December 30, 20244 min readAuroras May Light Up New Years Sky after Solar OutburstsWill still more auroras ring out 2024, a year marked by the celestial displays?By Meghan Bartels edited by Lee BillingsThe northern lights seen over Lindisfarne Castle in England on October 10, 2024. Owen Humphreys/PA Images via Getty ImagesThe sun is bidding farewell to 2024 with a bangor rather several bangs. Our star produced three powerful flares on December 29. In addition, two bubbles of material it sent speeding out across space may paint Earths skies with auroras just as many Earthlings mark the turn of the year.Solar flares are categorized by their peak brightness in x-ray wavelengths, with X-class flares being the fiercest flashes. Our stars December 29 activity included three such flares, which occurred at 2:18 A.M., 11:14 P.M. and 11:31 P.M. EST, according to a NASA statement. The outbursts represent continuing tumult amid what scientists have identified as the maximum of the suns current activity cycle, which also produced stunning auroras as far south as Florida in May and October.The suns 11-year activity cycle is dictated by the magnetic fields that roil our stars surface. Our sun is a giant magnet, and so most of the things that happen on the sun are guided by the magnetism, says Maria Kazachenko, a heliophysicist at the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Solar Observatory.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Scientists measure the suns activity by counting the dark sunspots that mar its surface. Each sunspot is home to a smaller magnetic fieldalthough sunspots themselves are often the size of Earth. Sudden changes in the configuration of a sunspots magnetic field, called a magnetic reconnection, can release a huge amount of energy, causing a solar flare. But scientists are still trying to understand what events can trigger magnetic reconnections.The major problem with these flares is that we cannot really stick a thermometer or a magnetometer inside of the solar flare, Kazachenko says. So its very hard to understand whats going on.And magnetic reconnection in one sunspot can trigger the phenomenon in another sunspoteven across a large distancein what scientists call a sympathetic eruption. We frequently see flares occurring in groups, Kazachenko says. The two flares that occurred on Sunday evening represented such a group: they involved sunspots on opposite sides of the suns equator that erupted less than 20 minutes apart.But flares are merely blasts of radiation. Usually for an aurora to occur, the sun must release a bubble of plasma that scientists call a coronal mass ejection (CME), a phenomenon that follows some but not all flares. Whether a CME occurs depends on the details of magnetism at play. During some flares, magnetic fields trap material within the sun. During others, they allow vast blobs of plasma to escape the roiling star. And the more material there is, the better the odds of more spectacular auroras are, Kazachenko says.In the case of Sundays activity, all three major flares produced CMEs. Whether they will produce auroras isnt yet clear. But the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations Space Weather Prediction Center has released a geomagnetic storm watch for an event on December 31 and January 1 that, it says, might result in auroras becoming visible over the northern U.S. and into the nations lower Midwest.The uncertainty in the forecast arises from a few factors. Only two CMEs are on paths to potentially strike Earth, and these still may result in glancing blows, complicating predictions about their secondary effects. In addition, Kazachenko says, in order for an aurora to form, the magnetic field of the plasma blob must align opposite to Earths own magnetic field. Otherwise the plasma will simply stream by, scarcely perturbing our planet.The recent activity doesnt surprise scientists who have been carefully monitoring the suns progression through its activity cycle. In an October press conference, experts announced that the sun is officially in the maximum period of that cycle and will remain so for much of 2025.We can expect the maximum phase to be on the longer side, roughly three to four years long, said Lisa Upton, a solar scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, during that briefing. Currently were about two years into the maximum period, so we are anticipating another year or so of maximum phase before we really enter the declining phase.Throughout the remainder of solar maximum and beyond, scientists expect more activity and more impacts on Earth. We anticipate additional solar and geomagnetic storms leading to opportunities to spot aurora over the next several months, said NASA scientist Kelly Korreck during the same press conference.And although solar outbursts can harm satellites and astronauts in orbit and even the power grid on Earth, scientists are pleased to see 2024s activity and that of this solar cycle, which has aligned with the arrival of a massive new solar telescope and two separate spacecraft, all designed to tease apart the mysteries of how the sun works.This year has been amazing, Kazachenko says. Were now living through this solar maximum, and now we have this huge suite of instruments that observe the sun in a new way. Were now living in the golden age of solar multimessenger astronomy.

