Video Games, Trailers Honored With Visual Effects Nominations

The Visual Effects Society, an international organization of visual effects professionals across multiple industries, announced nominees for its eighth annual awards, with two video game categories including titles like Fight Night Round 4 and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Other nominated titles include Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Need for Speed Shift, and Halo 3: ODST. At their inception, the VES Awards dealt exclusively with film and television formats, including feature films, commercials, music videos, and animation, but since their third year they have included some form of recognition for video games. This year, the society will hand out awards for real-time in-game visuals, and for game trailers, which can include pre-rendered visuals. Awards for real-time visuals are conferred to games released in the preceding year, while the trailer awards are open to games which have not yet shipped, but whose trailers were released during the year. Only two games nominated for the trailer award, DJ Hero and Halo 3: ODST, came out in 2009. BioWare was the only group to be nominated twice, with both Mass Effect 2 and Star Wars: The Old Republic -- the latter developed by BioWare's younger Austin studio -- receiving trailer nominations. The full list of nominees is as follows: Outstanding Real-Time Visuals in a Video Game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Infinity Ward), Gulag Extraction - Robert Gaines, Lead Visual Effects Artist - David Johnson, Visual Effects Artist - Richard Kriegler, Art Director - Mark Rubin, Producer Fight Night Round 4 (EA Canada), gameplay - Jeff Atienza, Producer - Jenny Freeman, Art Director - Ben Ross, Lead Character Artist - Frank Vitz, CG Supervisor Need for Speed Shift (Slightly Mad Studios), World Sequence - Robert Dibley, Lead Rendering Software Engineer - Dave Flynn, Development Director (world) - Andreas Moll, Art Director - Sven Moll, Art Director Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (Naughty Dog) - Christophe Balestra, Technical Lead - Evan Wells, Game Producer Outstanding Visual Effects in a Video Game Trailer DJ Hero (FreeStyleGames) - Diarmid Harrison-Murray, VFX Supervisor - Sarah Hiddlestone, Senior CG Producer - Jamie Jackson, Game Producer - Marco Puig, Art Director Halo 3: ODST (Bungie), "The Life" - Ryan Meredith, VFX Producer - Robert Moggach, VFX Supervisor - Michael Pardee, Executive Producer - Jens Zalzala, CG Supervisor Mass Effect 2 (BioWare) - Tim Miller, VFX Producer - Brandon Riza, VFX Supervisor Star Wars: The Old Republic (BioWare Austin) - Tim Miller, VFX Producer - Brandon Riza, VFX Supervisor