“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

Leading Post Production technology manufacturer of 2D and stereoscopic 3D products Digital Ordnance (Booth #1061) has confirmed that its SIGGRAPH plans include a live booth stereo 3D presentation. Exhibits run August 12th–14th, at the L.A. Convention Center. Read on at The Briefing Room

More Siggraph 2008 news from The Briefing Room

Massive Software, developer of the artificial intelligence-driven animation system Massive, will be in Los Angeles during the SIGGRAPH 2008 conference, showcasing their latest product updates and unique customer projects at special events to be held throughout the show. Read on at The Briefing Room

More Siggraph 2008 news from The Briefing Room

First, in case you don’t know what Fjorg! is here’s the blurb: The world‘s first international FJORG! competition is an “iron animator” event at SIGGRAPH 2007 in which 16 competing teams from around the world will have 32 hours to create the world‘s best character-driven animation in front of a live, “Gladiator-style” audience and judging panel.

And the winners are: First place, Team Mocap from Bowling Green State University for their animation “Switch.” The team consists of Jim Levasseur, Tomas Jech, and W. Jacob Gardner. Congrats to the team and you can see their winning entry later today at www.workstations.tv. more

If you’re here, you won’t want to miss this. Starting at 6pm go to Room 28B and C at the convention center to see the unveiling of the 32-hour animation contest winners otherwise known as the Fjorg! Iron Animators. They’re tired, but they’re happy.

Videos are rumored to be hilarious, winners will be announced at 6:55. In the meantime if you want to see the scene (or if you’re not here) go to workstations.tv .

All contest videos will be posted to workstations.tv tonight. Stop by and see what these creative CG animators have put their hearts and souls into.

These have been the most AMAZING couple days ever. Being a winner of the HP/Saytek Team Animation contest has really gotten our team’s names out there. I worked on the short with my two close friends Danny Garnett and Manuel Sierra. Our school, The Art Institute of Philadelphia, has been doing a great job of introducing us to many people already in the industry.

Day 1 (Monday): Lay of the Land

After being in San Diego for a bit and checking into our amazing hotel (Hilton Gaslamp Quarters…conveniently accross the street from the convention haha), we headed out for some food. Stopped by “The Field” near fifth and market. We all decided to get boxties since we have never heard of them before. They were delicious, pretty much a potato pancake wrapped around bacon, cheese, and covered in a white wine sauce. Now onto the convention itself. more

Thus far my first day of Siggraph has been pretty gnarly. Our game (www.shankethegame.com) we built for the Art Institute seems to be going over extremely well! It’s amazing to see something we worked so hard on over the last few months being played by so many people. I haven’t had the chance to meet any of my artistic heroes as of yet, but I plan to!

The Siggraph 2007 Special Sessions take a behind the scenes look at some of the past year’s top animation and visual effects accomplishments for the feature film industry. Four different sessions will take place in the San Diego Convention Center, each focusing on a different film production–a lineup which includes: Happy Feet, Transformers, Shrek, and Spiderman 3.

For more information on time and locations, as well as more of an in-depth look at the specific topics covered, click here.

Read more about the making of Shrek 3 in Senior Editor Michael Goldman’s recent article in Millimeter here.

Learn more on the creation of Spiderman 3 in Goldman’s article Digital Acrobatics.

The SIGGRAPH Papers program is the premier international forum for disseminating new scholarly work in computer graphics. This year the Papers Committee accepted 108 papers, a new record. These papers span the core areas of modeling, animation, rendering, and imaging, but they also touch on related areas such as visualization, computer vision, human-computer interaction, and applications of computer graphics.

New for SIGGRAPH 2007

To promote a lively exchange of ideas during the Papers program, we are introducing a system of per-paper discussants. Each paper in the program will be allotted 25 minutes, 20 minutes for presentation and five minutes for discussion of the paper, with the session chair serving as discussant.

For a video preview of this year’s Papers, click here.

For a list of Papers presentation times, click here.

(Chicago, IL) - SIGGRAPH 2007 announces the launch of FJORG! (pronounced FORGE), a new international computer graphics animation competition to be held at SIGGRAPH 2007, the 34th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques held 5-9 August 2007 at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, CA, USA. more