The short film a.maize won the VES Award in the category "Outstanding Visual Effects in a Student Project" at yesterday's 10th Annual VES Awards in Los Angeles. The short film and FMX 2011 trailer, that was created by Falko Paeper, Roman Kaelin und Florian Wittmann, was one of three entries from the Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg. a.maize was chosen as best of six nominated films at the VES Award ceremony. The VES Awards are annually bestowed by the Visual Effects Society (VES) and count among the most prestigious distinctions in the realm of Visual Effects. This year's Awards took place on February 7th in Beverly Hills.

Pixar's Christophe Hery (l) and ILM's Ben Snow (r) talk lighting, shading, rendering and the wonders of Davey Jones.

As a visual effects supervisor at ILM, Ben Snow has helmed the vfx efforts on a number of high profile films, including both Iron Man films, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Terminator Salvation and King Kong.  Snow joined ILM in 1994 to work on three-dimensional computer graphics for Star Trek: Generations.

Currently Pixar’s Global Tech and Research TD, Christophe Hery joined the studio in 2010 after spending 17 years at ILM.  Hery’s most recent work involves writing new lighting models and rendering methods for yet unannounced shows.  In 2010 he received a Technical Achievement Award for the development of point-based rendering for indirect illumination and ambient occlusion. He is recognized throughout the industry as one of the leading technical innovators and researchers in areas of lighting and rendering.

Marc Petit, Autodesk M&E Senior VP with Dan Sarto.

As Senior Vice President of Autodesk’s Media & Entertainment division since 2007, Marc Petit is responsible for the development and marketing of Autodesk’s digital entertainment creation products, including Autodesk® Flame®, Smoke®, FlareTM, Lustre®, 3ds Max®, Maya®, MotionBuilder®, Softimage®, Mudbox® and FBX® software and technology.  In a career that included almost a decade at then fledgling Softimage, as well as many years at Discreet, Marc has worked closely with production studios and understands some of the unique challenges they face.  Unlike companies in other industries, such as automotive or manufacturing system design, entertainment production studios create work product judged not by industry or consumer standards, but instead, by the subjective eye of one, or a small group of individuals. The competition is intense and the “look” that producers seek in their productions is always a shifting target.

Disney's Clay Kaytis talks with journalist Johannes Wolters and student production crew.

Clay Kaytis, a 16 year veteran of Walt Disney Animation, was one of 3 animation supervisors on Tangled.  His FMX 2011 presentation centered around how after several years of development, the animation team went back to basics, simplified their approach, learned valuable lessons on a daily basis from Glen Keane, and in a ridiculously short 8 months, completed work on the film.  As he explained, Tangled allowed Disney’s visual development artists, modelers, riggers, animators, and engineers to advance the art form and raise the bar for portraying subtlety and expression in CG human characters.  Clay walked the capacity crowd through the creative steps of bringing the characters to life, the iterative process that relied heavily on Glen’s original drawings and feedback, feedback that constantly challenged the CG artists to bring realistic motion, acting and feeling to the film.

During his interview for AWNtv, Clay gave great insight into the atmosphere of collaboration and team effort that has made work at Disney so rewarding and fulfilling.  This approach to animated filmmaking, he said, has raised the level of achievement considerably. 

Bill Kroyer.

I’ve known Bill Kroyer since I started AWN back in 1995.  He was one of the first industry people I was introduced to way back then.  I’ve always considered him one of the nicest, most knowledgeable people I’ve ever met in the business.  He cut his teeth years ago at Disney as one of the main animators on Tron.  He’s directed numerous commercials, feature films such as Ferngully: The Last Rainforest as well as supervised the CG on films such as Garfield, Scooby Doo, Cats & Dogs and The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas. He was nominated for an Oscar for his 1988 short film Technological Threat.  He’s also on the board of governors of the Motion Picture Academy and a director at the Dodge School of Film and Media at Chapman University.  In his spare time, he likes growing Orchids and taking long walks on the beach.  All kidding aside, he’s one of the true talents in our industry and one of the friendliest people you’ll ever meet. 

He was a guest at FMX 2011, doing a presentation on the making of the original Tron.  It’s fascinating listening to him talk in-depth about how they made the film, how they literally made things up as they went along, how they generated imagery from keypunching page after page of binary code. The list of nutty things they did to make this picture goes on and on. Bill sat for an interview and shared his thoughts on the original Tron, where it broke new ground and what impact it had on the computer animation field.  He also talks about the new digital animation program at Chapman as well as some of the political issues animation faces within the Motion Picture Academy. 

Dan Sarto with Jeff Okun at FMX 2011.

As chairman of the Visual Effects Society, Jeff Okun has the difficult and usually thankless task of balancing the wants, needs and positions of different professional groups that often sit, knuckles clenched and eyes bulging, on opposite sides of the conference table. Jeff always walks a fine line between agitator and voice of reason.  He isn’t afraid to speak his mind and does so quite frequently, possibly to his own detriment.  However, he doesn’t do so flippantly or without thought and reason.  He is not one to poke an ant hill with a stick just to see what trouble he can stir up.  He talks with passion, knowledge and conviction about pressing issues of importance affecting several thousand VES members as well as hundreds of thousands of other creative artists, producers and studio executives.   

Consequently, he is not afraid to speak honestly about subjects the make some uncomfortable, nor take positions that might rub some people the wrong way.  The bottom line is that everyone working in film and television today knows fundamental change is afoot in how shows are financed and produced and that the visual effects industry has taken a tremendous beating the last few years, especially in California.  The question is what to do about it.

This year, I had the good fortune to sit down with Jeff and talk about some of these pressing issues.  Edited down to 4 segments, these interview videos provide a frank look at the problems plaguing the industry, how the road ahead is no less rocky than the road just traveled and how the industry needs to work together to bring about the type change that will provide more respect and a better future for creative everywhere.