For the past weeks I received a good amount of emails asking me for freelance work services. As much as I appreciate your interest in my work, I have to say that I do not take any freelance work at this point. I'm under a sponsored Visa and a single freelance work can put my Visa at risk (along with deportation...). So, as much as I like the subjects of some of the projects offered, the risk is just too big. If I become available at some point, I'll make sure the information is shared here in this very same site. I hope you understand.

Thanks again,
-Kris

I'm very happy to announce that I got hired as senior artist at ILM's digital modeling department.

It's impossible for me to express in words how happy I am right now. Being a long time fan of everything that ILM does and having the respect that I have for the artists and the work involved in such mind-blowing VFX that inspired a generation of CG artists like myself, this is really an honor and a dream coming true, as stated in my previous post just a few days ago.

I like to thank everybody at Lucasfilm Animation for making me feel so welcome, keeping me around for the past 8-9 months. Working on the TV show was a great experience. I had the chance to meet an amazing team over there. I can't wait to see (on the big and small screens) the results of all that hard work. You guys are awesome and deserve just the very best, from the bottom of my heart.

To everybody at ILM, specially to the digital modeling team, I can only say: THANK YOU SO MUCH for having me aboard! I have a lot to learn with all of you. I feel great knowing about the challenges I will face, that will push my limits and will make me grow immensely as an artist. I'm also scared (in a good way) to work with such AMAZING artists. I'm so excited and inspired with the opportunity. I assure you I'll do my very best to help the team on any project you put me in.

To my wife Celinha and all my friends, thank you very much for the constant support. I love you all (Celinha first!)

Sincerely,
-Kris

I'll be one of the artists presenting at the Gnomon Workshop: Live.
When: Sunday, December 2nd
10:00am - Kris Costa: Digital Character Sculpting

Such an honor to be among those amazing and inspiring artists during these two days of seminars. Hopefully, I'll not miss a single presentation. Thanks Travis and Alex for the invitation!

More details:
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/events.html

Now I can make it official.

Yesterday I received the confirmation that my new O-1 visa was approved and I soon will start working at Lucasfilm - USA, at the beautiful Big Rock Ranch. I got hired as Senior Modeler for an upcoming movie in development by Lucasfilm Animation, a division of Lucasfilm Ltd.

I'm very excited with the new job and just can't wait to start working with all those talented artists already there. I like to thank everybody at Lucasfilm Animation for being such a great group of people and for making me feel so welcome. You guys are the best!

-Kris

Edit: seems like at least for now, I will be working on the upcoming CG Clone Wars TV episodes.

Ok, now that's official. Pan's Labyrinth is a GREAT movie. It's such an honor being part of this project in some way. Awesome to see a beautiful yet low budget movie moving so many hearts all around of the globe. Well deserved prizes to Guillermo and the whole crew involved, mainly the people that made the Oscars possible on the following categories:

* Achievement in Art Direction
* Achievement in Cinematography
* Achievement in Makeup

Also congrats to CafeFX for investing on the project. What a great way to start the year!

-Kris

***********************
Edited: WOOOOOW! Pan's Labyrinth just got 6 nominations for the 2007 Oscars!!!!!
See by yourself: http://www.oscar.com/nominees/?pn=list

I really hope Guillermo get one (or more). This is a passionate director and deserves nothing less. But well, let's low my expectations for now and just say that this is already a HUGE victory for such modest but great realization. Congrats Guillermo and all the people involved!
***********************

Pan's Labyrinth! Yeah, what a great movie!
The movie is out and I already miss the fun we had working on it. This is the moment that you feel good knowing that you helped creating something really special and I'm sure this feeling is shared by every single person that worked on it. My big congrats and thanks goes to CafeFX, the studio responsible for the whole Visual Effects and where I was lucky enough to be working at (and still). The movie itself is a magnificent experience, a "little masterpiece". I say little because it was not based on a huge budget like other movies that have hundreds of thousands of dollars available. The whole movie budget was something around 17 to 19 million dollars (according to press), really inexpensive if you know the amount of CG work done for this movie. How they managed to do that? Because CafeFX said we were doing the VFX and believed on this project and the vision of Guillermo del Toro. Good for CafeFX, good for Guillermo, great for us artists!

The movie is getting prizes and great reviews all over the place and it's a true honor to have my name on the credits, together with all my co-workers. Everett Burrel was a great VFX supervisor and working with him was a pleasure.

As for my participation on the movie, I spent too much time on the facial rigging for the faeries and at the end, because of their size on the screen and the demand for their acting was so limited, I felt like I would be happy if I had done some more animation. But yeah, facial rigging for the faeries was necessary anyways. As for animation, I animated about 4 shots only and I'll post it here as soon as I get authorization. I can tell you that I animated the stick-bug when it first appears at the screen, popping out of the statue's mouth. I did the whole modeling, animation, shader, texturing on the sequence showing the baby in the womb (pretty much everything apart of the rigging and comp). That is "my baby"!!!

Anyway, don't want to write too much. Just want to say: watch this BEAUTIFUL movie. Spread the word. Invite your friends. It's a rich experience for all of your senses.

To know more about the movie, please visit: http://www.panslabyrinth.com/

Wanna read the buzz?
Check it out:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pans_labyrinth/
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070122/klawans
http://www.pressacademy.com/satawards/ipa-sa-winners.html
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=2&t=406625&highlight=pan%27s

Video-interviews:
http://media.movies.ign.com/media/840/840477/vids_1.html
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8155571489738252066&q=guillermo+del+toro

-Kris

Well, kinda old news but here you have it anyway
About 5 months ago I did some work for The Syndicate, "sister" company of CafeFX (both owned by ComputerCafe Group). I modeled the aliens (Maya and Zbrush), based on a 3D concept/sketch by Aaron Sims and painted the textures for them. I also developed the facial rigging for the aliens. Bill Wright created the body rig and did the whole animation. Everything else was done at Syndicate (shaders, lighting, comp, spaceship model etc etc etc).

To know more about it, see the complete credits and also watch the complete spot, please go to http://features.cgsociety.org/story.php?story_id=3765

-Kris

Link: http://antropus.cgsociety.org/gallery/

Hi,
as some of you already know, Barnyard was my first job on the film industry. This was back in 2004. I worked as character animator for about 11 months at Omation Studio (Steve Oedekerk's own studio). That was great experience and I met a lot of talented artists over there. For the past years I've been posting just models here in my website, because I love learning organic modeling but also because I had no access to the shots I created for the movie. 2 days ago the DVD was released and I finally could see my shots. I made a compilation of some of them (about 18 shots, 1 minute 45 seconds) and posted in my CGPortfolio.

I like the way some shots turned out and dislike others but being that my first professional experience, I'm completely happy for having the opportunity of working in some funny stuff and also for being able to create some subtle acting/animation shots.
I'll consider this as a "temp" animation reel because I like to add a few shots I've created for the movie Pan's Labyrinth and also exclude some of the worse animation in this reel, making it shorter.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed working on it.
Cheers,
-Kris