This introduction to the SIGGRAPH convention experience starts with a practical guide to organizing to attend any large convention. He uses the same techniques many of us developed going to Comic Con or any other large Sci-Fi or Anime convention, but without having to go through three or four conventions gradually learning through trial and error how to organize your time and map out the convention space. So I recommend anyone who wants to attend a large convention watch the first 10 or 12 minutes of this presentation. He then goes on to break down the process of computer animation into its component parts by type of activity, giving a very clear understanding of how it works. If you have any interest in creating your own animations this is a great introduction. That shouldn’t be a surprise, since ACM SIGGRAPH is the Association of Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group, GRAPHics which started life as an organization in 1967, held its first convention in 1974, and became an Internet NEWSGROUP back in the early 70s as well. The latest convention, coming up at the Los Angeles Convention Center the 9th through 13th of August, 2015, will be the 42nd time the event has been held.
This Disney flic looks like a lot of fun! Zootopia is by definition the kind of Utopia where humans never existed, but the anthropomorphic animals who lived there were extremely HumanEsq. It has a great premise and some good 3D CGI animation that brings the characters to life in ways beyond what the creators were trying for, I suspect. I have enjoyed everything they have shown us of it so far, and can’t wait to see more.
The wonderful animated short Brain Divided was put together by Josiah Haworth, Joon Shik Song and Joon Soo Song. This looks a lot like the new Pixar film Inside Out, but according to the Brain Divided Facebook page, they were developed at the same time and totally independent of each other. Enjoy!
This is a fan made trailer put together to help us imagine what an animated version of BLADERUNNER would be like.
The award winning short film Somnium was created by Team Somium of The Animation School in South Africa, the team being Gerard Seymour, Riann Sholtz, Pieter Louw, Eben De Waal, Jasmine Morvan, and Greta Pepler. The award it won was the World Silver Award from the New York Festival’s International Television & Film Awards of 2014, and it only takes about 5 minutes to watch. I find it interesting but appropriate that they named it after the 1608 science fiction story Somnium by astronomer Johannes Kepler. Enjoy!
It will be hard to top this past weekend’s monster film Jurassic World after it blew the doors off of the previous opening weekend record holder, The Avengers. But if you are in need of a mental pick-me-up I recommend Inside Out, the latest animated fun fest from Pixar. I am thinking I will have to be in the theater for this one… although I might follow it up with another round of Dinosaurs.