The Game Developers Conference 2004 (GDC), held March 22-26 in San Jose, California, has updated its Visual Arts Track lineup, which is designed "to take art and animation in new directions." Sessions are focused on intermediate and advanced artists and are expanded in length to walk attendees step-by- step through the latest tools and technologies.

Keynotes:
"From Visual Anti-Establishmentarianism to Ubiquity and Back"
John Gaeta
Visual effects supervisor for the feature films THE MATRIX, THE MATRIX RELOADED, AND THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS

"The History of Animation"
Phil Tippett, Tippett Studios
Academy Award winner and visual effects supervisor on THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, RETURN OF THE JEDI, ROBOCOP and JURASSIC PARK

"Workflow Convergence: How Motion Picture Pipelines Are Merging With Game Development"
"DJ" John Jardin, visual effects supervisor on CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: 2 and THE MATRIX trilogy

Sessions:

"Building Gollum"
Bay Raitt, Weta Digital

"Acting for Animators"
Ed Hooks

"Character Rigging Cookbook"
Stephen Theodore, RAD GAME TOOLS

"Digital Painting and the Narrowing Gap between Games and Film"
Paul Topolos, Pixar

"Jak's Makeover for JAKII: Why the Dramatic New Look for a Sequel?"
Bob Rafei, Naughty Dog

"Lighting In the REEL World"
Tom Denove

"Outdoor Jungle Vegetation: BATTLEFIELD VIETNAM"
Richard Linde, DICE

"Producing the Characters and Creatures of ULTIMA X: ODYSSEY"
Stefan Henry Biskup, Liquid Development

"Visualizing Sly and Cooper"
Dev Madan, Suckerpunch

"Raising the Bar in In-Game Character Animation"
Jeremy Cantor

"3D Animation"
Andy Murdock

To see all Visual Arts sessions and the other six tracks of sessions, containing more than 300 lectures, seminars, roundtables, tutorials and keynotes for the GDC 2004, visit: www.gdconf.com/conference.