Paul Ekman, a psychological expert on facial expression, gave an enlightening talk on how a character’s facial animation can more precisely express very subtle emotional messages. 

Oh, and there were the panels and forums and workshops (… like nude drawing that I missed: Damn!). I was unexpectedly honored to co-host the Virtual Humans Forum with the brilliant Christophe Héry (Revenge of the Sith/ILM). Over the course of a long afternoon, visitors got to hear the likes of Mark Sagar (King Kong), Paul Debevec (Legend of Light and USC professor), Paul Ekman (psychological expert on facial expression) and Volker Helzle, a graduate of the Film akademie, who presented his advanced facial animation plug-in for Maya, which is now available as a free download. The content covered a broad spectrum of cutting edge tools and techniques and philosophies behind some of the finest character animation to date.

On a personal note, it was stimulating for me to have an opportunity to spend some time with Ekman, a man whose work I’ve admired for many years. I originally used Paul’s work on facial expression while training for antiterrorist agents to recognize inappropriate facial expressions, but that’s another story that I really can’t talk about. Paul enlightened us on how we can make our characters’ facial animation more precisely express very subtle emotional messages. He also discovered that perhaps our work could be of use to him in his research on emotions… more cross-pollination on the fly.

But I digress. I think everyone felt the flow of ideas in the air. East met west, genres collided and lines blurred. Maybe blurred isn’t the right word. It’s more like lines between entertainment types are becoming more clearly defined in looser terms. The cross feeding is intense. To paraphrase Doug Cooper, “Film and games are two different worlds, one passive, one active. They can be synergistic, but games should be developed by games people and movies by movie people. The key is how the two communicate and share resources.” These forces are leveraging the development of high-speed digital media communication where feature film dailies can be shared across time and space. The world is getting smaller faster than you can imagine.

One of the trends I had my antenna out for was American production companies outsourcing vfx to distant shores. Character animation has long been sent to Korea, China and India, but vfx is a little different. There were a few instances like Scott Coulter’s Worldwide FX in Sophia, Bulgaria, and, of course, the well established houses in the U.K., but not a general trend. It seems the Hollywood vfx supes still like to keep things close to home. I think it’s a matter of control, but in talking with many of the distant vfx/post/animation houses, I was impressed with their willingness to invest in communications technology that will rapidly close the gap. The one thing they can never change is the awful time shifts necessary to work in India or China, for example. However, with close communication and serious cost reductions possible, I think vfx work will eventually become decentralized.

Peter Plantec is a best-selling author, animator and virtual human designer. He wrote The Caligari trueSpace2 Bible, the first 3D animation book specifically written for artists. He lives in the high country near Aspen, Colorado. Peter’s latest book, Virtual Humans, is a five star selection at Amazon after many reviews.