Fast forward 7 years and ComputerCafe is doing the intro for all the movies you watch on Saturday night cable television.

“HBO needed a new high-end animation to introduce feature film presentations. The challenge was to create a thrilling introduction worthy of being one of the most-watched animations on the planet. HBO chose the showing of "Saving Private Ryan" to debut the new animation.”

The next year ComputerCafe was a little busy winning a Telly award for a commercial project “Wild Tires”; producing more than 50 shots for the feature film Panic Room (seen below), 16 photo-real CG animals for 35 shots on Spy Kids 2, 180 effects shots for a 4:28 video in four weeks for George Michael’s music video ‘Freeek’, and starting a new company under the ComputerCafe umbrella, The Syndicate. The Syndicate is the ComputerCafe Groups division for Music Video, CGI commercials, and hi-resolution color correction for feature films.

(Image from the introduction to the feature film “Panic Room” click for larger image)

You can view ComputerCafe’s gallery time line with feature films like Gothika, Spy Kids 3D, The Core, Hell Boy, and the Oscar Nominated Master and Commander and The Aviator here http://www.cafefx.com/cafefx/html/cafefx.html > Press/Pr.

CafeFX's most recent work is Sin City and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Café FX completed 600 shots on Sin City, a stylistic ground breaker directed by Robert Rodriguez.

“Jeff Goldman and Everett Burrell supervised two of CafeFX's teams for the work on Sin City; Goldman commented that of the nearly 600 shots, "Virtually all used LightWave®, but probably a good 550 were primarily LightWave due to the amount of 3D CG required for the shot."

(click for larger image)

CafeFX produced the visual effects for "The Big Fat Kill" segment of the film. The majority of the segment was shot with the actors on green screen sets, and CafeFX melded the live action plates with complete CG environments, everything from room interiors to brooding cityscapes, including the weather, since the story takes place in nearly constant rain. Some exterior shots are entirely LightWave, such as driving sequences where no live action plate was shot. A key requirement was to create a motion picture that was visually a match for the stark black-and-white style, with only splashes of color on key items that Miller had used for the comic; the digital artists at CafeFX took a very creative approach in recreating the style and feel, meeting Rodriguez's goal of remaining faithful to Miller's vision.