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(Reuters) -Chinese state-sponsored hackers breached the U.S. Treasury Department's computer security guardrails this month and stole documents in what Treasury called a "major incident," according to a letter to lawmakers that Treasury officials provided to Reuters on Monday.The hackers compromised third-party cybersecurity service provider BeyondTrust and were able to access unclassified documents, the letter said.News Police: Suspects in Aurora kidnapping, torture are Venezuelan TdA gang members looking for cellphone videoBy Kyla PearceThe Denver GazetteAccording to the letter, hackers "gained access to a key used by the vendor to secure a cloud-based service used to remotely provide technical support for Treasury Departmental Offices (DO) end users. With access to the stolen key, the threat actor was able to override the services security, remotely access certain Treasury DO user workstations, and access certain unclassified documents maintained by those users."The Treasury Department said it was alerted to the breach by BeyondTrust on Dec. 8 and that it was working with the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI to assess the hack's impact.Treasury officials didn't immediately respond to an email seeking further details about the hack. The FBI did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment, while CISA referred questions back to the Treasury Department. A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington rejected any responsibility for the hack, saying that Beijing "firmly opposes the U.S.'s smear attacks against China without any factual basis."BeyondTrust, based in Johns Creek, Georgia, did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but on its website, the company said it had recently identified a security incident that involved a limited number of customers of its remote support software. The statement said a digital key had been compromised in the incident and that an investigation was under way.Tom Hegel, a threat researcher at cybersecurity company SentinelOne, said it appeared the security incident described by BeyondTrust aligns closely with the reported hack at Treasury, though he cautioned that the company itself would need to confirm any connection."This incident fits a well-documented pattern of operations by PRC-linked groups, with a particular focus on abusing trusted third-party services - a method that has become increasingly prominent in recent years," he said, using an acronym for the People's Republic of China.(Reporting by Raphael Satter in Washington, AJ Vicens in Detroit, and Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli, Tasim Zahid, Alistair Bell, Rod Nickel and Leslie Adler)

"KOF Studio will proudly carry on the 30-year legacy".As part of The King of Fighters 30th anniversary, SNK Corporation has established a new King of Fighters studio to keep the "legacy" going and also bring forth a new "revolution.Heres the official announcement on SNK's website:Read the full article on nintendolife.com

While AI is lauded by some as the biggest technological breakthrough since the industrial revolution, enterprises arguably the techs biggest potential customer base have been slow to adopt AI.While some investors predicted that 2024 would be the year wed start to see more AI adoption by enterprises, that didnt play out as budgets remained constrained and AI tech often remained in the experimental category.Will that all start to change in 2025? Depends on who you ask.TechCrunch talked to 20 venture capitalists who back startups looking to sell to enterprises about their predictions for 2025. They told us what they anticipate regarding enterprise budgets, trends worth following, and what it will take to raise a Series A in 2025, among other things. Heres what they said.SC Moatti, managing partner, Mighty Capital: Im really looking into this theme AI adoption hinges on better data. As enterprises transition from AI experiments to large-scale deployment, the demand for high-quality data intensifies.Aaron Jacobson, partner, NEA: Code agents for app development modernization are underhyped. Expect to see AI being used to re-platform mainframe apps to the cloud and upgrade older codebases.Molly Alter, partner, Northzone: A key focus of mine is on spaces that were historically untouchable by venture funds because their business models demanded high COGS or OpEx. Were seeing AI automate so much behind-the-scenes work that sectors like accounting services, or revenue cycle management, or white-glove legal services can now command software-like margins.Marell Evans, founder and general partner, Exceptional Capital: Understanding trends in enterprise sales cycles what is the duration certain organizations are trialing tools for before making decisions about internal adoption? In addition, understanding the different pricing models of AI [in relation to] traditional SaaS, consumption-based and/or outcome-based.Mike Hayes, managing director, Insight Partners: An unappreciated metric and something that I think will gain traction in 2025 is TTFV, or time-to-first-value. I see this as a proxy for ease-of-implementation, so faster TTFV solutions should have a bigger advantage going into [the] new year.What