Wayne Stables, visual effects supervisor at Weta Digital for Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin has chosen to give the world’s first presentation of that studio’s work on the film at the VIEW Conference in Turin, Italy.

Tintin, Spielberg’s first computer-animated feature, opens in Italy on October 28. Based on the popular classic comic books created by Belgian artist Herge (Georges Remi), and co-produced by Peter Jackson, the story centers on Tintin, a young explorer, and his faithful dog Snowy. The first installment of a planned trilogy, the film stars Daniel Craig as Red Rackham, Andy Serkis as Captain Haddock, and Jamie Bell as the voice of Tintin. To create the film, Spielberg used performance capture techniques at Weta Digital similar to those used by James Cameron for Avatar. Prior to Tintin, Stables was a visual effects supervisor on Avatar, and lead technical director on the Lord of the Rings trilogies.

An upbeat Cartoon Forum, recently ended September 16th in Sopot, Poland- seems to have made a tremendous impact on the European animation business scene.   Sixty-six new animation series from 19 European countries were presented to over 800 participants at this year’ three-day event.  “The best Cartoon Forum in years” reverberates in post-Forum conversations with broadcasters, co-producers, distributors, investors and creators.  It’s unanimous.  Everyone loved Poland, and has had little time to go home and catch their collective breaths before heading to Cannes, France.

Cartoon Forum participants will “continue the Poland conversations” in the south of France, during MIP Junior (October 1 and 2) and MIPCOM (October 3-6). Many producers are optimistic about securing significant, tangible results for Cartoon Forum animation projects.  Making new deals needs to be done quickly all agree, due to the scary economic climate everybody’s facing today across Europe, and the rest of the globe. 

By Rick Kerrigan

Last night I attended the SIGGRAPH 2010 Computer Animation Festival in downtown Los Angeles. At the end of the two hour presentation my viewing partner kept muttering to me about “sensory overload” as we shuffled out the door. It’s one of the dangers of today’s world. The big Hollywood movie was well represented by clips from The Last Airbender, Iron Man 2, Alice in Wonderland, 2012 and Avatar. The digital work on these films is, of course, excellent but overwrought compared to the smaller films and shorts. Simple stories told using the computer took the day.

 

 

by AWN Publisher Dan Sarto

My SIGGRAPH Day 1 was actually the 3^rd day of the entire event, the first day of the main exhibits.  Either I’m getting old (which I am) or it’s just getting harder and harder to focus and keep track of people I’ve met, sessions I’ve attended, screenings I’ve sat through.  Despite 20 pages of notes and a handful of photos, I’m still trying to make proper account of my day before starting all over again today.  Here goes nothing…

Autodesk University is primarily a training conference.  There are over 500 classes that fill four floors of the convention center for almost a week.  Seeing the list of classes demonstrates just how broad and deep Autodesk’s design software reaches.  Everyone from architects to product designers to engineers to animators had something to attend.  In addition to classes, Autodesk used the show as a way to introduce products and reveal future directions for the company.

 

 

Tuesday night proved to be a big highlight of Autodesk University.  The Media and Entertainment keynote featured the first public screening of footage from James Cameron’s highly anticipated 3D feature “Avatar.”  

Simply put, “Avatar” was as stunning as it was rumored.  The 3D works incredibly well, but what impressed this animator more was the level of realism in the virtual characters.  The facial animation/capture was impeccable, the faces no longer looked like rubber masks as they have in so many movies that use facial capture.  In Avatar, the characters truly came to life and were believable in every way.  The audience identified with the characters and that made the story work on a much deeper lever.  The characters inhabited a world that was just as believable.  Much of it was lush jungle with fantastic creatures.  Some of the little details I noticed were highly realistic water, mud, and other subtle effects that helped to make the world that much more engaging.

 

Autodesk is taking over Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas for the week to stage Autodesk University.  The event is mostly dedicated to training Autodesk’s customers in their wide array of products, particularly people interested in AutoCAD, Revit, and Inventor.  In addition, there’s a trade show as well as keynote addresses and other special events that makes this more like a yearly Autodesk conference than just a week of training. 

Over 5500 people found their way to Las Vegas this week for over 500 classes.  An additional 20,000 will attend virtually.  People started arriving on Monday for various related events, such as the developers conference, but the main conference started on Tuesday with the main keynote.  Being Las Vegas, the keynote started with none other than Elvis Presley (or a reasonable facsimile) singing the disclaimers to the tune of “Glory Glory Hallelujah.”  After that, Autodesk CEO Carl Bass took the stage and talked a bit about Autodesk’s future direction.  A lot of this centered on the idea of the computing cloud, centralized high powered banks of servers controlled by remote workstations.  Users would interface to this computing power by Autodesk software running not only on high-end workstations, but also net-enabled devices such as netbooks and iPhones.

written by Maureen "MO" Whelan

The CTN Animation Expo is a new animation event based at the Burbank Convention Center in California. The Expo is mixed with traditional artist, computer artists, schools, software companies, book publishers, Women in Animation and ASIFA, recruiters from well established companies, and several other animation related companies.

I attended on Saturday, November 21^st 2009.  Young men stood outside the convention center spinning bright yellow signs directing patrons to the parking lot. The parking lot was full and I had to park across the street in another lot.  The inside of the convention hall was no different, packed full of people, slowly moving from one seminar room to the next. Clusters of people formed in different corners of the main lobby watching live art demonstrations and lectures.  Lines of people curved around every corner of the building with patrons trying to squeeze into main rooms to watch the seminars.  The expo floor was crammed with people slowly shuffling from one booth to the next. The booths were packed tightly into the expo area, allowing only a little room for foot traffic.  It was a claustrophobic's nightmare.

 

written by Rick DeMott

CTN-X kicked off its first edition on Friday. Nov. 20^th, bringing a new animation conference to Los Angeles. In it's first year, the event had quickly outgrown its home at the Burbank Convention Center with attendees lined up to attend various standing-room only panels. As can be expected from a first time event, there were a few hiccups I heard of from some attendees, specifically regarding registration lists, but overall the event ran smoothly and was put together with an desire to give people the biggest bang for their buck. In the halls of the convention center, there were animation demonstrations from 2D artists. Panels were broadcast in the halls for people to casually watch. A pirate was on hand for artists to sketch. There was plenty to do in between panels and walking the convention floor.

Sessions ran in two rooms in either 45-minute or 20-minute intervals. In a wonderful move, participants went outside after the panel to meet one-on-one with attendees to answer their questions. This gave attendees a more intimate time with panel members and also allowed for a steady flow between panels.

Finally I understood I am not indestructible so I have to decide to focus myself on highlights and to give the essence of the moment. This is how I proceeded to write this Day 3 Report for VIEW Conference 2009, in Turin.

Michael Giacchino, great anchorman, entertained us with the Italian Wedding Party he ended up without being aware of it. People dancing, drinking and singing. He is an American soundtrack composer who has composed scores for movies, television series and video games.

During his workshop he shared an avalanche of background tips and techniques on his work. For instance: Michael writes the score for a scene very quickly, even in a day. Because he gets to see the entire movie before its completed and he can map each shot and satisfy the requirements.

Here is a nice design advice, which I find very useful in many other fields, Giacchino approaches a soundtrack writing job with this question: whats my feeling for this film if I have to reduce it to one chord? It is really a great way to distill the essence of a project.

While the Maestro drives the audience with questions and answers like if they were instrument players, frames of his films went on the big screen: Mission Impossible III, UP, Star Trek. I could feel the mood being created in the hall thanks to the music playing. He is right, some movies should have only music and no dialogues...

Because, also true, as he said, if the music is working well you are not conscious of it.