Travelling Tipits - FMX 2014: Third day

Owwww.... Getting up that morning hurt... My friend's alarm kept going off and everything!
Anyway, an extra 10 minute kip on the coach and into FMX day 3. This was the day I mostly split apart from the main group.

Since we got there extra early I snuck into the Filmakademie screenings which included this lovely and heart warming/tear jerking short

The Present - Trailer / 2014 from Jacob Frey on Vimeo.

So after bawling my eyes out, I stayed in the Meidinger-Saal, for the 'Developing Games for Mobile', presented by Arash Keshmirian from Limbic. This talk gave interesting insight to the evolution of mobile games development and how audiences can change. They started out with TowerMadness, a highly successful game, that powered their company; with paid for unlockables. Later, however, when they went back to make a 2, they discovered that the older audience did a marmite, either loved it or hated it.

Very interesting talk.

I then went to a technical lecture on 'Gravity' and 3D conversion at the cinema, again interesting, but my notes are incredibly vague on it... I think it blew me away somewhat.

Staying there I then saw 'Behind the invisible visual effects of Rush' which was presented by Nathan Ortiz from Dneg...

THIS BLEW ME AWAY IN A DIFFERENT WAY. I had no idea how much Cg was in this film, it was all so realistic, which was crazy. Thankfully I sat with Remco and he managed to shut my seemingly permenant hanging mouth. The team work described in the Dneg team reflects on the time I went to see them, they are very much a community there and they want to work together to produce the best visuals. All fantastic.

I then saw the development of 'Manou the Swift'... I had considered working in Germany before, and after this it cememented the idea. I loved the concept of this film, the art, the models, the passion of the team, it all radiated the potential of the film. Looks fantastic and I cannot wait to see it... Am currently making multiple showreels... Definitely making one to send to Luxx studios!!

I stayed for the best of Siggraph Asia shorts that were shown, all amazing for different reasons.

I then ran to see 'Making Animation Blockbusters in France for Hollywood', which was more businessy than I somehow expected.

Stayed for 'Producing and Visual effects for the Grand Budapest hotel' which left me with the same feeling Rush did, I had no idea how much of it was visual effects. This was presented by Gabriel Sanchez, and others, but Gabriel I met the previous night at the party. So that was a funny meeting again, he's a lovely bloke. Seriously though, there was so much visual effects in that film, and by the sound of things, a great deal of them was because of mistakes made in the original shoot - CRAZY.

That wraps up the day...

But I went out to another party in the evening! WHOOPS... Still, it was an industry meet.

See ya soon,

Claire

Industry Indent: Double negative

Established in 1998 Double Negative, or Dneg for short, have worked on several exciting projects both for
major studios, Harry Potter, Skyfall, Man of Steel, etc. and independant film makers for films like Shaun of the Dead, Paul, Attack The Block, etc. 
They have won an academy award for Inception, as well as four VES awards (three for Inception) and two BAFTA awards, one for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, and the other for Inception.



Their pieces range from Character animation (Paul) to vehicle animation (Rush) and crowd animation (John Carter), again another diverse range of work that thrills me when I see it. Double Negative was another studio that visited USW in 2013, and gave a fantastic talk on their involvement with the animation of the Tharks in John Carter. Specifically they talked about the crowd scenes featuring the Tharks, such as the gladiator ring scene with the White Apes... Who are petrifying! For all those who paint John Carter with the 'flop' brush, I urge you to watch the film again with fresh eyes, the VFX are glorious, the realistic character animation on the Tharks is fantastic, and how they solved the whole four arm idles is brilliant. The film itself is well worth the watch just for all the Thark scenes, as you can see the heart and soul poured into the characters, each bringing a believable human aspect to the film. If you believe the story has influences from other Sci-fi hits like Star wars, then read the origins for the script, as the book 'John Carter of Mars' was produced early 20th century, and is in fact the stem of the other Sci-fis! Anyway, I'm detracting!
In fact this talk was the one to get me into rigging, due to the sequences they showed of all the facial animation, and how the deform shapes, and underneath muscles, were triggered by controls. However the main appeal of this talk to me how they interpreted the motion capture data for four armed characters, describing how the arms were arranged for dominate and recessive actions. This blend between motion capture and realistic key-framed animation is what drew me towards the studio. I approached the team after the talk and I was very fortunate... and very cheeky as I asked... to arrange a visit to Dneg late last near when they were in full production of a film I cannot mention because of reasons... However I am very excited to see it in the Cinema!!
If you cannot tell from my typing, I have been very inspired by the realistic animation Dneg has produced over the years, and cannot wait to see more! See you later, Claire