areas are you looking to invest in?Liran Grinberg, co-founder and managing partner, Team8: Enterprise resilience, whether in front of operational faults or malicious insider or outsider threats. The CrowdStrike software update incident demonstrated how fragile our digital world is, not only due to cyberattackers but also just mistakes.Jonathan Lehr, co-founder and general partner, Work-Bench: Data sovereignty as a service. Organizations are increasingly investing in data sovereignty solutions driven by regulatory requirements and geopolitical concerns. We are exploring startup opportunities that enable companies to maintain complete control over their datas location, storage, processing, and governance while ensuring compliance with local regulatory frameworks.Mark Rostick, vice president and senior managing director, Intel Capital: One area were looking at is companies that focus on task-specific models. While the foundational models are well established, I find models that excel at specific functions particularly intriguing, especially when combined with agents built on top of them. In addition, we are closely monitoring the development of alternatives to transformers and any possible solutions to reduce the need for the huge amount of computing capacity now required to train LLMs and use them in production.Mike Hayes, managing director, Insight Partners: Enterprises have historically thought of technology as either driving revenue or reducing cost, but that is quickly changing in favor of technology that drives enterprise value while simultaneously reducing business friction. I look for solutions that solve unique, orthogonal challenges for enterprises areas where traditional solutions have fallen short; this includes vertical and persona-specific workflows reimagined with GenAI or agentic automation and security innovations that not only identify and alert, but also remediate.Jason Mendel, venture investor, Battery Ventures: A few interesting areas where I think AI can add significant value, and which Im excited about, include observability / incident response, IT service management, demand generation and sales engagement, offensive security, software development, and the SOC workflow.Ed Sim, founder and general partner, Boldstart Ventures: We think in second order effects. So if we assume that in the future, meaning the next two to three years, we could live in a world where each of us has dozens or hundreds of agents doing work for us, we need to think about all of the infrastructure that needs to be built to support these new digital employees. Whos going to provide the security infra to provide access control? Whos going to manage these? Is there a platform to manage disparate agents and secure them? What about a runtime system for Claudes MCP, which feels like a dockerized, secure sandbox for agents to do work.What technologies, sectors, companies, etc., are you finding interesting that arent AI?Liran Grinberg, co-founder and managing partner, Team8: Quantum computing is still promising. Cybersecurity isnt going anywhere as well, with attackers leveraging AI and an increased complexity in protecting our digital infrastructure.Nina Achadjian, partner, Index Ventures: Weve seen a resurgence in fintech, SaaS, and e-commerce, which were hot sectors that saw a slowdown in the last couple of years. Beyond that, we expect cyber and gaming to continue to be interesting this year, with cyber accelerating further as the IPO market opens up and regulations and disclosure rules around security increase.Aaron Jacobson, partner, NEA: There is a ton of hype around securing AI, but the bigger opportunity is helping enterprises apply Cybersecurity 101 at scale in a way that doesnt impede user productivity. Key areas of particular interest are enforcing least privilege access, maintaining a secure data posture, and preventing ransomware. Im also excited to invest in technology that facilitates multi-cloud deployments for enterprises.Molly Alter, partner, Northzone: Im really excited about companies addressing the public sector. The fiscal environment for government contracting is flush; total federal agency contracts reached $774 billion in 2023. Technology adoption and modernization are key to driving the efficiencies that the new administration is committing to, and there is a growing ecosystem of companies that are tackling this head-on.Andrew Ferguson, vice president, Databricks Ventures: Were spending a significant amount of time with our system integrator partner ecosystem. These companies are doing the hard work of helping enterprises take their data and AI strategies and turn them into real-world implementations.Janelle Teng, vice president, Bessemer Venture Partners: We are moving beyond the modern data stack. The data infrastructure landscape is undergoing a massive transformation, fueled by various factors, including the rise of lakehouse architecture and convergence toward specific open table format standards.Raviraj Jain, partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners: Energy is a huge sector to invest in given increasing demand for energy for data centers and the challenges with grid failures across the country. Well see continued interest in nuclear both fusion and fission.When it comes