Timcunningham

Yes, it was an amazing use of the technology, and the work R&H did was breath taking. Very sad that the oldest CG company next to Pixar wasn't able to make it work in the wake of such success. They had another project nominated for the Oscar at the same time, Snow White and the Huntsman.

We were asked to reproduce a practical effect for a trailer for Snow White. They loved the practical effect, and so I said just recreate that, it would be cheaper, but they didn't want to. They wanted to do it CG. So we tried, and they didn't like it as much, so we eventually recreated our own version of the same practical effect, but they ended up just going with the original. Huge waste of time and money.

Well, I would wager a guess that many people who saw Life of Pi have no idea that the tiger is CG most of the time, or that the ocean isn't actually there. Let me think on this a little, though, and get back to you. i like this question.

I was a VFX producer on Narnia, and X-Men: First Class...I was a VFX coordinator on X-Men: X-Men United, so I was involved in the project management. For Narnia, the company I worked for did some matte paintings and simple comps scattered throughout. For First Class, we did Emma Frost, Angel's wings, and Mystique's transformations, among other things. On United, our major sequences were the opening Night Crawler bamf sequence, and the interior of Cerebro.

Well, it depends on what you want to do. My general advice would be to have very specific goals. If you want to be a filmmaker, then you need to make films. If you want to be an animator, then always be animating. The doers are the ones who make, not the ones who wait for someone to pay them to do.