The 2017 Creative Arts Emmys happened last week, and CoSA VFX, where I work, brought home some wins this year!
We were nominated in the only two visual effects categories, Outstanding Special Visual Effects for our work on Westworld , and Outstanding Special Visual Effects in a Supporting Role for our work on Gotham . We won both categories! The Outstanding Special Visual Effects win was a team of people, one from each of the companies that worked on Westworld. The Supporting Role win was entirely CoSA – every person up there on stage is a CoSA employee.
Our winners for Gotham are Tom Mahoney, Michael Capton, Randy Little, Ryan Bauer, Alex Gitler, Matthew Hunt, Jon Anastasiades, Mark Nazal, and Sina San. Our winner for Westworld is Paul Ghezzo.
CoSA has been nominated for the last 5 years in a row. Various artists and supervisors have been nominated for various TV shows, but until this year, we hadn’t come away with a win. I’ve been working there a little over 2 years, and have been honored to have even contributed a small amount to the amazing work we create day after day.
We had a fun catered party in the parking lot to celebrate. You can see the full list of winners here, and you can see the Gotham team saying their thank you’s on the backstage camera here . And congrats to all the other winners and nominees!
And because I know you’re going to ask, yes, I did use Blender on both Westworld and Gotham. On Westworld, I created some blood effects using particles and liquid simulation tools, and on Gotham, on the specific episode that won, I made some small smoke simulations.
To see some of CoSA’s work check out our Vimeo page, and here’s the Gotham Season 3 vfx reel.
Hi, Your site is great!!
I’m just learning Blender and I would like to know why Blender isn’t used in VFX more complex.
Is it bad in that kind of stuff? or Is just a commercial thing?
Thanks, Joel! It’s a combination of things, I believe, but honestly, there’s no way to know the real reason. (I guess I could start asking people in my industry, if we wanted to find out.) Myself, I believe it’s a combination of a bunch of things. Autodesk and Foundry tools are taught in schools, which makes their user base already huge by the time new artists are entering the workforce. Also, many commercial tools specialize in just one thing, which allows them to do it extremely well. And I also believe there’s a long lasting stigma of Blender being free, so professionals tend to think it’s a toy or may not have all the features they need (which is untrue, of course). But again, these are just my thoughts, based on what I see in my industry.