on the cloud, they have already been doing it for 5 years. He talks about how the company led over 600 shots on Robert Zemeckis's The Walk rendering on the cloud and with V-Ray for Katana.

We sit down at Siggraph 2015 to talk to Senior Compositor Shahin Toosi about how he has spent the last 2 years pushing V-Ray for Nuke. Based on his self admitted addiction with the product, he explains how having that level of rendering power inside of a composting package opens the doors things to people may not realize is possible.

Based on a request on Twitter, I asked Fausto to come on the podcast. His interesting background coming from São Paulo Brazil to working at Blizzard eventually led him to be a concept artist, now working at Lightstorm Entertainment. We follow his interesting and inspiring story.

Kirk and Christopher from A52 chat about their work at A52. We learn about the history of the company as well as some of the amazing work, including the Daredevil main title and Nissan #WithDad spots which got them nominated for Emmys this year. They are an extremely creative company which plays of their expertise in Directing, editing, and VFX.

Erik's background in Effects started way back as a director of photography in miniatures. Having done 8 seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Deep Space 9, he claims that he has done more shots of space ships then anyone else. His experience as a DP is what most inspires the people that work with him as a Visual Effect Supervisor today. In doing so, he has earned 3 Oscar nominations for I Robot, Real Steel, and Iron Man 3.

Rob Nederhorst is a veteran of the VFX industry. He has deep knowledge in compositing, lighting, 3D, 2D, as a supervisor, and even in programming. On top of that, he is also a teacher at University of Southern California. All this led him to his new venture Live Mentor. We talk about his history in the industry, and about his ideas behind the new project.

While at FMX, I had the opportunity to visit Luxx Studios, an interesting small studio that does some really great Visual Effects work. I sat down with Andrea Block and Christian Haas in their very warm and inviting studio to talk about their work. Besides the work on White House Down and Grand Budapest Hotel, we also talked about the feature animation that they are producing called Manou the Swift. They talk about their inspiration in making the film, as well as what it takes to get something like this to happen.

We recorded this podcast while at FMX in Stuttgart. We had a great conversation with Jörn Großhans a VFX Supervisor and Christian Zilliken a CG Supervisor at Mackevision. They talk about what it was like to start a VFX department there and all the amazing work they did on Game Of Thrones Season 4 and 5. You will also hear a bit from Kian Saemian who is the Business Development Manager.

Allan and I both started our podcasts around the same time. And while he and I have similar audiences, history, and friends, we were inspired by different motivations. At the age of 33, Allan has been doing visual effects professionally for 20 years. Besides his strong drive, he feels a strong need to give back to the community through his new mentorship program.  I had a great time talking to Allan, and I have a strong feeling that we will be joining forces a lot more when it comes to supporting our community.

This week we talk to Ben West, a Creative Director at Framestore, and Director. His unique and interesting upbringing, combined with his strong creative education in both Architecture and Film School, led him to create interesting projects such as Fugu and Tako. Based on it's success, Ben has launched a kickstarter project to expand the story into a graphic novel form. He tells us about his past work, his passion for CG and VFX, and his creative process.

Scott Ross is an extremely important person in the world of Visual Effects. He was the general manager at ILM when they started to go digital. He also founded Digital Domain with James Cameron and Stan Winston. He later made great efforts to be an advocate for the visual effects industry based on his strong knowledge of how the business is run. Most recently, he has become an ambassador for Trojan Horse was a Unicorn, bringing world class speakers to that event.  We speak about his long and fascinating history, as well as what we each think is wrong with and how to fix the issues surrounding the world of VFX today.

Jonathan Litt has a long history in the world of VFX. We cover a large number of subjects in the podcast with Jon. From his first job at ILM, his work on the Matrix series, digital humans at Digital Domain, we even dive into his new passion for virtual reality. Jon offers insight into every part of the process.