Hawthorne Debuts Tonight!

As TNT orders up another drama centering on a strong female lead, Green Grass Studios in conjunction with The Outfit, offers up another successful delivery of state of the art visual effects that are guaranteed to contribute to the shows anticipated success. Hawthorne, debuting tonight at 8pm central TNT, chronicles the life of a single mother and the Chief Nursing Officer at Richmond Trinity Hospital in North Carolina. Created by emmy-winning writer-producer John Masius, Christina Hawthorne (played by Jada Pinkett Smith) gives tribute to those that make caretaking their life's work.

This project has been a perfect fit for our studio because it has required the development of photo realistic computer generated imagery to be tracked into each scene. The first episode had our team busy developing and inserting a prosthetic limb for a main character into three shots. We are excited to be a part of the Hawthorne production process and we are looking forward to future episodes.

GGS gets muddy with Ford

Recently we developed a series of Ford spots with our friends over at 3008. The series of six commercials focused on the truck and suv vehicles and aired during truck month (apparently a holiday in Texas). The client request was to see a life like stampede of trucks in context to the cool graphical style of the spot. Our team worked hand in hand with the editors to execute the presentation. Our crew not only developed fully functional CG trucks and suvs but we also created all the dynamic dust, dirt and mud effects. These effects were developed with a combination of particle and fluid simulation. The entire package of spots were produced in a six week squeeze. Provided below is one of the final spots that aired and a CG mud test that we developed while we were producing the spots.

McDonalds Anyone?

About a month ago we were approached by our good friends at 3008 to help with a national commercial spot scheduled to air May 16th. The story was that the agency (Moroch) was looking for a visual effects team that can conceptualize and execute a series of complicated particle effects on a tight deadline. So with the deadline looming we were excited to step in and provide a helping hand.

After a couple of brief concept meetings, our team set out to develop a series of particle intensive visual FX shots that focused on rebuilding two primary characters from dust. During this process our artists worked with 3008 and Moroch to develop the look and feel of the particles while sculpting computer generated replicas of each actor. Once the look and feel was finalized we used the computer generated actors to develop multiple composite passes of the particles. These individual passes defined events for the particles such as a simulated vortex with wispy streams, color changes from the soft yellow/white dust to the actors colors, and an added sparkle effect. After all was set up, we used our 200+ processor in-house rendering farm to accomplish the complex particle calculations and memory intensive rendering tasks. At job completion, the team developed a successful custom production pipeline that not only exceeded the client’s quality expectations but delivered it on time.

Busy...Busy...

It has been a couple of crazy months here at Green Grass. We have been working on everything from visual fx for television shows and commercials to animation for video games and sports teams. I have had the fun of venturing off to Los Angeles and San Francisco to stir up business for both of these markets. As we charge off into the summer I thought it would be a good idea to start posting some of our latest and greatest work.

Over the years, Green Grass Studios has developed a strong relationship with the Dallas Mavericks. We have produced animation for the team since 2003 and have had the awesome opportunity of working on some fun and inspirational pieces (Shaq Albert) over the years. This year we took notice that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will be releasing in late June. In excitement and anticipation our team developed a Transformers inspired animation for the Mavericks 2009 playoff run. As the Mavs go deeper into the playoffs I will be sure to keep our portfolio site updated (GGS Animations). Go Mavs!

17 Again

17 Again hits the big screens today and while many of us are probably not drooling over Zac Efron, you'll want to hit opening night to see the scene featuring Green Grass visual effects!  Our team was hired to develop the rain drop that lands on Matthew Perry towards the beginning of the movie.  We created a computer generated water drop using particle effects and composited it to the live action footage.

New Year and New Energy

In with a new year and with a new energy! I have spent most of my week in production meetings about several large and exciting projects. The concepts range from video game cinematics, television VFX and big commercial campaigns. Personally, I am glad our team got a good break after a long year. That said, we are back in the saddle and happy to be busy.

As a feature of this site, I will always try to feature a video or piece of artwork we are working on. Some of the pieces will be relevant to what we have produced in the past, some others will just feature cool stuff from the artists. The first piece was produced as a character / modeling test for one of our new modeling packages. Jesse Sandifer, a co-founder developed this at the end of last year.