Oscar Winner Inside Out, the Avengers VR Experience and More
Oscar Winner Inside Out at FMX
Oscar Winner Inside Out at FMX. Inside Out, which scooped the award for “Best Animated Feature” at the 88th Academy Awards, is the hot topic of two presentations this year. Tanja Krampfert, who’s an alumna from the Institute of Animation at the Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg and a Character TD at Disney Pixar, talks about the creation of the bubbly character Joy, whilst DoP Patrick Linilluminates the special camera structure set-up that was designed to parallel the main character’s emotional journey.
Effects
Christophe Hery‘s “Lighting & Rendering” track focuses on blending realities of lighters and renderers (i.e. in a 100% digital environment) with the realities of DoPs and cinematographers (i.e. real light environments). For this, it assembles, among others, presentations on lighting for Oscar-nominee The Martian (Sebastien Gourdal, MPC) and for six-time Oscar-winner Mad Max: Fury Road (Dan Bethell, Iloura). In addition, VFX Producer Camille Cellucci talks about virtual production for Robert Zemeckis‘ biopic The Walk. Pioneer Michael Pangrazio (Weta Digital) has just wrapped his work on Steven Spielberg’s upcoming The BFG.At FMX he talks about his approach to creating concept art. His work goes back to matte paintings on The Empire Strikes Back and includes many interesting milestones like the creation of the Disney film logo.
Animation
Sabine Heller (Blue Sky Studios) demonstrates the character development from comic strip to 3D for the cult classic Peanuts as part of “The Art of Animation” track, and Dave-Alex Riddett (Aardman Animation) delves into cinematography for stop motion from a narrative perspective.
Virtual Reality
Kim Adams (Source Consulting, e.g. for Google Spotlight Stories) hosts the panel discussion “Storytelling in Virtual Reality.” The renowned panelists include Jan Pinkava, who directed the Pixar Oscar-winning Ratatouille and is now working as Creative Director of Google Spotlight Stories, as well as Jason Fletcher-Bartholomew and Tim Ruffle (both Aardman Animation), Chris O’Reilly (Nexus Productions) and Jacquie Barnbrook (The VR Company). Andy Cochrane (Mirada Studios) gives a presentation under the headline “Creating Narratives For Virtual Reality,” showcasing Mirada’s work, whilst Chris O’Reilly explores VR storytelling, using the example of Nexus’ 360° VR film project Rain or Shine for Google Spotlight Stories. And Andrew Daffy, former CEO of House of Curves, shares how he directed the popular Avengers VR Experience for Framestore, which is used by Samsung to demo the Gear VR. At FMX, he demonstrates how the 360° previs was realized.
Games
Chris O’Reilly is also among the speakers for the “Games 4 Change” talk series, discussing the interactive real-time gaming installation Woodland Wiggle, a therapeutic play space for children in hospitals. Frank Vitz (Crytek) dedicates his time to the development of a new VR benchmark that uses CryEngine technology. In addition, Pedro Sabrosa (Framestore) speaks about Framestore’s contribution to the rebirth of the PS classic Guitar Hero, which boosts the “live feeling” for a more immersive experience.
Technology: Tools of Tomorrow – Highlights of SIGGRAPH
Dirk van Gelder (Pixar Animation Studios) talks about Pixar’s proprietary animation system Presto as part of the “Tools of Tomorrow” track, which is curated by Volker Helzle (Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg). Moreover, Dr. Marco Romeo (MPC) provides an overview of the Thalia R&D project that seeks to improve the quality and performance of digital actors’ deformation and simulation, following the work on the digital Arnold Schwarzenegger in Genisys. On top of this, Prof. Michiel van de Panne(University of British Columbia) and Berhard Thomaszewski (Disney Reasearch Zurich) cover a vast tech-terrain from vector graphics animation to dynamic traversal skills as part of the “Highlights of SIGGRAPH” presentations.
