French feature film, Renaissance, an example of digital filmmaking premiered at Imagina. © Onyx Films/Millimages/Luxanimation/Timefirm Ltd./France 2 Cinema.

Pixar’s Paul Topolos led a master class in art direction for The Incredibles that attendees found inspirational.

After such dizzying visions, some of the presentations on the making of 2005’s big films seemed a bit, well, boring, notwithstanding the fact that all the work was technically and artistically excellent. However, students and independents could be counted on to leave their creative mark on Imagina 2006.

The Germans from Studio Soi presented two delicate short films, one on road safety (Torvald) and one aimed at preventing the deaths of children who play on train tracks (Oli’s Chance). By broaching such topics head on, yet with poetry and sensitivity, the studio has created two absolutely admirable films. The films can be viewed on the studio’s website. Also, worth seeing is Klic Klac, a simple but poetic film by Aurélie Fréchinos, Victor-Emmanuel Moulin and Thomas Wagner from French vfx school Supinfocom Arles that won the Imagina Grand Prize.

Let’s also mention matte painter Paul Topolos from Pixar, whose master class in art direction for The Incredibles was particularly inspiring to the many students. MacGuff Ligne also presented superb images created for L’odyssée de la vie, a documentary that follows the first day in the life of an embryo until the end of the pregnancy. The young and already talented French studio Def-2-Shoot was on hand as well to show how it had recreated a space station for the feature film Un Ticket pour l’Espace.

There were few technological breakthroughs at the tradeshow. You may want to keep an eye on the multi-platform development solution from StoneTrip that can generate interactive environments for games, the Web or any other 3D application on PC, Mac, PDA, etc., as well as on the rendering engine RTSquare a GPU-based engine that can shave a considerable amount of time off renders.

During the Imagina Awards ceremony, IBM and Apple said they were happy with their involvement with Imagina 2006 and committed then and there to come back next year. Indeed, Imagina’s organizers are already mulling over improvements for 2007. After overcoming last year’s deficiencies, Imagina looks set to reclaim its position as the leading 3D event in Europe.

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.