It’s a good life when your job involves watching cartoons.

Attendees at the Day 2 Television Animation Conference (TAC) address got to watch some seriously funny cartoons. David Silverman, animation director and producer long associated with The Simpsons, let Homer talk for him through selected clips screened during his speech. And with grainy black-and-white footage showing comedic inspiration as a backdrop, Silverman went on to explain the origin of Homer’s famous “D’oh!”—culled from the exclamations of such comic greats as Oliver Hardy and the Three Stooges.

Silverman also recalled how he got involved with The Simpsons back when it was first created as part of The Tracey Ullman Show. Silverman credits his admiration for the work of Matt Groening (Life in Hell) for his decision to work on the show.

“We didn’t know if The Tracey Ullman Show would get picked up or if The Simpsons would get picked up as part of the show,” Silverman recalls. “We worked hard… all hours of the night. We were trying to please ourselves.”

Years later, that philosophy still holds as Silverman has continued work on The Simpsons show – directing 22 episodes – as well as directing The Simpsons Movie. Other credits include working with DreamWorks on The Road to El Dorado as co-director and with Pixar on Monsters Inc. as co-director.

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.

Here we go again! It's May again, so time to travel to Stuttgart, Germany to meet, to listen, to open the eyes and the minds, to feel the sense of wonder, the pulse of the future and to be amazed by the achievements of the many professionals, as well as those of the bold young students, who present their work. For the 15^th time the Conference on Animation, Effects, Games & Interactive Media starts today and — business as usual — this year's program let your mouth drool, if you are a big fan of those wondrous worlds.

Fifteen editions ago, in 1994, the small and tiny “Film and Medienbörse Stuttgart” was held for the very first time – Prof. Thomas Haegele and his team decided to translate the German term into English and the “Film and Media eXchange” in short FMX was born.

Monday nights' Evening Theater began with the introduction of host Miles Perkins, senior staff at Industrial Light and Magic. He kicked off the award ceremony by paving the way for Scott Farrar, visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light and Magic. Scott presented the awards for SIGGRAPH's 2009 animation festivals. Out of 770 submissions the following were selected for three categories.

Friday is field trip day at the Red Stick Festival – It seems as if half of Baton Rouge’s school population has been bussed in to take part in the festivities. I share an elevator With Walt Santucci of Duck Studios, on his way to lead an all-day animation workshop with the local school kids. I bump into him again at days’ end; his group produced some 9 anti-global warming PSA’s, with some of the best work done, he says, by kids with no previous animation experience. If you teach them too much at once they start worrying if they’re doing it right or not…

By Heather Kenyon

On Thursday, June 2, 2011, I attended Kidscreen’s day long “everything you wanted to know about apps but were afraid to ask” workshop.  It was great!  Not only did it cover the basics, the companies attending and panelists were top-notch and the focus was on making better apps for our kids audience.  Held at the beautiful Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, the group was small and intimate and there was plenty of time to network.   The attendees were an interesting mishmash as we all convened from our different backgrounds—kids programming, gaming, educators, researchers, etc.—to learn about this new, historically expanding space.  How does it work?  Who are the best companies in the field?  What are the best games?  What are the problems facing this new fantastically fast-growing field?

Joseph Olin is the President of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. Just like that Other Academy, on which it's modeled, the AIAS exists to recognize and reward outstanding accomplishments in video games. The Academy is 12 years old, has 15,000 members, and acknowledges the best of the gaming best every year through the Interactive Achievement Awards.

As Chief Visual Officer for EA Black Box, Henry LaBounta works with art directors and studios to define their visual goals in preproduction and help them execute.

Game Art Direction has three main focus areas – the look of the game, the characters and animation, and the graphic design (menus, user interface, and fonts) – and most of the unsolved problems are with the characters and animation.

 

By Haley Hughes

Premiering at The Los Angeles Film Festival last Sunday June 17^th, Disney’s Paperman, directed by John Kahrs and produced by Kristina Reed, is a very sweet short  film that embodies Disney’s optimism and romanticism.

This year’s GDC is expecting well over 14,000 attendees, at the Muscone Convention Center in San Francisco. This has become the epicenter of world game development, a gathering of game designers, producers, sponsors, and the tech companies that support them. The venue is friendly (formal wear is a clean black T-shirt), with over 2,000 volunteers to help gamers navigate through the huge show.