Sateesh Malla - VFX Artist » VFX

The Orphanage is shutting down

Sateesh Malla — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 06:45:51 +0000

I just learned today that the VFX house, The Orphanage, in San Francisco is officially closing its doors. It was a real surprise considering the amazing work they’ve done, like in Iron Man. Seems the economic downturn is hitting everyone hard this year. There are several instructors at our school who work at the Orphanage, so it is really sad news.

Read more about it here at co-founder Stu Maschwitz’s blog.

Fall Semester 2008

Sateesh Malla — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:27:01 +0000

It’s amazing how quickly the summer went by. Classes officially begin today at the Academy of Art University. I have a full schedule with 3 classes (believe it or not). They are:

Pre-Production for VFX
Collaborative Texture and Lighting
Production Lighting Principles (VFX 1)

The pre-production class here at the academy is where you develop your masters thesis ideas, along with the story, storyboards, concept art, animatics, etc.

The collaborative Texture and Lighting class is essentially a production class where we colloborate as a class to work on outside projects. We actually had to sign a non disclosure agreement on the first day. I wish I could give more details, but you’ll just have to wait until my reel gets updated after the semester.

The last class is Visual Effects 1 consisting of five projects, some group, some individual, beginning with character replacement in a film. This is probably going to be a ton of work, but I’m not too worried about that right now.

Luckily, my classes are all on either Tuesday or Thursday so technically school starts on the 9th for me. It should be another exciting semester. I’ll update the site with project work as I chug along.

Summer Classes 2008

Sateesh Malla — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:23:26 +0000

My classes begin today. I’m taking the following:

Conceptual Physics
Advanced Texture and Lighting

I’m really looking forward to both of these. I haven’t taken physics since undergrad, but I’m not too worried. The class is going to cover the underlying physics in relation to the field of Visual Effects and Animation which will help me understand the fundamentals of science. We’ll be covering waves, particles, light, color, refraction, diffraction, motion, and much more.

The advanced texture and lighting class will no doubt help me tremendously. I’m familiar with the basics of texturing and not so much about lighting. Later this fall, I’m planning to take a lighting production class that will cover the rules for lighting during a green screen shoot, among other things. I’ll post updates on my work in the class. Stay tuned.