Fur. It's hard to model in CGI. For a start, it's not one object but hundreds or thousands or millions of them. To make them convincing you have to model them; understanding how they move relative to each other, and to the animal or human that they're attached to

It didn’t take long for a sci-fi short to make noise in 2013, courtesy of animation student Kaleb Lechowski, who took a can-do approach in realizing his mini-epic

Have a close look at this video clip. It’s an advert for a high-end kitchen worktop manufacturer. Watch it in 720p, and look as closely as you can at the camerawork, the clever use of depth of field, the lighting, and particularly the fresh fruit.

And then reflect on the fact that no cameras - or indeed fruit - were involved in the making of this at all.

For anyone that hasn't seen it yet, Tears of Steel is a heavily CGI-based short film that demonstrates the Open Source Blender's abilities as an end-to-end VFX and finishing pipeline

It's really, really hard to create a GGI human face that's convincing. If you know this, then you also know the reason why so many blockbuster movies (Antz, Bug's life, Cars, WALL•E etc) have been about things and not humans

UK company Speech Graphics is gunning for the top-spot in lip-sync technology: mark their words. RedShark contributor David Valjalo reports

Increasingly, the makers of visual effects software produce shorts to showcase their products. This week, it’s Red Giant Software’s turn to dazzle

Unity introduces version 4.0 of its game engine/character animation system with a jaw-dropping CGI short, courtesy of Passion Pictures

I don't know about you but I simply can't get enough VFX and Compositing breakdowns. The reason is that special effects are now so good that you don't always know they're there. It's pretty obvious with explosions, but what's definitely not so obvious is when a whole cityscape is fabricated