AMD announced that Troublemaker Studios is using Six-Core AMD Opteron processors and ATI FirePro graphics accelerators to create animations and special effects for its films, including “Shorts,” now available on Blu-ray and DVD.

• AMD has a long history in the movie making industry, with Troublemaker Studios using its technology to push the envelope of digital moving making and special effects in several blockbuster films.
• Most recently, studio head, director, cinematographer and special effects supervisor – the one man show that is Robert Rodriguez – used AMD technology to bring to life the “booger monster” in the children’s movie “Shorts.”
• Rodriguez has looked to AMD technology to create five of his movies, including “Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams,” “Spy Kids 3D: Game Over” and the triumph of special effects that is “Sin City.”
• Rodriguez’s next film, “Machete,” is currently in production employing AMD technology as the movie’s digital hardware backbone, and is expected to be released in 2010.

“Robert Rodriguez is a director whose artistic vision constantly drives the technology,” said Charlie Boswell, director of Digital Media and Entertainment at AMD. “Robert is an artist who uses technology almost like a performance instrument, playing it rather than working on it. This regimen demands the tech be fast, intuitive and allow the work to occur at the highest visual fidelity possible.”

Boswell continued: “By combining AMD’s superior ATI FirePro graphics solutions and our new Six-Core AMD Opteron processors, digital content creation customers like Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios can quickly create the scenarios and objects and render them in almost real-time. Not only can movies get created faster, but the creative minds at work are not stifled by the process – they’re free to create, change and innovate at the speed of thought.”

“When inspiration strikes, I have traditionally turned to pen and paper to quickly jot down my vision for a scene because in a matter of minutes the images I see in my head can become reality,” said Robert Rodriguez, Troublemaker Studios. “With the new AMD platforms, my team is given the freedom to quickly design and animate our concepts and designs. AMD’s complete platform solutions technology helps us to keep ahead of the artistic curve by allowing us to easily and quickly manipulate images or scenes without having to wait on the technology.”