fmx/08 is the international center for all creative people working in the visual fields. Courtesy of fmx.

Buzzing clouds of animators, visual effects people and creative artists of videogames showed up last week in Stuttgart, Germany, at the Haus der Wirtschaft (House of Trade), where fmx/08 was held: the annual and international conference on animation, effects, realtime and content. Once again, this four-day event, the brainchild of Thomas Haegele, head of the Ludwigsburg-based Animationsinstitut, the animation school department of the Filmakademie Baden Wüerttemberg, seemed to become the international center of all creative people working in the visual fields.

If you attend fmx and are addicted to this world of creative and artistic visual development, you encounter a nightmare of decisions. At least eight wonderful panels, talks or lectures are given simultaneously. So you have to decide which programs you positively can't miss. And the one you choose, of course, will turn out to be the wrong one, as DreamWorks Animation's Shelley Page commented with her customary dry British wit.

More than 6,000 people attended fmx/08 again this year. And more than 400 speakers from 30-plus countries were invited. So this event is still growing strong both by numbers and by complexity. But this certain feeling of a big, friendly family meeting is still there, the chance to meet and speak to everyone you want to.

Of course, all the major players in the field of animation and visual effects hosted recruitment-sessions, including Pixar, Disney (they are additionally seeking 2D artists for their shorts and the upcoming The Princess and the Frog), DreamWorks Animation, Aardman, Sony and many, many other companies from Germany and the rest of the world. The high quality of education in the various German film schools certainly attracts the attention of the big studios. But you will find also many highly skilled students from France, Great Britain, Switzerland, of all various states of the EU and other parts of the world at fmx.

As a single individual going to the fmx, again, you have the choice of nearly 400 presentations, talks, keynotes and sessions. If you are on a diet, drink a lot of coffee and be able to postpone pure exhaustion for a couple of days: you can attend nearly 50 panels and presentations if you try hard enough, especially if your editor gives you a non-stop timetable!

So here are some of my experiences at fmx/08:

To begin with, the keynote was given by one of the pioneers of computer-generated images.

At fmx/08, EA Worldwide Studios' Glenn Entis made a surprise announcement that he would be stepping down from his position.

Academy Award winner Glenn Entis, SVP and chief visual and technical officer of Electronic Arts, shocked us all with the announcement of his retirement from EA. His motto: "Every 14 years you should change your life a little bit. A career should be dynamic. And you shouldn't get too comfortable in one place!" It was just a small quantum of solace that Entis was giving a wonderful and touching keynote about his 30 years in the business. As the Co-Founder of Pacific Data Images in 1982 , Entis moved from the world of movies to games when he entered DreamWorks Interactive, where he worked on more than a dozen games, including Medal of Honor, Clive Barker's Undying, The Neverhood and Trespasser. After his company was acquired by Electronic Arts, Entis joined EA, moving to the company's headquarter in Vancouver. In his keynote, he emphasized the enormous inventions made by mankind in the fields of communication and computer science. Using a handy old telephone along with some current high-tech toys, Entis showed us the development of memory space and all the staggering amount of change in a single lifetime. But he also confessed, that he would never have entered the Pacific Data Enterprise, if he had known the amount of work that had to be achieved. "We worked all day and I remember having massive feelings of guilt, when I showed up on Sunday in the office around 10:00 in the morning, having slept in, while the others had already started working around 8:00! Impossible to keep a family at this time!" But after all the fundamental coding for the software, PDI moved on, creating the CG logos for the big broadcast companies. His personal moment of triumph came, when he was standing in New York next to all the big TV stations. Around news time on every television set in the huge windows appeared the logos of the various stations, every single one done by PDI.