Diploma film directed by Andreas Feix and produced by Francesco Faranna wins the VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Student Project.
LUDWIGSBURG, GERMANY -- The diploma film Citipati, directed by Andreas Feix and produced by Francesco Faranna and created at the Institute of Animation, Visual Effects and Digital Postproduction at the Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg, scored a VES Award at Tuesday evening’s ceremony in Los Angeles.
Citipati succeeded over three other nominated student productions in the Outstanding Visual Effects in a Student Project category, two of which being other diploma films produced at the Institute: Skål, directed by Marco Hakenjos and produced by Christian Zehetmeier, and Jagon, directed by Murat Eyuep Goenueltas alongside VFX supervisor Julian Weiß and VFX producer Tobias Mueller.
Citipati leads the viewer back to the Cretaceous era where a dying dinosaur is encountered. During his final moments, the dinosaur’s last glimpses of the inhospitable world around him merge with his own personal memories. Working on his diploma project Feix an opportunity to return to one of his favorite subjects -- reptiles in a larger sense. In his third-year project, Lindwurm (2012), Feix had animated a dragon about to explore an empty museum at night. While Lindwurm already featured arresting photorealistic visuals, Citipati outperforms the earlier film, impressing the VES jury with its razor-sharp, hyper-realistic 3D imagery.
The VES Awards are bestowed every year by the Visual Effects Society and count as the highest distinction in the field of visual effects right after the Oscars. Feix and Faranna were present at the ceremony, which took place at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills and were thus able to accept the trophy in person. In addition, Krampfert -- who finished her studies at the Institute of Animation in 2006 and now works as an animator at Pixar -- was also honored, along with three of her colleagues, in the Outstanding Animated Performance in an Animated Feature category for her work on the character Joy in Inside Out.
Source: Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg
Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.
