Hello.
Just arrived back from SIGGRAPH...whew, that's over!
It seemd smaller than past years.
..and just as crazy.
I participated in a presentation put together by Lucilla Hoshor, a professor at SCAD. The workshop was Drawing and Acting for Animators. It was a huge success and I enjoyed my time there.
Old friends, former students were everywhere - that was the best part of the conference.
Someday,there will be a real festival in the U.S. dedicated to animation and the art form.
Anyone have impression of SIGGRAPH?
Thanks,
—
Larry
web site
http://tooninst[URL=http://tooninstitute.awn.com]itute.awn.com
[/URL]blog:
[U]http://www.awm.com/blogs/always-animated
[/U] email:
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Hey Larry!
Looked all over for you but never bumped into ya. Guess thats what happens with 40,000 people running all over the place.
Siggraph was great I got to meet some great people like Bobby "boom" Beck and Shawn Kelly character animators from Pixar and ILM respectivley. These guys are who I look up to for inspiration in my work and to meet them in the flesh just was fantastic!
Overall I had a fantastic time there...hopefully next year I will be attending Siggraph as a full time character animator!
www.robtmiller.com
Animator
Neversoft Entertainment
[URL=http://www.studiopendulum.com]
[/URL]
Look for you at the SCAD booth but didn't see you but did meet Dan Sarto.
SIGGRAPH was small but good, Electronic Theather was a disappointment, I won a graphics card at AGUA and had to leave early to prepare for Charley (we were spared here).
ed
Department of Computer Animation
Ringling College of Art and Design
Sarasota Florida
I saw the DVD for Electronic Theater. It *was* rather disappointing, wasn't it? A lot of rather unimpressive animation made its way into the show this year...
Yep there were a lot of effects, water over and over again, water was cool back in the days of The Perfect Storm but it's been a few years. I think it may be time to have an effects theater or something where you can go and watch effects to your hearts content. Every movie now has photoreal and seemless effects and the "wow" factor is gone (for the most part). Don't get me wrong, it's still very impressive but it's not groundbreaking anymore. Well except for some of those Lord of the Rings shots where nothing is real, with thousands of characters running about and you don't doubt it's reality for a second.
Then a lot of animations that looked wonderful but had no substance, story or ending and if they did, they only showed part of it.
oh well,
ed
Department of Computer Animation
Ringling College of Art and Design
Sarasota Florida
I thought that the freaky clown-jack-in-the-box animation was neat, but the pacing and ending were just horrendous. Pretty decent animation and rendering though.
Sigh. Where has the story gone?
There were some pieces that had really neat concepts that completely fell off the tracks because their narratives were weak. The French piece that looked like it was rendered with different kinds of paper was ocassionally beautiful (minus the terribly buggy shadow passes) but the narrative was almost entirely incomprehensible.
I really liked the tea-infusion animation though. That was very nice, and the narrative was cute, if a little obtuse.
Rockfish was fun, albeit a complete rip of the visual style of Star Wars, Episode I. And it felt largely rotoscoped, which is a tragedy in my opinion.
I've been told that last years Electronic Theater was much much better. Though I haven't seen it, unfortunately. I wonder why there was such a dip in quality this year...
Ender
I agree with you guys. I could not even count how many times I sat there after viewing a short then said to myself "what the hell was that all about". To me story is everything and I dont want to constantly sit through animated short after short questioning how much longer is this or will I eventually get the point?
Dont get me wrong alot of this stuff looked really good but still...I was hoping for more substance and the ability to know the bottom line when the animation was over.
Perhaps next year?
www.robtmiller.com
Animator
Neversoft Entertainment
[URL=http://www.studiopendulum.com]
[/URL]
Hello.
Our presentation ACTING AND DRAWING FOR ANIMATORS was very well received. It was great! Lucilla Hoshor deserves alot of credit.
I did see lots of friends and former students.
More later.....
Larry
web site
http://tooninst[URL=http://tooninstitute.awn.com]itute.awn.com
[/URL]blog:
[U]http://www.awm.com/blogs/always-animated
[/U] email:
larry.lauria@gmail.com