Well, I hate to say I told you so, but…a couple of days ago I wrote this entry, France dominates Computer Animation Festival, which is pretty self-explanatory. Now, I’m writing to tell you of the winners in the Siggraph 2008 Compuater Animateion Festival, and guess what?

France dominated.

Here’s the list, all deserving winners. Congratulations to all the nominees on a great exhibition!

Best of Show Winner

Oktapodi

Gobelins l’école de l’image, France more

A lot of focus this year at Siggraph has been on stereoscopic 3D and its emergence as a new language of filmmaking. If 3D is a new way of making movies, then the vast visual effects team that worked on Speed Racer discovered a reinvention of 2D filmmaking.

Visual Effects Supervisor John Gaeta calls the style pioneered on Speed Racer many things. Among them: “virtual cinematography,” “photo-anime,” and “2 1/2 D” layering. When he and Dan Glass first started working on the project, it was a liberating experience to force themselves to let go of the need for any kind of photorealistic element. This quality is something ingrained into any visual-effects artist worth his salt from the get go. Letting go of that instinct is like asking a cat to ignore a mouse. more

LoiLo, today introduced LoiLoScope at Siggraph, their breakthrough video editing software that redefines the video editing experience with speed, sophistication and playfulness never before seen in video editing software. LoiLoScope introduces an entirely new user interface based on an unconstrained, infinitely zoom-able workspace. Their pioneering direct interface with the graphic processing unit (GPU) lets users create and manipulate HD videos freely with one-touch operation and without time-consuming rendering. Read on at The Briefing Room

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“He was fearless,” says James Cameron. Stan Winston always had the charisma to talk nervous producers into letting his creature effects and make-up studio create expensive, experimental visual effects for their movies. Cameron should know, because some of Winston’s most famous and groundbreaking work was done for Cameron’s 1991 film Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

Last night at the Nokia Theater in downtown Los Angeles, hundreds gathered to pay tribute to legendary Hollywood effects guru Stan Winston, who died this past June. The man left a huge legacy of memorable and award-winning visual effects moments from movies such as Jurassic Park, Aliens, A.I., Iron Man, Predator, and Edward Scissorhands. Jody Duncan, author of “The Winston Effect” interviewed Cameron and some of Winston’s other collaborators about the keys to Winston’s success. more

The only thing more popular than laptops and Starbucks at Siggraph this year is the double-feature panel featuring the visual-effects wizards behind Cloverfield and Iron Man . Tippett Studio and Industrial Light & Magic split the bill to reveal some of the secrets behind two of 2008’s biggest FX-heavy blockbusters.

The Tippett team, headed by Eric Leven, gave the impression that the best kind of movie to work on is one with a limited budget and nothing to lose. Such a project was pitched to them as a kind of “Blair Witch meets Godzilla.” Originally Cloverfield was budgeted at $25 million when they got the call from J.J. Abrams’ team to work up the monster, known affectionately as “Clover.” Once the filmmakers got the original tests back from Tippett, the excitement they generated resulted in more money. more

Siggraph 2008 covers a wide spectrum of educational topics concerning animation, so it’s no surprise that the conference isn’t always looking into the future if there’s something important to glean from the past. The storied history of classic animated movies from the Walt Disney Animation Studio still holds so much for the animators of today to learn from. This morning’s panel “A Tribute to the Life and Work of Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston” featured seven top animators of today sharing memories and discussing why these two of Disney’s famed “Nine Old Men” continue to serve as inspiration. more

This year’s Siggraph Computer Animation Festival is an all-inclusive affair. Each standalone programmed screening runs approximately two hours and is made up of several short films and compliation works of varying degrees of length. Though they are the shortest of the short and often are promoting one thing or another, commercials and spots shouldn’t be overlooked as works of art worth celebrating, and the festival’s first program featured several worth mentioning. more

“Live-action 3D is the future/Teach it well and let it lead the way,” Whitney Houston once sang, I believe. Oops, wrong bad joke. The big joke among people who make 3D stereoscopic films is that it is way more work than making a regular 2D film because you have to make the same film twice.

This summer’s Journey to the Center of the Earth was shot in stereo with dual Sony HDC-950 HD cameras mounted on Pace Technologies‘ 3D HD rigs. The movie’s Visual-Effects Supervisor Christopher Townsend was on hand to explain that there is no cheating space when you’re filming live-action 3D. You can’t use any of the solutions normally associated with 2D movies, such as flat matte paintings for backgrounds, 2D compositing, or any 2D cueing traicks at all. Journey to the Center of the Earth is the directorial debut of longtime visual-effects supervisor Eric Brevig and the movie was the first ever full-length stereoscopic motion picture shot in HD to be released in digital 3D. more

It’s the same general approach, only with very different visual presentations.

Robert Neuman, stereoscopic supervisor at Walt Disney Animation, showed a trailer for the upcoming computer-animated feature Bolt, which is from the talking-animal variety of kids-oriented films. In this movie, John Travolta voices a dog who thinks the popular TV show he stars in is real life. Neuman stressed the importance of using 3D as an aid to storytelling and not as purely a gimmick, something echoed by all the presenters so far today. Having objects flying nonstop at the screen seems to be a William Castle-like relic from the past. more

Cinnafilm, a pioneering developer of advanced film and video production tools, announced the immediate availability of Cinnafilm HD1, the industry’s first all-in-one format conversion platform designed specifically for film simulation and unlimited frame rate conversion of digital video. The unique combined hardware and software platform leverages the power of graphics card parallel processing to deliver unmatched quality format conversions and celluloid simulations quickly, easily, cost effectively and most significantly, in real-time. HD1 places complete and instantaneous control of the artistic process directly into the hands of creative professionals without sacrificing production quality or visual integrity. Read on at The Briefing Room

More Siggraph 2008 news from The Briefing Room