Stuttgart, Germany -- The FMX 2013 program is taking shape. Europe's most renowned conference on digital entertainment, which takes place two weeks earlier than last year, adopts the slogan "lean, smart and agile" and focuses on the ongoing paradigm shift in the animation, effects, games and transmedia industries. It zeroes in on how smart technologies, adaptive approaches and flexible strategies are shaping the business, allowing for integrated storytelling, affordable workflows, accessible budgets, independent initiatives, new players and global success. Highly esteemed industry professionals explore this change in various presentations, workshops, masterclasses, on the Marketplace, the Recruiting Hub and the School Campus. What's more, FMX focuses on VFX highlights such as Life of Pi and Cloud Atlas and animation adventures such as The Croods. In continuing its successful cooperation with the popular International Festival of Animated Film Stuttgart and the business platform Animation Production Day, FMX transforms Stuttgart into a meeting point for professionals, digital artists and decision-makers from all over the world.

The paradigm shift presents the industries with new challenges while offering interesting opportunities at the same time. At this year's FMX, presentations take a closer look at how the ensuing demands of versatility and flexibility allow for new distribution models, different ways of financing, adaptive workflows, innovative strategies and more. In the light of this paradigm shift,  last year's subject of "Cloud Computing" is a recurring theme, complemented by presentations on "Cloud Gaming" and curated by Ludwig von Reiche, Managing Director/Senior Director of Business Development at NVIDIA ARC. Moreover, FMX takes up last year's focus on "Virtual Production" in a dedicated track by curator David Morin, Chair, Joint Technology Subcommittee on Virtual Production and Chair, Autodesk Film CTO Advisory Council.

Last year's trends prevail: FMX attaches great importance to the subjects of Games and Transmedia. Compared to technically oriented events such as SIGGRAPH, FMX discusses current developments from the perspective of artists and content developers across the industries. Subjects under discussion include multi-platforms as well as questions concerning production and distribution. Moreover, this year's program features the presentation series "Games: Visual Arts," curated by Joseph Olin, as well as talks on "Game Cinematics" (curated by Dominic Cianciolo, NetherRealm Studios) and other track highlights span from "Game Characters" by Henry LaBounta (Microsoft) to "Real-time Rendering" by Wolfgang Engel (Confetti). Inga von Staden (Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg) curates the track "Indie Games" and the program series on Transmedia experiences which concentrates on the central theme "Building Worlds."

The prehistoric adventure The Croods, which will be released in March, counts among this year's most anticipated animation highlights. The DreamWorks Animation production focuses on the world's first family, the last survivors of their kind. While Eric Tabellion (R&D Dreamworks) discusses the use of different lighting techniques in The Croods and other films, Visual Effects Supervisor Markus Manninen gives a broad overview over the animation process. Wildness is a theme that permeates other animation tracks at FMX as well - the "Wild 'n' Strange" series, curated by Andreas Hykade, is dedicated to offbeat indie highlights far from mainstream.