Many of the best and brightest in the vfx field gathered at the inaugural AnimfxNZ 2006 symposium in Wellington, New Zealand. All AnimfxNZ images courtesy of Positively Wellington Business. Photographer: Matt Grace.

"Animation is the crack and cocaine of the art world," said the tall, spectacled speaker as he paced back and fourth under a single spotlight. "You don't just dabble with it, it takes you over."

And Tim Johnson, director of DreamWorks movies such as Antz, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and, most recently, Over the Hedge, should know. Devoted to animation since his early college years, Johnson credits his "addiction" to a past teacher, whose lack of teaching skills led him to make flipbook animations from his textbooks.

It was the second day of the inaugural AnimfxNZ 2006 symposium (Nov. 4-5) in Wellington, New Zealand, a country that has brought to the world, blockbusters such as King Kong and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The two-day symposium opened with a powhiri, a traditional ceremony where local Maori (the indigenous people of New Zealand), welcomed attendees to the Ilott Theatre of Wellington's Town Hall, by presenting a kapa haka, a performance of song and dance, together with a mihi mihi, a welcoming speech.

Positively Wellington Business organized the symposium in partnership with the Visual Effects Society (VES). In addition to speakers from DreamWorks, renowned companies such as Weta and Warner Bros. presented lectures, screenings and workshops.

As Eric Roth, exec director of the VES, noted before the event: "This will be an opportunity for Los Angeles and the rest of the world to see first hand all the cool things that New Zealand is up to. It will offer attendees a mixture of awe inspiring, state of the art effects and pragmatic ways of solving problems -- we'll meet the people who create the magic."

Positively Wellington Business organized the symposium in partnership with the Visual Effects Society. Eric Roth (left) and Jeff Okun (right) from VES visit with Weta's Kim Lavery, who also served as AnimfxNZ co-chair.

In addition to director Johnson and DreamWorks European rep Shelley Page, other participants included Sander Schwartz, president of Warner Bros. Animation, exec producers Barrie Osborne (The Waterhorse, The Matrix) and Martin Baynton (Jane and the Dragon), visual effects supervisors Jeff Okun (Blood Diamond, The Last Samurai) and Boyd Shermis (Poseidon and Speed) from Los Angeles, and local animation studio directors Brent Chambers, Dylan Coburn and Cristina Casares.

The symposium was also strongly supported by several technical key people from Wellington's own Academy Award-winning visual effects facility Weta Digital, hosting multiple workshops and presentations during the event.

Well-known names such as senior visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri, special projects supervisor Dr. Mark Sagar, visual effects supervisor Matt Aitken, computer graphics supervisor Chris White and Weta Prods.' visual effects supervisor Trevor Brymer were on the speakers' list. The movie that, naturally, was given the most attention for this purpose was director Peter Jackson's latest feature -- King Kong.