Maya

  • Animating the Frontier: Realism and rigging in 1923 with WeFX

    On Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone prequel series, 1923, the Dutton family and other protagonists are under constant pressure from the encroachments of the modern world. One mistake, and they could end up shot, drowned, frozen to death, or mercifully, arrested. It’s fitting then that when WeFX had to complete 20 VFX shots in about three months…

    Visual Effects

  • Heroes, Crowds, and Heart: Building Character in The Electric State

    Immerse yourself in Digital Domain’s epic 3D creations, discovering how they craft character design and performance to convey emotion and personality. The 2025 Netflix film The Electric State exudes epic vibes from the scope of its story, the expanse of its landscapes, the skill of its performances, and perhaps most notably, the creative vision of…

    Visual Effects

  • A Sparrow’s Song Soars: How Collaboration Won Gold at the Student Academy Awards

    In life, and in art, encouraging those around you goes a long way. In the 2025 Student Academy Award-winning animated short film, A Sparrow’s Song, an injured sparrow singing along to a grieving widow’s piano playing in a World War II bomb shelter gives hope to everyone who hears it. On the 50-student team who…

    Animation

  • Gattai Robots + Winnie the Pooh: How Lemon Sky Gets It Done with Autodesk’s M&E Collection

    In this chat with Lemon Sky Studios, the team walks you through how they tackled the creative workflows behind their in-house Metal Genesis game and the Playdate with Winnie the Pooh animated series. They talk about the tools they rely on, why open standards matter to them, and what they think really makes a studio…

    Maya

  • How No.8’s Bold VFX Helped Bring Black Mirror’s Most Daring Tech Concepts To Life

    Season 7 of Netflix’s Black Mirror dives back into the tech-driven storytelling the show’s known for, from quantum computers that bend timelines to tools that can recreate vintage films. At No.8, a VFX studio based in the heart of Soho, London, that love of cool, forward-thinking technology really resonates. Together, the 70-strong team thrives on…

    Maya

  • How Triggerfish’s Animation Pipeline Creates Space for Artistic Freedom

    What does it take for a small animation studio to become a leader in the development and production of premium character-driven animation for feature film and TV? For Triggerfish, Africa’s largest and most awarded animation studio, the answer lies in empowering animators and embracing new technologies that let artists be artists. From automated animation pipelines to cutting-edge simulation software…

    Maya

  • SEGA’s Sonic X Shadow Generations: Mesmerizing Character Movement and Event Staging with Maya

    “Sonic X Shadow Generations” is the latest title (released October 2024) in SEGA’s signature “Sonic the Hedgehog” character franchise. It is a video game in which “Sonic Generations” (released in 2011) is remastered in high definition for current platforms, and the new “Shadow Generations” chronicle, featuring the popular Shadow the Hedgehog (“Shadow”) character, is included…

    Maya

  • AI-Powered MotionMaker for Animation: Your Top Questions Answered

    Maya now includes MotionMaker, a new motion-generation system that lets you drive the motion of your character through higher-level user input. MotionMaker uses machine learning to train on a motion dataset, and then applies that learning—along with user-provided information about a character’s current position and trajectory—to predict the next pose. With repeated predictions, the result…

    Maya

  • There Are No Ghosts at the Grand (or are there?): Friday Sundae on making their debut game

    Friday Sundae Studio is an independent game development company based in Bristol, England, founded by husband-and-wife duo Rachel and Anil Glendinning. They are currently working on their debut title, There Are No Ghosts at the Grand, which was featured at GamesCom. We sat down with co-founder and creative director Anil Glendinning, writer and director of…

    Maya

  • On Land and at Sea, Chromatica VFX Brings Battle Scenes to Life

    The talented team at Chromatica VFX used the Golaem plug-in for Maya to populate complex battle scenes with dynamic digital characters for L’Abbaglio, a 2025 film set during Giuseppe Garibaldi’s 1860 campaign that reunified Italy. Please introduce yourself and the studio. My name is Mattia Donelli, and I am a crowd technical director at Chromatica,…

    Visual Effects