Tuesday, February 12th, 2013 Posted by Jim Thacker

Spoof UFO video becomes YouTube hit, Wired story

A spoof UFO video created by director Aristomenis ‘Meni’ Tsirbas and students at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects has become first a YouTube hit and now a rather nice story in Wired, thanks to some excellent CG work.

While you may not be in the same camp as the YouTube poster who labelled it a fake because the craft is the wrong shape (the “real ones are lentil-shaped”), you may be surprised to learn just how much is digital.

“The point of the video was to prove that CGI can look natural and convincing,” Tsirbas told Wired. “Everybody assumes [that while the UFOs are probably fake] the background and car are real. I usually have to [show] a wireframe of the entire shot to prove that nothing is real.”

Nice stuff. Wired’s making-of article also includes some of the wireframes in question.

Read Wired’s story on the making of the video

Full disclosure: CG Channel is owned by the Gnomon School of Visual Effects.