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FMX Wraps its Sold-Out and Successful 23rd Edition

Theme of ‘Creating Worlds’ resonated across tracks and through presentations from Aardman, Phil Tippett, Réka Bucsi and top tech companies.

STUTTGART, GERMANY -- The 23rd edition of FMX has wrapped and was a sold-out success with 264 speakers attracting 4,000 visitors to the conference’s locations throughout Stuttgart.

"FMX 2018 was a complete success,” says Andreas Hykade, FMX Conference Chair. “Under the theme ‘Creating Worlds’ we were able to show through first-class conference contributions how igniting ideas can develop into inventions of great artistic and economic sustainability."

Aardman Animations' co-founder and animation legend David Sproxton shared at FMX 2018 the story of how Shaun the Sheep went from being a minor role in Wallace and Gromit to a global franchise in the space of ten years. He also presented the new Aardman film Early Man. "Creating worlds for Aardman means using our imagination to find the places in which our stories are going to take place and our characters can inhabit and feel suited to,” he said. "And of course we try to make them places in which comedy can play well."

Visual effects legend Phil Tippett expressed a different position on world building: “Creating worlds means emotion. My emotion is misanthropic, because mankind is doomed. I want to tell the story of mankind as a comedy.” He was substantially involved in creating the most popular movie worlds. In his presentation he covered the stop tricks of the first Star Wars films and the advent of CGI with Jurassic Park up to his new stop-motion film Mad God.

In the Wild & Strange track, curated by Jeanette Bonds, director and co-founder of GLAS Animation, indie animation filmmaker Réka Bucsi explained her path to animation and the creation of unconventional stories, and presented her feature film Solar Walk. For her, creating worlds as an artist means "I guess everything. All of us are trying to do it. I am many times trying to escape into a world that is more interesting than the real one."

Numerous talks presented current developments and productions from the field of immersive media. In the track AR Platforms, Apple, Google and Microsoft presented platforms with which they merge the virtual and the real world. In 2018, the Stuttgart Planetarium once again hosted a number of extraordinary lectures, including Sonaria and Coco VR, the virtual experience of Disney Pixar's cinema success. In addition, the VR experience Conscious Existence was presented in a world premiere as a unique interactive multi-user VR cinema presentation.

In addition to its conference presentations, FMX again offered networking and career opportunities with its recruiting hub. Numerous companies presented their latest products and services on the marketplace as well as in master classes, company suites and workshops. The school campus complemented this diverse array of events as a meeting platform for schools, alumni and prospective students.

FMX 2019 will take place from April 30 to May 3, 2019.

Source: FMX

Thomas J. McLean's picture

Tom McLean has been writing for years about animation from a secret base in Los Angeles.