The GDC’s Serious Games Summit was an object lesson on how many areas of the world can be affected by games—and how effective Serious Games can be in teaching, affecting opinion, motivating exercise, and medical healing, to name but a few.
The last talk of the day I attended was suitably called “Making LOVE In Your Bedroom.” The solo developer of a game called “LOVE,” Eskil Steenberg, ran the session. The absolute focus of his talk was pushing developers, indie and commercial alike, to build their own tools rather than licensing existing ones.
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 Game Developer Conference, also known as GDC, is the end-all be-all event of the year for game developers. You’ll find no fan-boys here!
CN exec Keith Crofford, the hour’s default grown-up introduced a panel that included Seth Green, Brecken Meyer, Kevin Shinick, Matt Senreich and Geoff Johns. Jokes, ad-libs and non-sequiturs flew fast and furious.
Imagina, a longstanding computer graphics conference in Europe, has transformed itself in 2009 to cater more toward the industrial and building industries, with the prior media and entertainment scope being served by one of several sub-conference tracks.
The Ink and Paint Club held its premiere luncheon with Walt Disney Animation Studio’s Emily Hoppe on hand as the guest of honor. Hoppe, the studio’s senior manager of creative marketing outlined the role Disney and The Princess and the Frog, the studio’s first 2D animated film in five years, will play at Red Stick’s April festival.
As the festival is winding down my wife and I are on a mission to pack in as much as we can. I have a short film in the festival this year and feel like we need to give it our all (can always sleep when we get home). It's time to take off the gloves switch off the phones and hit the streets!
I am sitting in the filmmakers lounge at Sundance headquarters watching the historic inauguration of Barack Obama. I am amongst a crowd of filmmakers, and there is a clear sense of hope and relief that this day has arrived.
After we enjoyed a spectacular meal at the brunch festival director Geoffrey Gilmore steps up to the mic and welcomes us to none other than Robert Redford.
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 featuring the voice talents of Toni Collette, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Humphries and Eric Bana.
What is it about Italians? Give any of them a microphone and invite them to speak and they immediately turn into the best public speakers known to man. Joking, calling out to the audience, laughing, and then delivering interesting insight and banter. This is I Castelli Animati.
The novelty and cutting edge feeling of the Art Gallery and Emerging Technology shows of earlier years is missing and it feels like these sectors have reached a plateau.
It might just be that he is so humble to rather highlight other folk’s contributions to Pixar’s final products, but Rob Cook surely is connected with Pixar’s secret recipe to success – their stories.
From what I see and hear, everybody seems happy at SIGGRAPH Asia in Singapore. The exhibition floor is busy; the quality of talks is high, the Electronic Theater has been praised for its quality selection, and everyone notes the intimate feeling and family flair in the air.
The inaugural SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 was formally opened on Tuesday, Dec 11, in true Singaporean style: with festive opening speeches by the Conference Chair YT Lee and by distinguished government representatives.
One of the hot topics at AnimfxNZ was 3-D stereo and digital cinema. Dave Scammell, the President of SohoNet, ran a panel on the issue with Steve Schklair from 3ality Digital, Patrick von Sychowski from Adlabs/Reliance India, and Habib Zargarpour from Electronic Arts Los Angeles.
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.
Tom Willits, Creative Director at id Software, provides insight in his talk about the gaming industry.
Carolyn Soper is a Vice President of Disney Animation Studios, and has been working on the upcoming Disney feature Bolt. She walked AnimfxNZ attendees through the process of building a hamster named Rhino.
According to Henry LaBounta, Chief Visual Officer for EA Black Box, 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.
AnimfxNZ 2008 began with a song. A contingent of Maori gathered to perform a 'powhiri', or New Zealand traditional welcome. The foreign visitors and speakers lined up so the kaumatua could determine if they were friends or foes. Thankfully, there were no enemies among them, and the conference was able to proceed.
One cannot help feeling that there is something very special in the way Maria Elena Gutierrez has put together this festival: her cultivation of industry figures, her contacts with other festivals, and her warmth as a hostess. Or maybe it’s the chocolate.
Well, I’m torn. Shall I go to the presentation on “Hair shells and bi-quad transition rig on Shrek the Halls and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa” or to the “Humanizing virtual agents: the role of speech technology in effective human-machine interaction?” Maybe if they made a rule that titles had to be short, like “Beards and boundaries” and “Talk to me, Mac,” I would feel less anxiety about making these choices.
Here at the VIEW Conference there is another vapor in the air besides water: a palpable sense of worry. You can see it on the faces of the digital hipsters listening attentively to representatives of Pixar and DreamWorks, consigning their show reels with all the courtesy and ceremony of a Japanese businessman presenting his business card.
