Tell me more about your space shuttle short. Was it inspired by the landing sequence in Con Air?

No, not particularly - the concept of a large craft doing an emergency landing in an odd place is not uncommon in movies - the Core, Con Air, 405, etc. For us, it made sense to do. We were a fairly new company with a new group of animators, so it was a excellent exercise for them to pull together as a team. Plus it was great fun to do and, we hope, great fun to watch. The idea was that we would make it and send it out as a form of viral marketing, to get Atomic's name out there.

We already had the shuttle from a previous pitch that never went ahead, so we decided to put it to good use. What better thing than to take a classic Hollywood concept and classic American icon and bring it, literally, down to earth in a very South African way. Cape Town and Table Mountain as the setting and one of the self-appointed parking attendants, that you will literally find on every South African city street, as our hero!

It has been very well received locally and we have received a lot of positive responses internationally as well, which we are very pleased about.

Aside from being a training exercise, I would say that its purpose was as a marketing exercise, both locally and internationally, with the emphasis on promoting Atomic as a VFX house that is proudly South African.

How long did it take to make? It says it was filmed in Cape Town in Aug 2001...

We did it over a period of about three months - we were working on other (paying) jobs at the same time, which obviously took priority!

Who was the music video for?

The music video we did last year, "Dream", was done for a group called Jago. They are a South African group that is doing really well in the States and the music video was made to be shown on MTV.

We had to create an entirely CG futuristic city as the backdrop to the story, complete with flying taxis and police vans - plus a particularly nasty-looking thought extractor thingy with tentacle-like arms...

What awards has Atomic won for its work?

Last year we were honoured to receive three awards at the 25th Annual Stone Awards, which is the annual regional awards competition of the National Television and Video Association of South Africa.

We received awards for our showreel, for Hellweek and for our music video "Dream".

Tell us all about swearing?

"What the #$*! Do We Know?!" was a project we did last year that presented a lot of firsts for us. It was our first feature film and we completed over 100 shots - 90% of which were full CG, the rest were compositing effects. It was also the first time we completed a project of this scale with an LA-based international client. It would not have been possible without the development of our online client communication system Shotgunner.

Using only LightWave, we created organic looking vein interiors, wide sweeping views of nerve forests, interior shots of the brain and hypothalamus - we learnt more about the inner workings of our brains in nine months than is actually sensible! Say the words "hero nerve" to any of our animators and they will fall over in a dead faint!

And yes, that is the actual title of the movie - check out IMDB if you don't believe me!

What have you got as a gift for our loyal readers?

Because we at Atomic seem to be obsessed with all things mechanical, have a tank on us! Jason has kindly donated one of his models for your animating and texturing pleasure.

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Cool! Thanks guys, we look forward with interest to seeing Atomic on our screens some more soon! You can see what Atomic VFX are up to by visiting their website.