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One of the great pioneers of movie magic, Stan Winston passed away on Sunday, June 15 at the age of 62. He originally moved to Hollywood with aspirations to become an actor, but instead began a makeup apprenticeship at Walt Disney Studios. A few years later he founded Stan Winston Studios and started to collect Emmy Awards for his work in makeup special effects.

His career took another leap forward when he was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on Andy Kaufman’s “Heartbeeps”. Then in 1984 he won an Oscar for his work with James Cameron to create the now infamous endoskeleton for “The Terminator”, which was soon followed by another Oscar for “Aliens”. He later won two Oscars (Best Visual Effects and Best Makeup Effects) for “Terminator 2: Judgement Day”. In fact, Winston and James Cameron collaborated so much that they co-founded Digital Domain, which is now one of the world’s foremost digital effects houses.

All told, Stan Winston was nominated for ten Academy Awards, of which he won four. He also worked on 32 major motion pictures (including this year’s blockbuster “Iron Man”), and has another five films still in production. Along the way he founded four companies for various aspects of movie magic: Stan Winston Studio, Stan Winston Digital, Stan Winston Creatures, and Stan Winston Productions! (www.stanwinston.com)

Closer to home here at ZBC, many of you no doubt remember reading how Aaron Sims got his start in part under Stan Winston. In fact, it was Stan’s achievements in “Jurassic Park” that inspired Aaron to become a digital artist!

We at ZBrushCentral and Pixologic are going to greatly miss Stan Winston. Although the man himself may now be gone, his legacy is going to continue for a very long time to come!

The first minor update to Mozilla Firefox 3 has been released. Firefox 3.0.1 fixes three critical security vulnerabilities, improves stability and resolves a handful of other small bugs.

The security fixes are detailed in the Firefox 3.0.1 section of the Security Advisories for Firefox 3.0 page. Two of the issues — one related to how Firefox handles command-line URLs to open multiple tabs and another allowing remote code execution by overflowing a CSS reference counter — were also present in Firefox 2 and fixed in Tuesday’s Firefox 2.0.0.16 release. Security improvements in Firefox 3 mean that it’s not vulnerable to some of the Firefox 2 variants of the command-line multiple tab exploit but it can still be compromised by combining the attack with a script injection flaw.

The final flaw only affects Mac OS X and allows an attacker to crash Firefox with a malformed GIF file, potentially gaining the ability to execute arbitrary code on the victim’s computer. This vulnerability is not present in Firefox 2.

The non-security fixes include an issue where the phishing and malware database did not update on first launch and a problem that could cause Firefox to not save the security certificate exceptions list properly. A bug that could result in missing output when printing a selection from a page (bug 433373) was resolved and a Linux issue causing Firefox to always start in offline mode when using a PPP connection (bug 424626) was also fixed. The Public Suffix list has also been updated (bug 438585).

The Firefox 3.0.1 Release Notes have more details about the fixes in this minor upgrade. The new version can be downloaded from the Firefox product page or the Firefox 3.0.1 directory on releases.mozilla.org but most Firefox 3 users are expected to get it via the software update feature built in to the browser or their own operating system’s update facility.

This week The Gnomon Workshop is pleased to present Conceptual Storyboarding: Story Telling and Struggle, Storyboarding Techniques with Derek Thompson. Storyboard artists conceptualize and layout the shots of live-action films, visual effects sequences, animations, games and TV commercials. Using Adobe Photoshop, Derek guides you through the storyboarding process as he creates a sequence directly from his imagination, using the basic principles of illustration and cinematography. You will gain insight into his process and valuable information on such topics as Developing Story Concepts, Sequence Building, Shot Design and Construction, Improving Story through Character, Editorial Thinking, Troubleshooting Story Problems, Action and Movement, Simulating Camera Moves and Sequence Pitching.

Check it out! http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/dvds/dto01.html

Friday, August 1 is a red-letter day for eclipse enthusiasts. On that date, the sun will be partially eclipsed over an immense area that includes western and central Asia, parts of northern and central Europe, all of Greenland and even a small slice of northeastern North America.

Here’s your handy-dandy cheat sheet of the first two days for all things, well, most things, well, some very cool things to check out at SIGGRAPH. We even starred* a few don’t miss events and talks. Wednesday thru to Friday coming soon. But first, the basics.

The core convention is at the Los Angeles Convention Center, in downtown LA at 1201 S. Figueroa Street. The Computer Animation Festival is across the street at the Nokia Theater, 1111 S. Figueroa. They’re both about an hour from the beach in traffic and a half-hour from the airport. Fly into LAX. If you don’t have a hotel reservation, check the SIGGRAPH site for special rates, but at this stage, you could have better luck with hotels.com, tripadvisor.com, or another travel website.

Once at the convention center, register in Hall G on Sunday from 1 to 7, Monday 7:30 to 6, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 8:00 to 6, or Friday 8 to 3:30.

Prices for non members. (Join SIGGRAPH and get discounts)

Full Conference Access: Admission to everything – the Reception, the Computer Animation Festival, papers, panels, you get it all plus the conference DVD: US$1,025 now, US$1,125 at the door.
Full One-Day Access: US$325 now, US$425 at the door.