to AI, how are you determining that a company has a moat?Cathy Gao, partner, Sapphire Ventures: I think about it in a 5D framework: design, data, domain expertise, distribution, and dynamism. Since early this year, we at Sapphire have used this framework to evaluate companies building applications with AI.SC Moatti, managing partner, Mighty Capital: An AI moat is built on proprietary data, cutting-edge algorithms, and scalable infrastructure, enabling unique and superior solutions.Scott Beechuk, partner, Norwest Venture Partners: The deepest moats will be created by large proprietary datasets. The companies with the greatest long-term potential are those building their own unique datasets to excel in their particular, verticalized channels often by either training or fine-tuning their own models.Jonathan Lehr, co-founder and general partner, Work-Bench: As a pureplay seed fund, were focusing most of our energy in vertical AI opportunities tackling business-specific workflows that require deep domain expertise and where AI is mainly an enabler of acquiring previously inaccessible (or highly expensive to acquire) data and cleaning it in a way that wouldve taken hundreds or thousands of man-hours.Raviraj Jain, partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners: Question to ask is, As models become better, does this company get threatened or strengthened?What does it take to raise a Series A as an enterprise startup in 2025?Liran Grinberg, co-founder and managing partner, Team8: With a strong founder-market fit, and an ambitious vision to build a big company, one can raise a solid $15 [million to] $25 million Series A round with only a few $100Ks in ARR.Molly Alter, partner, Northzone: Successful Series A enterprise startups will show strong topline traction (>100% YoY) with low burn multiples; gone are the days of 2021 when it was all about growth at all costs. More importantly, these businesses will show a clear long-term differentiation strategy that will set them apart from the host of other offerings attempting to raise money and sell into the same enterprise customer base.Kirby Winfield, founding general partner, Ascend: Go from zero to $1 million in two quarters with an A-plus team in a massive market with a differentiated solution having created overwhelming demand.Andrew Ferguson, vice president, Databricks Ventures: If youre building an AI-first product, an all-star technical team and early product market traction ($2 [million to] $5 million ARR) may be the Series A expectation. The time from product launch to $5 million ARR is materially faster in the AI era than it was in the traditional SaaS era. I expect that the Series B bar will be much higher and it remains to be seen if this early ARR is high-quality and durable.Jonathan Lehr, co-founder and general partner, Work-Bench: Were hearing from downstream peers that the bar is around $1.5 million with the ability to grow 3x from there sequentially to raise a stellar Series A.Jason Mendel, venture investor, Battery Ventures: Repeatability. Startups that are solving a real pain point in a large market where there is clear urgency from a buyer/user perspective should be well-positioned to raise a Series A in 2025.Do you predict enterprises will increase their tech budgets for 2025? Will they decrease them?Aaron Jacobson, partner, NEA: Within AI, well see budget allocated away from chatbots to agents. Enterprises will move beyond the low-hanging fruit of GPT wrappers to deploy digital workers that can reason and take action to make a real business impact.Scott Beechuk, partner, Norwest Venture Partners: Tech budgets across many industries will increase in 2025, driven by leaders desire to achieve two goals which will sometimes be at odds with each other. The first goal is consolidation. The second is increasing top-line growth and improving operational efficiency, both of which are achievable with AI-based software applications. Buyers will purchase startup solutions in this category despite their desire to consolidate.Kathleen Estreich, partner, Pear VC: In 2024, we expected to see more enterprise adoption of AI. But that hasnt panned out, primarily because we havent yet figured out use cases that are tightly scoped enough and the tools to reduce hallucinations and validate outputs have not gotten robust enough. In 2025 I expect to see more enterprise adoption as the model providers extend their stack upward. Every enterprise will need an AI tech strategy. If you dont adopt, you wont keep up. This will also create a lot of false signals on the revenue side for AI startups as experimental budgets will be high, but true product-market fit will be harder to see at first glance.Kirby Winfield, founding general partner, Ascend: Enterprises will increase AI budgets in 2025. The question isnt whether theyll invest but how theyll tackle pricing, testing, and data security. Companies like Salesforce and Smartsheet have already committed to AI adoption and will push harder to leverage their data assets to stay competitive.Susan Liu, partner, Uncork Capital: Probably the same for the first half, and then as the economy improves and revenue/profits improve, well see an increase in tech budgets in the second half.Mike Hayes, managing director, Insight Partners: