DCC on the Upswing in Northern France
Synthetique, founded by Francois Dequidt, is a small 3D animation studio that is in the midst of R&D on proprietary photorealistic human skin capture, which it hopes to someday license for data library repurposing. Synthetique, meanwhile, which utilizes Vicon technology for its MoCap work, is currently wrapping up a short, Bruno From Mars, which will be available on the Internet.
Wipon, another Lille-based animation studio, is partnered with NVIDIA on a plan to rethink the animation process for 3D cartoons. According to founder Marc Antoine, they’ve created a realtime animation engine, Matris, using an NVIDIA Quadro card, which translates XSI into Collada and allows you to change camerawork in realtime. Wipon is currently working on a proof of concept for a kid’s cooking show.
Meanwhile, back in Valenciennes, the 2006 edition of the E-magiciens student festival provided further proof of Supinfocom’s pre-eminence, though there was plenty of representation from other parts of France and Europe too. The three-day program, which took place at the Phenix Theater, was a fast and furious event, marked by screenings of 200 shorts from 34 schools and continuous interactive teamwork known as Chained Animation and Webjam. E-magiciens culminated with a Friday night awards ceremony crammed with students donning flashing lapel pins and hurling paper airplanes at the winners as they took the stage (a French tradition that is distracting at first but then infectious).
Among the shorts honored were Once Upon a Time, Bloodflowers and Telerific Voodoo. Once Upon a Time is a clever manipulation of 3D characters (a giant, lanky hero and a gregarious MC) and clips from John Ford’s Fort Apache reminiscent of Fast Film. Made by Corentin Laplatte, Jerome Dernoncourt and Samuel Deroubaix of Supinfocom -Valenciennes, Once Upon a Time took the Canal + award, which now owns distribution rights, and was a Jury Best Of selection as well. Bloodflowers, from Timothee Lemoine of EMCA Angouleme, is an intensely graphic work about creation, confinement and liberation. And Telerific Voodoo, from Paul Jadoul of La Cambre Bruxelles, is a bouncy musical tribute to the history of evolution.
An interactive videogame winner was the jovial Pirates of Pelican from ATI, Paris 8’s Sylvain Grain, Célia Demere, Vanessa Jorry and Antoine Ferrieux. And The Perfect World was a sly Orwellian satire that was honored in the collaborative Webjam category focusing on ubiquity and Big Brother.
Other highlights of E-magiciens were a special tribute to North American student shorts presented by Shelley Page of DreamWorks and Laura Dohrmann of NVIDIA, and an opening night offering of favorite shorts by guest of honor Michel Ocelot prior to a digital screening of his exquisite new animated feature, Azur et Asmar.
The North American program included Memorial (USC), 9 (UCLA) and Things That Go Bump in the Night (Ringling), and the Ocelot program included Une Bombe par hazard, Next, Au Bout du Monde, Anna et Bella and his own Les Trois Inventeurs.
“It is a golden age of animation,” Ocelot told VFXWorld. “What we need are auteurs and films that touch you in the gut and the heart.”
Bill Desowitz is editor of VFXWorld.
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