Image courtesy of Deron Yamada. © 2004 DYA367.

For a week at the beginning of May, a few hundred computer graphics enthusiasts flocked to Copenhagen for some education, entertainment and enlightenment at the annual 3D Festival. Something like a mini-SIGGRAPH, this gathering brought students, professionals and the simply curious to see some impressive content put together by the folks at CG Networks and Gnomon School of Visual Effects (OK, in the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that I work for The Gnomon Workshop).

Now I’ll tell you about all the really cool sessions, but the truly wonderful distinction of this conference was the access it gave to students and professionals from all over the EU (standing in the lobby made me feel like I’d been dropped into a linguistic melting pot). Incredible artists and speakers such as Tippett’s Blair Clark, ILM’s Hal Hickel, PDI’s Bill Seneshen and Weta’s Shawn Dunn held court and presented fascinating content. The conference also provided a stage for those folks to see creations from their continental counterparts. Simon Clutterbuck at the Moving Picture Company talked about Ella Enchanted’s snake; Luc Froehlicher gave a glimpse into the magic created at La Maison, Ikuo Nishii’s discussed Onimusha’s dazzling opening sequence.

The 3D Festival could be the 3E Festival, standing for education, entertainment and enlightenment. All festival photos © 2003-2004, Bella Center and 3D Festival. All rights reserved.

I have to say that Copenhagen’s a really great place to have a conference like this. It’s small, manageable, easy to navigate, beautiful to look at and there is so much to see and do — between the hours of 6:00 pm and 4:00 am, of course. Seriously, though (and don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing frivolous about beer), if we live in an art and industry-heavy community, as I do, we should take a second and realize how great we have it: an embarrassment of riches, indeed. Though the Internet has opened the world to all kinds of great information, we have the opportunity to hear much of it first hand. We have access to so many festivals, conferences, meetings, user groups, exhibitor talks, school event and gifted (generous) artists from whom to learn that we become complacent and (sometimes) almost lazy. When I started talking to a group of kids who shlepped to the conference from Bulgaria, Germany, England, Italy… it just kind of hit me!

A warm and fun spirit lingered at the speakers’ luncheon at the end of the event. Weta’s Shawn Dunn (right) talked about his work on Lord of the Rings.