Based on what Im hearing from our enterprise partners, theyre likely to marginally increase their tech budgets in 2025, with a focus on areas that deliver measurable ROI and clear KPIs. I expect pressure from boards and CXOs to put AI use cases into production to increase and receive discretionary budget. I also expect continued enterprise investment in cybersecurity and cloud optimization. Said differently, the right emerging technologies should not have trouble landing due to tech budgets.Jason Mendel, venture investor, Battery Ventures: Im optimistic about 2025 and expect to see companies increase their IT budgets with a strong focus on emerging technologies. Heading into the 2025 budgeting season, we at Battery Ventures polled 100 CXOs, collectively representing over $35 billion in annual technology spend, and 74% of them expected to increase their technology spend in 2025.Will there be more AI adoption?Paul Drews, managing partner, Salesforce Ventures: Yes, essentially all enterprise workflows can be optimized with AI especially agentic AI. Were seeing real demand for AI and ML tools that can make underlying models 50% more efficient while delivering improved results. AI is experiencing froth, but from a larger market perspective (not just Silicon Valley), AI is still new and everyone is trying to figure out how to use it, price it, and purchase it.Mark Rostick, vice president and senior managing director, Intel Capital: For the moment, it is clearly easier to adopt AI through application vendors than trying to build your own platform given that the market for enterprise platform tools is still very, very fragmented. I do think there is pent-up demand for some sort of platform solution, so I believe well see many founders trying to address that problem this coming year.Raviraj Jain, partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners: Its a consensus view but AI adoption will continue to accelerate in 2025 as (1) model capabilities improve, (2) enabling infrastructure is built out, and (3) stronger AI-first products come to market.What kinds of companies in your portfolio are seeing the strongest growth? Do you predict that will change in 2025?Marell Evans, founder and general partner, Exceptional Capital: Urgent pain points for AI-ready customers are producing shorter enterprise sales and procurement cycles and therefore faster traction and scale. As we see AI adoption more broadly, we may see enterprises will have greater appetite to try not just solving for the urgent problems but also planning ahead to maintain competitive edge with nice to have or more future-forward and strategic solutions.Kathleen Estreich, partner, Pear VC: We are seeing great traction in vertical agents with a clear understanding of the unique needs of their customers. I think vertical SaaS is a huge opportunity in 2025 to own the end-to-end workflows with custom-built agents for the tasks to be done.Janelle Teng, vice president, Bessemer Venture Partners: Many of Bessemers AI defense tech companies experienced tremendous growth this year. One of our observations earlier in the year is that the defense community is not sitting idly by as the AI revolution sweeps the consumer and commercial industries by storm. The [Department of Defense] mapped and released its formal AI adoption strategy last year, and we predicted that advancements and applications of ML will be embraced as essential for the national agenda and the defense communitys day-to-day work. This prediction proved prescient as the year continued.Mark Rostick, vice president and senior managing director, Intel Capital: Another strong segment of the portfolio focuses on the infrastructure layer of software and services companies. Anyscale is a fantastic example. With their software, developers can build, run, and scale AI applications instantly. Theres also RunPod, a virtual cloud service provider (CSP) for inference. It can bridge the gap between hardware and software stacks, which allows for seamless operation across various server providers, addressing a current challenge in the AI space.Ed Sim, founder and general partner, Boldstart Ventures: No. This is one of the greatest platform shifts Ive seen in 29 years of being a venture capitalist and IMO this will only accelerate.What are your predictions for the exit environment next year?Cathy Gao, partner, Sapphire Ventures: I predict M&A activity will increase as large companies seek to acquire AI expertise. Strategic acquirers will focus on startups with domain-specific AI capabilities or high data moats. The IPO market will remain cautious, but high-growth companies with profitability metrics might test the waters.Nina Achadjian, partner, Index Ventures: I anticipate more liquidity in 2025, both for M&As and the public markets.Aaron Jacobson, partner, NEA: With the change of administration, I expect the return of mega M&A deals. We are going to see a multi-billion and even decacorn M&A outcome for a leading AI company.Marell Evans, founder and general partner, Exceptional Capital: We expect exits to pick up slightly next year, possibly more acquisitions and IPOs. Although, given the latest fed meeting, exit volume might be slower than we expected.Kirby Winfield, founding general partner, Ascend: I predict new