Aaron Sims Talks Directing & XSI

If you have the QuickTime plug-in, you can view a clip from Vermilion by simply clicking the image.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that Aaron Sims would want to make his own films. After all, he's had a very distinguished career as a sculptor and character concept designer/art director working with Rick Baker and Stan Winston (Terminator 3, Men in Black, Constantine, War of the Worlds). Then, after helping to run Stan Winston's Digital 3D department, Sims went independent a couple of years ago and subsequently formed his own production company last year with producer John Norris, White Rock Lake, named after a Texas urban legend about a benevolent ghost.

Last week Simms premiered his first project under the White Rock Lake banner at Softimage's launch event for XSI 6 at the House of Moves in L.A. Vermilion is a 15-minute live-action short, a horror story about an obsessed painter who purchases some mysterious pigments that make his works come alive and torment him and his artist girlfriend.

Vermilion contains 20 vfx shots in XSI created by Sims himself over a period of two months. Not surprisingly, the movie reveals his trademark visual flair. The effects include the evocative White Rock Lake logo, highlighting the woman in the lake, a CG cat, a frightening incarnation of the painter's girlfriend done with motion capture and lots of simple distortion effects. "There are certain tools in XSI that I like that you can't find elsewhere," suggests Sims, who's been an avid XSI user for years and co-wrote the XSI 4 Guide to Character Creation with Michael Isner. "When we were working on the effects, there was a lot of distortion of the canvas and I wanted a certain look that we achieved by taking the geometry behind the render. We found that you couldn't copy that in Shake. It could only be done in XSI. It's very subtle but very effective."

The idea was to start his own production company so Sims could direct features based on various story ideas that have piled up over the years. Vermilion, which Sims hopes to showcase at festivals, is a test to reveal what he's capable of. The biggest challenge for the fledgling director was trimming it to a more acceptable length.

Moving forward, Sims and Norris will hire screenwriters and look for independent financing for their other features. First up is the sci-fi creature film Residents. The low budget nature of this will not require a great deal of CG effects.

However, one particular pet project for Sims with a lot of potential CG is the animated Tethered Islands, about an alien world that is being destroyed by its eco system. The story is still being fleshed out into a possible franchise. Sims is interested in developing Tethered Islands as a videogame franchise as well. "Tethered Islands has been a project that has gone through many changes and is continuing to evolve," Sims says. "We started out thinking in terms of a short film but as time has gone on the story has developed into something larger. I have used the Tethered Islands idea as inspiration for other ideas."

Meanwhile, Sims continues working independently on his character concepts for mainstream features. His most recent projects include His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass, Prince Caspian, the sequel to The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Incredible Hulk. Although he can't discuss The Golden Compass, Sims suggests that he's created a more intricate-looking sedar for Prince Caspian (the vfx is being divided between London-based Framestore CFC and MPC).

Bill Desowitz is editor of VFXWorld.

Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.