Siggraph

There’s no shortage of people walking around Siggraph this year with plastic Viking helmets on their heads and goofy grins on their faces, and that can only mean one thing: Fjorg! is back.

Fjorg! 2008 The Sequel! gathers 16 teams from around the world and pits them against each other in a 32-hour Iron Man-style event where nothing but the ticking of the clock, extreme sleep deprivation, and multiple staged distractions from costumed weirdos stand in each team’s way of creating the best animated short ever. In reality, 32 hours is not a lot of time to do that, but the teams forge on undeterred.

Less than one hour ago (and two hours after a rousing samba dancer performance), the Chief Viking Priestess called time, and the teams had to turn in their films. The guys pictured (with the flagrantly orange capes!) were one of the last teams finished. One of the student volunteer floor runners told me that each short had to be between 15 and 45 seconds and have something to do with the chosen theme: The Saddest Story Ever Told.

Five celebrity judges including Simon J. Smith, the Director of Bee Movie; Maggie Malone, the Director of Creative Development at Walt Disney Animation Studios; and Bill Kroyer, Senior Animation Director at Rhythm & Hues Studios, will judge the 16 films. Tomorrow at 6:30pm the winners will be announced, along with a showing of all the team animations and a five-to-10-minute documentary of the event. Chain mail and mead are optional.