FTC leadership under the incoming administration will make hyperscalers more acquisition-friendly for tech and talent. But the IPO market will likely remain sluggish, given the frothy valuations some companies can command from the private market.Andrew Ferguson, vice president, Databricks Ventures: 2025 may finally be the year that we see an uptick in tech M&A activity, as more favorable macro and (potentially) less onerous regulatory oversight make larger companies less skittish about M&A. Most strategic M&A will be focused around amazing technical founders and technology, rather than on scaled business, especially ones that matured during the ZIRP era where the growth/profitability metrics may still not pencil out for strategic acquirers. Its possible that private equity or growth equity investors make a play to consolidate that class of assets into broader platforms.Paul Drews, managing partner, Salesforce Ventures: The likely emphasis on government efficiency and lower regulation will spur growth, investments, and exits. The public markets are soaring, but there continues to be hesitation around the IPO process from a private company perspective. Weve seen glimmers of hope in the IPO markets, which pre-IPO businesses should take as a good sign, but there is still some disconnect between the last private valuation and where the public market will price businesses.Mike Hayes, managing director, Insight Partners: I think enterprises will look to strengthen their inorganic growth through acquisition more in 2025 than in 2024. As far as the IPO market, I do think that enterprises focusing on mission-critical solutions with predictable revenue will have opportunities in 2025. Im optimistic and energized for 2025.

The highly stylized sci-fi project focuses on a remote planet on the brink of collapse, where most of its inhabitants are ensnared by a powerful addiction.

As if this was in doubt plot details are under wraps for the fourth cinematic installment, as Sonic the Hedgehog 3, which follows Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails as they reunite against the powerful adversary Shadow, quickly soars past $200 million at the global box office.

One must wonder, with a resume that includes Lovecraft Country, Creepshow, Fear the Walking Dead, Werewolf by Night, Interview with the Vampire and Love & Death, what keeps Emmy Award-winning EFX Supervisor Carey Jones awake at night. Or whether he has developed a strong constitution for the macabre. This is a job, art and a passion so it doesnt keep me up, shares Jones, who recently applied his craft to the Peacock horror thriller series Teacup. However, deadlines keep me up! Created by Ian McCulloch and based on the novel Stinger by Robert McCammon, the eight-episode show follows a group of people living in rural Georgia who may or may not be threatened by an alien lifeform that inhabits the bodies of other beings. James Wan executive produces for Atomic Rooster.Evidence that something is horribly wrong rears its head when local resident Claire Kelly (Holly Morris) crosses a mysterious blue line that has been sprayed painted across a roadway and turns into a rotted corpse frozen in time. When we started, I got a bible from Ian that had a detailed description of what he felt this transformation would be and how violent it would be, explains Jones. In fact, what he sent me was extreme and we dialed it back! We had an artist, Mike Broom, who could whip out hundreds of sketches quicky; pencil drawings that showed silhouettes and interpretations to get the three-dimensional discussions started. From there, wed do more concerted and direct pieces of artwork like Photoshop or ZBrush that we then submitted to get final approval. The one word that they would always use is grounded. We used a lot of anatomy books to show the different layers of the body, skin, and whats inside; thats what we used as a main source of reference.To get the correction proportions, a head cast and body scan of Morris were created. Its called photogrammetry, notes Jones. Essentially, she stands in a pod of cameras, which take upwards of 300 plus photos and the computer stitches that together into a 3D replica of the actress in the desired position. Once we get that digital information, we have it printed. But really, the process is where a block of foam is put into a machine that carves it out. Thats how we got her body. Now the head was from a life cast where we put a silicone material over her face. That comes off, we put molded clay inside, which we pull like its a direct representation of her. We have artists and sculptors here [at KNB EFX Group] that then add the details per the design that we got approved. Different sculpts did not have to be made to show a progression of deterioration as the event happens over a period of days rather than months or years. The person is more like a statue frozen in time, but the blood and guts would age, and maybe shell get dustier. Claire established the visual aesthetic for other victims such as Carmen Navarro (Adelina Anthony) and Valeria Shanley (Diany Rodriguez). Once we got the first one done, which was the Claire statue, as well as the animals, the rabbit, snake, and dog, we had the language that we could then match to, states Jones. For