The Best Advertisement prize was given to the amazing Travelers: Snowball (U.S.), directed by Dante Ariola with post-production by Weta Digital Ltd.

Imagina is also the place to see great "making of." Even if there have not been many astounding movies vfx-wise since Matrix and Lord of the Rings trilogies, there were several inspiring presentations this year. It was interesting to note how the 3D artists and the vfx world in general are increasingly open to new creative approaches, resulting in films that transcend the 3D genre. Such was the case with Flushed Away, presented by Simon Otto, supervising animator at DreamWorks SKG, who showed how much care went into recreating in 3D the stylistic hallmarks of Aardman Studio and their claymation signature style. Modelers and animators reproduced unique features of clay animation, like the facial expressions given by bending the eyebrows of characters, such as Gromit's unibrow, for example. Other stylistic nuggets like static bodies with highly caricatural and animated facial expressions, heavily-accented head-bobbing during speech that was originally designed to hide the changes of mouth positions on the clay puppets, all of those were ported to the CG feature film, even down to the character set-ups based on the actual wireframe articulation on which clay models are usually built.

The French feature Arthur and the Minimoys (Arthur in the Invisibles in the U.S.) by director Luc Besson, used another method to combine traditional miniature imagery with CG. Crafted by vfx house Buf Compagnie, the film tells the story of a little boy who is shrunk to the size of fairy-like tiny creatures living in his grandfather's garden. In the early beginning, this project had been conceived as a CG animated character film with real miniature backdrops and sets. But the first tests showed that this approach was too complicated because microphotography of a real vegetal environment in which the miniatures were to be built was a real nightmare. The Buf team suggested using a camera mapping approach instead. All the miniature sets were built as per the storyboard, and then recreated in 3D. The miniatures were lit and photographed. The photos were then projected on their 3D counterparts. This gave the film a decidedly unique look that is a combination of real photography, miniatures and CG rendering.

Electronic Arts' Frank Vitz showcased character behavioral simulation tools that were stunning and yet simple.

The Imagina trade show was buzzing with visualization products this year. Imagina's general manager Laurent Puons sees visualization as reaching a much bigger market beyond vfx, and a growing one at that. Many vendors were presenting various products to help design and showcase car prototypes, buildings or urban developments. Interestingly enough, video games are also part of the visualization industry, such as in the partnership between video game company Crytek and French visualization service provider ImagTP. Crytek and ImagTP have developed a real-time viz tool based on the highly photorealistic and versatile Cry engine, the game engine at the heart of every Crytek product. This tool enable the architect and his clients to experience architectural project as they would in a first-person shooter video game. It also allows for highly dynamic and interactive modifications of lighting, movable elements, time of day, etc.

The Imagina Awards were not as impressive as other years'. Worthy of note was Codehunters (U.K.) by Ben Hibon with post-production by Axis Animation and The Mill, which won the Imagina Award for Best Short Film. The Best Student Film Award went to renowned school Supinfocom for En Tus Brazos (France) directed by François-Xavier, Edouard Jouret, Matthieu Landour, that tells the story of two tango dancers. Also the winner for Best Advertisement is Snowball (U.S.), an ad for Travelers Insurance directed by Dante Ariola (MJZ -- Los Angeles) with post-production from Weta Digital Ltd.

Imagina is still in a revamping process and it is hard to tell if it will evolve as a new rendezvous of digital imaging revolutions and breakthroughs or as a more business oriented and thus less vfx event. Could it be both? Check it out next year at Imagina 2008.

Mireille Frenette and Benoit Guerville have been reporting on digital effects and film technologies for several years in Europe and North America. Through their production company, they are currently setting up a research lab on alternative filmmaking technologies with a film project already in development.