Siggraph

Finally got a chance to sneak over to the Electronic Theater at the San Diego Civic Center Theater last night for the 7pm showing. As with every Electronic Theater from Siggraph’s of yesteryear, the pre-show is just as entertaining as the actual clips.

For ‘07 the committee offered a tribute to some of the ground-breaking innovations in game technology–from the ’80s. They projected three different laser-based Atari games onto the huge movie screen and invited industry pros to try their hand at the joystick classics.

Computer Animation Festival Chair Paul Debevec was up first giving Asteroids a go (the first game to use such laser technology for an interactive experience). Then, Richard Taylor, VFX guru for Tron (read more on Richard Taylor and Tron in the upcoming issue of Millimeter) drew much applause for his performance on Tempest–the first laser-based game to incorporate 3D visualization. Finally, John Knoll, VFX Supervisor for Star Wars Episodes 1-3 got behind the stick for (I’m sure not ironically) Star Wars and got nearly a standing “o” for successfully destroying the Death Star on first go.

Highlights from the screening included a hilarious short from Blue Sky Studios based upon the Ice Age squirrel character who stumbles upon a time-machine and travels through the millenia chasing his acorn, titled “No Time For Nuts.” Interesting behind the scenes notes for big time productions included the birthing scene in “Children of Men” showing the creation of the baby by Framestore CFC; Sony Pictures Imageworks development of the Sandman and Venomous goo for Spider-Man Three; an ILM overview including work on Transformers; and the creating of 300’s Liquid Battlefield by Scanline VFX.

Best of Show winner “Ark” was a dark tale of depression and hallucination/imagination for an elderly gentleman caught in dimentia–done to perfection by Marcin Kobylecki and Gregorz Jonkajtys. New game FX and skin elasticity/fabric flexibility was shown from various sources including Valve Corproration, MIRALab, NVIDIA, Carnegie Mellon University, and Electronic Arts.

Some of the most humorous, and well recieved clips were shorts from Katsuyuki Suzuki of Japan, who created “The Recent Future Robot: Helper Z”–a building-sized robot on a mission to save a woman hanging from a window. His eathquake-ic entry turns out to be more of a burden than help. Britain’s Joel Green (Bournemouth University) brought wit to the screen with “The Itch” where a lanky fellow who found an old chap tapping a cane on his leg for 8 years and showed an arc of frustration to acceptance to a lonliness when the chap decides one day to stop. And, one of the most loudly applauded pieces was The Mill’s short called “Raymond” developed by Fabrice le Nezet, Jules Janaud, and Francois Roisin. Raymond is a guy who has seeming been overwhelmed by lethargicism and a group of scientists begin tests developing liquids to douse on Raymond to get him to move, spin, and jump. Hilarity ensues as poor Raymond gets tossed to and fro like a rag-doll across various experiments from going through a set of doors, to running a treadmill, to finally being cloned and having a disco.

As always, the Electronic Theater at Siggraph did not disappoint and served as a great venue to exhibit all of the current and upcoming animation and FX greats in the industry.