each individual thing, we made sure that we did the research on its anatomy so when it did get turned inside out or pulled apart, that anatomy was still intact but reconstituted into a directional thing where you get the feeling that it was being pulled back towards the blue line. The idea is that the blue painted line provides gravitational resistance, which pulls the body apart and reconstitutes it into a different shape. It basically splays you open so anything inside that will be in its way would get ripped through, Jones adds.Years of experience comes in handy when things must be kept grounded in some recognizable reality. We have been doing this for a long time so were able to reproduce it in a realistic way, remarks Jones. Body Worlds is a travelling exposition, where they take a body and deconstruct it through every layer down to the nervous system, Jones notes. So, we used that a lot for reference. Its more using medical references to make sure that we stayed true to whatever anatomy was needed. Then we used different materials to create that. There would be hard materials such as the bones and soft materials like silicone which we layered over top of that to make it feel more flesh-like. Also, you get that detail with color. Fat has yellowy tones and some white depending on where it is in the body. Your innards and flesh have different colors depending upon the depth it is from the surface. All that stuff came into play when we were doing coloring and textures. Over the past 10 years new EFX technologies have enabled new ways of positioning and moving bodies. With photogrammetry or digital scanning, you can get into some crazy positions and not worry about the comfort of the performer, Jones shares. We did a lot of digital scanning and used a lot of 3D designs, especially with the animals. The rabbit and snake were basically designed in a 3D space, and we used stereolithography printers, which are resin printers. The lasers spray this resin, which is hardened to create the finish piece. We did a lot of 3D printing, foam carving, traditional hand sculpting in clay and mold-making. Basically, we ran the whole gamut of the techniques that are available.A solid statue was produced for the rattlesnake. Because we didnt have to animate the snake and was in its mid-strike position, it was essentially manufacturing a finished statue, states Jones. We built inside of the snake this posable armature so if they did want to lower it down or uncoil it or position it differently, they were able to do that. I would say that the snake, rabbit and even the dog was a wider load in terms of building things. The human statues and make-ups were certainly the more difficult things. A tight partnership with the visual effects team was crucial. Everything with regards to the final statue was scanned, states Jones. When we did make-up for the interim stages of a transformation so that VFX could morph between the actors normal look and our make-up on the statue, we turned over all our assets, which made their job a lot easier. Theyre literally using the same language and products that were using so it all matches. Not only did we handover our digital scans and digital free sculpts, we also had them scan all the actresses in the make-up. Literally after the make-ups were done, they would do a photogrammetry scan of the actress so they had a 3D model of her that could be augmented forward and backwards. They could take it back to her normal state but also take it from our make-up state to the final product and augment that. Numerous components involving several departments were required for the statues. [The hardest part was] making sure that from our artists to sculptors, mold makers and finishers, we were all communicating so that the final product was what it was supposed to be, remarks Jones. When you are onset, the set is such a moving puzzle piece. Sometimes the statue was in place, and we had to move it but then get it right back in its place and make sure it looked untouched for continuity. Time was always of the essence. Throughout the process I made sure that I sent along photos and updates so nothing was a surprise, and we were able to get everything out there early enough where they could do camera tests. The earlier you have a conversation with the DP and director, the faster they can also understand the limitations of how to shoot it. If youre not given enough time to build something and youre bringing it to the set at the last minute, they already have in their head how to shoot something and youre suddenly dropping this thing in place. It doesnt work out. Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer best known for composing in-depth filmmaker and movie profiles for VFX Voice, Animation Magazine, and British Cinematographer.

To download, simply join our newsletter and you will get an e-mail back with download instructions. If youre already part of the newsletter you can find previous e-mails from me which will all have download instructions. You will receive this free 3D model but youll also get our 500+ other 3D freebies as well!

The TCL QM8 delivers excellent picture quality, great sound, and a dedicated picture mode at an affordable price. Right now, three of the models have received huge discounts.