With topics ranging from fighting robots to animation, product design to sound design, character creation to camera mapping, and game design to storytelling, VIEW 2012 offers professionals and students a remarkable chance to learn from some of the leading directors, animators, artists, storytellers, and designers in the world.
Some sessions limit the number of participants, so conference organizers suggest early enrollment to ensure a guaranteed seat. These include:
Design the Future: Creative Bootcamp – Designing for a New World
Autodesk fellow, author, Singularity University professor Tom Wujec brings together directors Eric Darnell (PDI/DreamWorks) and Dan Attias, sound designer Gary Rydstrom (Skywalker Sound), industry veteran Glenn Entis (Vanedge Capital), game designer Vander Caballero (Minority), animation supervisor Rex Grignon (PDI/DreamWorks), director/animator Mark Walsh (Pixar), teacher, producer and storyteller Chris Perry, creative director of “Halo” Josh Holmes (Microsoft) and game evangelist Marco Mazzaglia (Milestone) to imagine with participants the year 2025. What will everyday life feel like? What technologies will we use? What will movies, television, and games evolve into? This will be a lively, interactive workshop in which participants and conference leaders will think and work together to design the future.
PART 1: Develop Future Scenarios: Thursday, Oct. 18, 4:00 pm - 7:00
pm
Using trend data from several sources, participants will work in small groups to speculate about life in 2025 and develop a series of future scenarios.
PART 2: Prototype the Future: Friday, Oct. 19, 9:00 am -1:00 pm
Based on insight from day one, participants will develop sketches, mock-ups, and prototypes of future products: movies, videogames, shoes, medical devices, personal robots, and who knows what else? The future is yours for the making!
Creature-Creation: Friday, Oct. 19, 9:00 am – 1:15 pm
Creature-Creation Invasion workshop with Erminio Pinque, creature fabricator / performer and director of the BIG NAZO LAB will head this session.
The VIEW Conference BIG NAZO LAB Creature-Creation Workshop will explore ways in which low-budget, hand-constructed character elements can inspire alternatives to high-tech digital special effects. Using scissors, staplers and other basic tools, participants will transform thin sheets of foam into functional characters that can be animated and performed in real time by way of innovative fabrication and movement-manipulation techniques. The session will end with the production of a short group video or an invasion of a public space with students transforming into their own hand-crafted creature-personas. The instructor, Erminio Pinque, is director of the BIG NAZO LAB, an international performance group and creature shop based in Providence, Rhode Island. Erminio is a professor at the Rhode Island School of Design Film Animation Video Department where he teaches Creature-Creation.
Sound Design: Friday, Oct. 19, 10:00 am – 12:15 pm
A Sound Design Master Class with seven-time Academy Award-winner Gary Rydstrom of Skywalker Sound will host this session. “I invite people who work in sound and filmmakers interested in creatively using sound to bring questions and short examples of their work to this master class. We will explore how sound is being used and how it can be better used to tell stories.
Games
Game Design Bootcamp with Josh Holmes, creative director, “Halo 4”: Wednesday, Oct. 17, 9:30 am - 5:15 pm
Space is limited to 30 participants. Teams will design, construct and pitch a game that can be played in less than 15 minutes by up to five players. Bootcamp leader Holmes promises unforeseen events that participants will need to deal with. Prizes awarded to the winning game designs.
MelBotWars Virtual Fighting Robots with Habib Zargarpour, creative director, Microsoft Studios: Thursday, Oct 18, 9:00 am – noon
Autonomous robots fight each other using RBD, rigid-body dynamics in Maya. Contestants build their own robots, add intelligence using Mel scripting, and in the process learn about physics and RBD in Maya. A prize will be awarded for the last standing robot!
Creating Emotional Games with Vander Caballero, creative director, Minority: Monday, Oct 15, 10:00 am – 3:45
Space is limited to 30 participants. Participants will learn how to design games people will play to the end. At the end of the workshop, participants will leave with a narrative structure for a full game that they designed. Workshop leader suggests that all participants play the game “Papo & Yo” before attending.
Animation
Creating a Memorable Character – Animation Bootcamp with Rex Grignon, head of character animation at DreamWorks Animation: Monday, Oct 15, 2:00 – 5:00 pm
Participants will read script pages, listed to audio tracks, and then break into teams to create a compelling character from a character’s description or a recording. At the end of the session, they will pitch their ideas and share the process that led to their decisions.
Storytelling
The Big Story with award-winning writer/director Chris Perry: Wednesday, Oct. 17, 10:00 am – 1:15 pm
Learn how to work from script to screen. By reverse engineering short films, participants will map the turns of narrative and character, and understand the visual choices the directors, designers and cinematographers made.
Storytelling, a Comparative Anatomy with graphic novelist Roberto Recchioni: Monday, October 15 9:00 am – 1:00 pm
Learn now to develop a story and bring it to life with graphic novelist, comic-book author, and scriptwriter Recchioni. Understand how to create stories for different languages and media.
Character Design & Concept Art
Wacom for Character Concept Techniques with Daniele Angelozzi, 3D Artist and ZBrush-certified instructor.:Tuesday Oct. 16, 12:15 pm – 1:15
Learn how to create organic and hard surface models using new features in ZBrush, then move the models into Photoshop where, using Wacom tablets participants will create concept art.
Digital Matte Painting
Camera Mapping Workshop with Daniel Shutt from Escape Studios: Friday Oct. 19, 9:00 am – 4:15 pm
Learn how to create a photorealistic environment from a photographic still by aligning geometry and cameras to a backplate and then mapping from the camera’s perspective.
The 13th Annual VIEW Conference will be held October 15 to 19 in Turin, Italy. Speakers include Genndy Tartakovsky, director of “Hotel Transylvania,” Eric Darnell, director of “Madagascar 3,” Gary Rydstrom, Academy Award-winning sound designer, Paul Franklin, VFX supervisor for “The Dark Knight Rises, “Dan Glass, visual effects supervisor for “Cloud Atlas,” Dan Attias, award-winning broadcast television director, Rob Bredow, CTO and visual effects supervisor at Imageworks, David Schaub, animation supervisor for “The Amazing Spider-Man,” Mark Walsh, supervising animator for “Brav” and director of “Partysaurus Rex,” Jason Smith, associate VFX supervisor for “The Avengers,” Rex Grignon, head of character animation at DreamWorks Animation, Tristan Oliver, cinematographer for “ParaNorman” Josh Holmes, creative director of “Halo,” and many others.