TORINO, ITALY — Dean DeBlois, writer, director and executive producer of this year’s
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, and Changhan (CH) Kim, CEO of PUBG Corporation (pictured), will give keynote addresses and are the first VIEW conference speakers announced by director Dr. Maria Elena Gutierrez for the curated 2019 symposium. Speakers include directors, studio heads, animators, game developers, visual effects artists and inventors who create live-action films, animated films, games, and virtual reality.
“I’m excited to reveal a stellar group of speakers who are the top professionals in their fields,” Dr. Gutierrez says. “I know they will educate, collaborate with, and inspire our attendees. I look forward to welcoming them to Torino and to our VIEW Conference community.”
Keynote speaker Dean DeBlois was writer, director, and executive producer of this year’s blockbuster animated feature How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. The writer/director of the acclaimed trilogy has been nominated for two Academy Awards, a BAFTA award and won a Golden Globe Award for How to Train Your Dragon 2.
Keynote speaker CH Kim is the CEO of PUBG Corporation, known for its successful online multiplayer game Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), which pioneered and revolutionized the battle royale genre in gaming. PUBG holds multiple Guinness World Records, in addition to various industry accolades and awards, including “Game of the Year” at the Steam Awards 2018 and “Best Multiplayer Game” at The Game Awards 2017.
Joining these two keynote speakers at the conference are:
Michael Fukushima, Studio Head and Executive Producer, National Film Board of Canada’s Animation Studio who has received multiple awards for his own animated short films and now leads a studio that has produced many award winning animators and directors, including Oscar-winners Torill Kove, Chris Landreth, and Alison Snowden and David Fine.
Danny Dimian, visual effects supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks, who led the artists who created the groundbreaking animated feature Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The film won over awards, including an Oscar for best animated feature, seven Annies, a BAFTA award, four VES awards and a Golden Globe.
William Reeves, global technology supervisor at Pixar Animation Studios, was one of the founding members of Pixar. He invented the first motion blur algorithm and methods to simulate particle motion in CGI. He has received two Academy SciTech awards – one for Pixar’s animation system and the other for particle systems. He won an Oscar for best animated short film (Tin Toy) and an Oscar nomination for the animated short film Luxo, Jr.
Paul Debevec, senior staff engineer at Google VR and adjunct research professor at USC Computer Science & USC ICT graphics lab, is best known for his work in utilizing the light stages his research team constructed to find and capture the reflectance field over a human face, for high dynamic range imaging and image-based modeling and rendering. Techniques based on his work have been used in many major feature films.
Jan-Bart van Beek oversees the art and animation quality of all Guerilla projects. He was lead artist on Killzone and art director on Killzone 2. For his work as art director and originator of Horizon Zero Dawn, he received a BAFTA Award in 2018. He also has a VES nomination for outstanding real-time visuals for the video game Killzone: Shadow Fall.
Milan Jovovic, co-founder, partner, and chief creative officer at Nordeus, led the Serbian studio’s debut game, Top Eleven Football Manager, a free-to-play social football management simulation game. Nordeus is an independent mobile game developer headquartered in Belgrade.
Jack M. Gilson, a mobile game artist, is the studio art director for Rovio’s Stockholm Sweden branch. The Stockholm studio developed the hugely popular Angry Birds 2. Gilson began working in games when he was 15. Prior to Rovio, he was a lead artist and senior technical artist at Wooga.
The international VIEW Conference, Italy’s premiere event for Computer Graphics, Interactive and Immersive Storytelling, Animation, Visual Effects, Games, and VR, AR, and Mixed Reality, brings top professionals from those fields to the beautiful baroque city of Torino, Italy for a week of talks, presentations, workshops, B2Bs, and recruitment. This year’s conference takes place from October 21 to 25 at the new OGR venue. Registration is now open. (www.viewconference.it/pages/registration).