Shane Acker’s 9 was awarded the Best in Show prize. © Shane Acker. All images courtesy of SIGGRAPH.

To program the Electronic Theater and Animation Festival for the 2005 SIGGRAPH conference and exhibition, the festival committee and jury had the arduous, but ultimately rewarding task to review 560 submissions from 27 countries. The resulting program represents what could be considered the most innovative, creative and outstanding work in the world of visual effects, animation and scientific visualization. Contributors ranged from budding student artists to entertainment industry giants.

At the Electronic Theater, during the pre-show screening of John “J. Walt” Adamcyzk’s evolving animated art, Autocosm: Gardens of Thuban, the first thing that I noticed from the back, was the high-def digital cinema projector provided by Christie Digital. Despite the massive theater space, the picture was sharp and the colors saturated throughout the presentation. If there was any doubt in my mind that the demise of film was inevitable, this projector eradicated it.

The Electronic Theater programmed 31 shorts, excerpts and compilation reels in lengths from seven seconds to more than 10 minutes. Using the tag line, “Bring Your Brain,” the opening and interstitial animations, Previs and Brainhead (produced by Wild Brain) set the stage for the art and technology fun to come. Yet in such a diverse, extremely high caliber showing, several works managed to stand out as exceptional.

The honor of Best of Show was awarded to freelance director, Shane Acker, for his darkly futuristic 9. This post-apocalyptic vision, set in a rumble-filled world, tells the classic David and Goliath story of a stitched together rag doll, “9,” who defeats a mechanical dinosaur set on devouring his soul just as he has consumed the souls of the other rag dolls. Inspired by puppetry and stop-motion (no wonder Tim Burton is producing a feature-length version), Acker brought these influences and his strong sense of composition to the world of CGI animation, adding the critical elements of sound and music to build a frighteningly believable fantasy world. The 10-minute, largely one-man labor of love took four-and-a-half years to finish and has garnered a student Oscar nomination and numerous festival awards.

Polish animator Tomek Baginski of Platige Image received Jury Honors for Fallen Art, a disturbing commentary on war and art that combines flawless technique and high production values with a twisted sense of storytelling. Baginski is the first two-time winner in the history of SIGGRAPH, having won Best of Show in 2002 with his previous film, The Cathedral. Jury Honors also went to Eric Castaing, Alexandre Heboyan and Fafah Togora of L’ecole de L’image for La Migration Bigoudenn, a whimsical celebration of recurring patterns about a group of traditional ladies from Brittany competing to cook the most ethereal crepe that leaves the impression of a Busby Berkeley routine.

Several animations were particularly humorous. Learn Self Defense by Chris Harding and the Chris Harding Animation Concern successfully pulled off a satirical political commentary on violence and WMDs. Blur Studio offered its two most recent comical selections. Jeff Fowler went for broke with the 3D Gopher Broke, an amusing tale of a gopher and his quest for food that was nominated for an Oscar. The gopher POV, slow-mo, airborne cow was sidesplittingly hysterical. Paul Taylor time-lapsed through prehistoric times with his comic caveman chronicle, In the Rough. Supinfocom Valenciennes and artists Gabriel Garcia, Benjamin Fligans, Geordie Vandendaele and Benjamin Flinois choreographed the animation in Workin’ Progress to a 1940’s style big-band version of “Over There” to comical effect.