Animated shorts. Commercials. Visual effects for live action. Games. Music videos. Long animated short fi lms. Scientifi c animations. Real-time animations. Images from all these genres and more will be featured in this year’s Computer Animation Festival, held yearly during the SIGGRAPH conference and exhibition.
Always a highlight of SIGGRAPH, the festival showcases the breadth and depth of digital animation by professionals and students as they push the boundaries of CG technology. This year, the festival jury, headed by The Creative Cartel’s Joshua Grow, reviewed nearly 900 submissions to the showcase, of which 77 were selected for various genre screenings. In addition to these pieces, several invited selections will also captivate audiences during both the Electronic Theater and genre reel screenings.
“Every year we are seeing the bar getting raised higher in terms of technology and artistry,” Grow says. “This year’s submissions prove that.” Grow, who has been a SIGGRAPH volunteer since 2002, served as student volunteer chair and festival producer and technical director. In 2012, he will continue his role as Computer Animation Festival director.
While the format of the festival has changed during the past few years, for the 2011 show, the committee is maintaining the tradition of the Electronic Theater, showcasing the best of the best for three nights and a Thursday matinee, while also keeping the fairly new festival format, offering screenings through the day with seven “amazing” production sessions, notes Grow.
Among the particularly noteworthy festival animations are those that received the coveted trio of awards: William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg’s “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore,” Best in Show Award winner; Damian Nenow’s “Paths of Hate,” Jury Award winner; and Tomer Eshed’s (The Konrad Wolf Potsdam-Babelsberg Film and Television University) “Flamingo Pride,” Best Student Project Prize winner.
A selection of still images from the festival is featured on these two pages. –Karen Moltenbrey