District 9‘s still going strong, and we have even more insider insights from some of the 43 grads who worked on it! This time, it’s courtesy of Animator Anthony Di Ninno and Creature Texture Painter Julianna Kolakis, both of whom worked on the film out of Image Engine.

Anthony graduated from 3D Animation & Visual Effects at VFS in early 2007 and has already seen a lot of the Vancouver industry, with stints at Vanguard Animation, Rainmaker, MPC, and Image Engine. Since wrapping District 9, he’s headed back to MPC, where he’s working on Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief.

Julianna graduated just a few months before Anthony, and has already established herself not just as an in-demand freelancer for visual effects, but as a conceptual artist – her work with well-known character designer Aaron Sims has included designs for the likes of X-Men Origins: Magneto and Clash of the Titans among many others.

Here’s what they each had to say about the District 9 experience:

On Working with Fellow VFS Grads

Julianna: It’s always great meeting former students since we’re able to relate to the work process we went through as students, but now we can elaborate and expand our methods into a studio pipeline to become more efficient. Studio environments are pretty similar to VFS, so having old friends around makes it that much more relaxing and familiar.

Anthony: It was great working with people I know from school. I have worked with people from VFS at every studio I have been a part of. It’s really nice to see how far we have all come in a very short time. The people from VFS that I consistently work with all have an amazing work ethic and are those same people who I remember working many all-nighters with back in the Ant Farm.

The Challenges (and Rewards) of District 9

Anthony: The stuff I had the most fun with were the riot footage shots. Inserting the aliens into stock riot footage of actual events and making it look like the aliens were reacting to things like riot police shooting shotguns was very challenging.

Julianna: Being part of the look development team, we had to decide on the colours, patterns, and materials of each part of the alien. When working on the textures, there were challenges with creating a variety of patterns to individualize each character while creating specific maps to build the look we wanted for the body.

For every section of the character, extensive work was done to the colour, bump, dirt, subsurface, alphas, displacement, and spec maps. I used a more procedural technique for the overall patterns, creating different alphas to apply to specific colour maps which could generate diverse looking aliens. Clothing modifications, war paint, and stickers were also used in this process.

Seeing the final shots was truly rewarding. After trial and error, it was great to see everything come together so well.

VFX in Vancouver

Julianna: Hopefully [District 9] means bigger projects with more creature work coming to Vancouver. It’s really impressive how Image Engine, The Embassy, and Zoic Studios handled the workload while achieving quality results. It’s a true testament of what Vancouver has to offer, which can only mean bigger opportunities to further show what this city is capable of.

Anthony: I think the future of Vancouver in the effects world is very bright. Studios like MPC, Image Engine, and Frantic Films are not only getting work on big movies but are showing that Vancouver talent can produce creature animation and effects that stand up alongside the work being done in California and London.