Image courtesy of Deron Yamada. © 2004 DYA367.

August is the month of summer camps, holidays and journeys to far away beaches (we wish). In my case, summer camp came to town in the second week of August when SIGGRAPH took over the Los Angeles Convention Center. A confessed addict of this 31-year-old-conference, and on my third tour as a grateful (if over-committed) program chair, I am always awed: Where else do a team of dedicated volunteers work for 18 months to gather and organize content so we can marvel at some of the coolest digitally-influenced art and advanced technology, attend informative and entertaining courses, papers and panels, stargaze at many of the world's best artists and technologists, get annual hugs from friends you rarely get to see, attend a cyber fashion show and get your nails done?

This year's SIGGRAPH hosted more than 28,000 people from about 90 countries; people who rely on this gathering to see something new, be inspired by their peers, and maybe find a new job. These folks flooded the exhibit hall and the course rooms; they networked in the coffee shop, they convened around the job boards and vied for elusive party tickets. As always, I basically ran from one end of the convention center to the other, trying to absorb as much of this wonderland as was humanly possible.

Probably the most anticipated event each year is the Computer Animation Festival, divided into the Electronic Theater and the Animation Theaters. This is the place where we get to experience the best computer graphics the world has submitted over the course of the year. With the Electronic Theater held onsite for the first time, transportation and access were certainly much, much easier. And though I missed the Shrine, I loved being able to see a matinee and resume my mad dashes across the convention center.

The actual production left me with a bunch of questions, but as each chair gets to make his own choices from year to year — and this was an extremely challenging venue — I'm sure we'll see some interesting changes next year, so I'll shut my mouth and concentrate on the superb content we were priveleged to watch, including a really fun pre-show where we got to toss around huge helium-filled reflective balls whose movements were tracked by a Vicon motion tracking system as we participated in an audience-wide videogame: if you weren't able to attend, this was truly a land-of-the-giants experience that I'm sure would not have been possible in the more traditional Shrine auditorium.

The Priestess just loved Jessica Scott’s Attack of the Note Sheep. Courtesy of SIGGRAPH. © 2003 Jessica Scott.

As usual, some good stories surfaced, augmenting the usual feast of studio-driven effects film (including the I-wish-it-wasn't-creepy Polar Express and the beautiful Digital Domain disaster-driven The Day After Tomorrow). I loved Jessica Scott's Attack of the Note Sheep (Texas A&M also gave us that cool Ascii Runner piece a few years ago), and Cortex Academy by Cedric Jeanne and Fredric Mayer. NASA contributed On the Edge of History, reminding me how much I would love to see more scientific visualization pieces in this festival. I know you're out there inventing and creating — please make us cool animations to watch! Though the edited version screened in the ET did Annie and Boo a disservice, the Filmakademie Baden-Wurttemburg's contributions consistently give us good stories and challenging ideas; I wish our students would give us more of this out of the box thinking (though I think ever earlier deadlines are making it difficult for schools to participate…).

Leaving that proverbial box somewhere on another planet was Chris Landreth's latest accomplishment, Ryan. I don't even know what to call this: Animation? Documentary? Documation? Whatever it is, I hope everyone out there got to see the full-length version of this devastating, beautiful jury award-winning piece. If this doesn't win the Academy's nod for best animated short, I think we must be in for something truly extraordinary: I just can't imagine anything surpassing this experience.