James Cameron's Avatar

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.

Another fine year for OIAF. Another bad year for the Ottawa culinary scene.

By Dan Sarto

There are a number of things I can always count on at an Ottawa festival. First, I will find myself defending Chris Robinson and the selection process. Second, I will find myself defending Chris Robinson and the selection process with people whom earlier in conversation I had defended Chris Robinson and the selection process.  Third, after watching several days of screenings, I will question Chris Robinson’s selection process.  Nothing ever changes.  I love it.

The festival brings together everything uniquely interesting about the animation industry.  Art, commerce, tattoos, the best and worst of kids cartoons, unintelligible films from Asia, alcohol, great student films and big studios walking hand in hand with little studios,  agreeing they'll refrain from poaching talent except at the parties. The Ottawa festival brings together big and small, have and have not, legend and newbie together in a unique way - cozy, intimate, unpretentious, inviting.  The care that goes into its planning is always evident – from the programming of retrospectives to the variety of master classes and talks, nothing on the schedule seems out of place and each holds its own against the other.  It’s tough to arbitrate the constant decision making surrounding what to do and when.  Suffice to say, days and nights are always full and I travel home lamenting all I didn’t get a chance to see or do.

Some final observations on the 5 day fest, in no particular order and really, to be honest, displaying limited insight:

David O’Reilly's Please say something won the Cartoon d'Or at Cartoon Forum 2009.

The 20^th annual Cartoon Forum took place September 22-25 in the beautiful town of Stavanger, Norway, capital of the coastal fjord-filled county of Rogaland. The premier European co-production forum for animation for TV and new media platforms takes place each year in a different city and affords participants the opportunity to present their project to all the key players of the animation industry. Always marked by a convivial atmosphere, the event in this milestone year had an especially positive and cohesive vibe, with attendees seemingly enjoying simply being together to share their common enthusiasm.

Sorry Film Not Ready by Janet Perlman.

Whatever you call it, abstract/experimental ruled the day in Competition 5.  Here are some highlights.

Writer/director Adam Elliot and producer Melanie Coombs talk with the press at the Sundance Film Festival.

The opening night selection of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, Mary and Max is a clayograph (a claymation biography hybrid) feature film from Academy Award winning writer/director Adam Elliot and producer Melanie Coombs, featuring the voice talents of Toni Collette, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Humphries and Eric Bana.

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.

VFX Animation Supervisor Keith Roberts.

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.

ILM VFX Supervisor Scott Farrar will present for Transformers: The Dark of the Moon.

Weta Digital’s Wayne Stables, Digital Domain’s Eric Nash, Pixar's Sharon Calahan, ILM's Scott Farrar, ILM's Roger Guyett, DNeg's Gavin Graham and PDI Founder Glenn Entis are some of the speakers slated to present next week at VIEW, Italy's largest computer graphics conference.

Attendees dug in with the "Glowing Pathfinder Bugs" display.

The 2010 SIGGRAPH Art Gallery has done away with the old phrase “look but don’t touch.”

The 14 juried pieces exhibited this year absolutely require human interaction with a focus on haptics (touch).  Richard Elaver from Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne has taken the cross disciplinary theme of Leonardo and applied it to the selection process for the exhibits on display.  Leonardo is a journal that has a philosophy of combining science, technology and art.  Leonardo can be explored at www.leonardo.info.

Richard comes from a traditional art background of metalsmithing and jewelry making.  He was always chasing new techniques and looking for different ways of doing things.  Technology is fine, but there is something satisfying about working with materials.  As a boy, when the others were making snowmen, Richard made a six foot toilet out of snow in his parent’s front yard.  Certainly that was different, more importantly, it was a combination of science and technology to produce art.

Eye in the sky view of the auction. (Photo by Deborah Coleman / Pixar)

Word coming from the Bay Area is that the Totoro Forest Project auction at Pixar was a stellar success. The world's top film animators, comic book artists and illustrators came together after creating original works of art inspired by the iconic animated film My Neighbor Totoro for an auction to benefit the Totoro No Furusato (Totoro's Homeland) National Fund – also known as the Totoro Forest Fund on September 6, 2008, at Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, CA. The Totoro Forest Fund is dedicated to preserving Sayama Forest, a large park outside Tokyo that inspired the beloved film by respected Japanese movie director Hayao Miyazaki. AWN is proud to present some of the exclusive pics from the event to share with you.