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

It was an exciting day when I found out that my short film “Distraxion” was going to be featured in the 2008 SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival. I had spent the last two years bringing it to completion and I was constantly motivated by the goal of a screening at the CAF. The first year, I was a student in the short film curriculum at AnimationMentor. The next year, I had landed my position as staff animator at DreamWorks Animation and had dedicated my nights and weekends to completing the remaining work on the project. As exciting as it was to learn about my acceptance to the festival, it was even more exciting to learn that in 2008 a new format was being introduced. This new format combined the festival with what was in previous years known as the Electronic Theater. The two showcases would be shown intertwined in high definition digital projection at Los Angeles’ Nokia Theater. more

Siggraph 2008 drew to a close with a bang Thursday night as ILM hosted a screening of its new Star Wars: Clone Wars animated feature at the Nokia Theater following the final run of the Electronic Theater. The screening featured an intro with the film’s director, Dave Filoni, being interviewed by ILM Academy Award-winning visual effects supervisor (and co-inventor of Adobe Photoshop), John Knoll, about their Star Wars experiences. At the private ILM party before the screening, millimeter Senior Editor Michael Goldman had the chance to have a quick chat with Knoll about his impressions of Siggraph 2008 and what parts of the show interested him the most. Hear their conversation.

The Nokia Theater hosts the Siggraph Computer Animation Festival’s awards ceremony today at 3:45, when the winners of the Audience Award, the Student Prize, the Jury Award, and the Best of Show award will be announced. I’ve covered many of the films up for these awards in previous blogs. See France dominates Computer Animation Festival and Commercials and Promo Spots are Shorts Too for details and links to some of the actual films themselves.

I’ll take this chance to spotlight some of the nominees I haven’t covered. Carbon Footprint is a time-lapse movie depicting 50 years in the life of a discarded aluminum can and is enough to make you vocal the next time you see some jackass throw something away on the street. It comes from the U.K.-based Jellyfish Pictures, and despite its very short running time, is a strong contender for Best of Show. more

“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

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

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. more

Press Release

SIGGRAPH 2007 announced today the inclusion of an exclusive preview of “Beowulf”, groundbreaking director Robert Zemeckis’ unique vision of the “Beowulf” saga, in this year’s Computer Animation Festival‘s Electronic Theater taking place at the 34th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, 5-9 August 2007 in San Diego, California, USA.

“In an Electronic Theater filled with truly the best of the best in each category, ‘Beowulf‘ is on the absolute cutting edge of what is being produced today,” said Paul Debevec, SIGGRAPH 2007 Computer Animation Festival Chair from the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies. “This year’s show weaves together amazing visuals from numerous disciplines into a single mind-altering experience.” more