The 3D Festival’s a great place to see what EU students and professionals are up to. Here, participants (left) gather at the Bella Center reception area. The ambience at the 3D Festival is casual and inviting. A participant (right) checks out the latest gear at the Festival Expo.

Just watching the audiences was inspiring. Whether they were sitting rapt during Alex Alvarez’ Maya lesson (yes, he’s my boss; and a great teacher), or hanging on every one of Dunn and Greg Butler’s Lord of the Rings enlightenments, you got the sense this was for many a unique experience. It was particularly great to see full rooms for concept artists Scott Robertson and Feng Zhu. It was great to see 3D artists absorb some great 2D content from these two gifted artists.

And while the conference offered workshop-type talks, there was an abundance of enlightening production talk as well. In his Pirates of the Caribbean presentation, Hickel showed just how animated an animation director could be. He incorporated home video of the model builds, model shoots, pyro shoots and an explosion, if I remember correctly. I have to say how much I love this stuff, and how great it is to show this to artists who spend the great portion of their time sitting in front of a CRT, rather than out on a set (and seriously, how often does an artist from Bulgaria get to see how life works in a tank at ILM?). Clark illuminated the visual effects pipeline in the context of Hellboy, while Bill Seneshen gave us a look at the wonderful (and extensive) worlds of Shrek.

Though sales-oriented talk crept in here and there, when I expected to hear about Kaydara from company President Michel Besner, I was delighted to hear something completely different: a history and future of storytelling in animation. Of course, he wouldn’t mind if you wanted to purchase Kaydara’s animation products, but his talk about animation (to the point where he didn’t want to answer Kaydara questions), was refreshing. Refreshing, too was Oddworld’s Lorne Lanning’s keynote address about his company’s evolution and the changing world of content development.

Technical sessions balanced the more conversational or structural sessions, and lent an overall balance to the conference. Of course, being an industry of images, the three film festival sessions edited by DreamWorks’ Shelley Page, VFXWorld co-publisher Dan Sarto and conference organizer Leonard Teo provided a feast of (mainly) beautiful imagery: Though most pieces were remarkable, some just fell a bit short, reminding us once again that it’s just really difficult to write a good story. There were definite treats, though, like Annie & Boo from Johannes Weilund at the Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg. I have to say how much I love the work that comes out of this school, which is consistently inventive, creative, beautifully rendered and with not a shred of sexist, scatalogical or cruel humor (we could learn a little something from the Filmakademie and Supinfocom). Jojo and the Stars was another treat. This sweet, tragic love story captivated me (though there were no fish or birds, the impossible relationship reminded me a bit of Stella and Stanley from years ago). I’m a sucker for computer graphics that uses the technology in an unexpected manner (it was rendered in very rough black and white). The festival also provided an opportunity to see work from the ever awesome Meni Tsirbas and the Will Vinton Studios, among many, many others.