Hasta La Motion!

The 11^th edition of SIGGRAPH Asia aims to take computer graphics and interactive techniques into space and beyond this year. Themed, Crossover,SIGGRAPH Asia 2018, today announced the full lineup of its conference program. The annual conference and exhibition will take place from 4 – 7 December at the Tokyo International Forum, where 10,000 attendees from more than 60 countries are expected to attend.

“In a few short decades, the computer graphics and interactive techniques community has been exploring new frontiers of digital media and industries. The international teams at SIGGRAPH Asia 2018 will share their knowledge, crossover experiences and achievements to further inspire the next generation of the computer graphics community,” said SIGGRAPH Asia 2018 conference chair Dr. Ken Anjyo. “This year, we’ve also sought out keynote speakers, who are pioneers in their own fields beyond computer graphics, bringing interesting topics that are reflective of our conference theme “Crossover”. We believe that the delegates will be very much excited to attend the future-minded conference.”

Close to 750 speakers will be presenting at the four-day conference. Notable panel and production sessions include:

The boundaries of space, origami and robots will be explored through the keynotes:

• Exploring Red Planets and Metal Worlds: How JPL turns Dreams into Reality by Senior Systems Engineer and Engineering Technical Authority for ‘Psyche: Journey to a Metal World’ Dr. David Oh,
• Computational Origami: From Science to Sculpture by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor in Computer Science Dr. Erik Demaine.
• New Generation Household Robot’s Concept by GROOVE X Founder and CEO (Inventor of the Robot “Pepper”)Kaname Hayashi

Invited Sessions from the Featured Sessions and Computer Animation Festival – Panel and Production Talks, which spotlights major breakthroughs in the field of computer graphics and interactive techniques, include:

• Featured Sessions – Beyond the Uncanny Valley: Creating Realistic Virtual Humans in the 21st Century with Pixar Animation Studios senior scientist Christophe Hery; Weta Digital visual effects supervisor Matt Aitken; Luminous Production senior game designer Prasert “Sun” Prasertvithyakarn; Pixar Animation Studios director of photography Erik Smitt, and Hanson Robotics CEO and founder David Hanson.
• Computer Animation Festival – Panel & Production Talks – The Making of Pixar’s Bao: A Production Panel with Pixar Animation Studios story artist Domee Shi; Pixar Animation Studios director of photography, Lighting Ian Megibben; Pixar Animation Studios artist Rona Liu; Pixar Animation Studios director of photography – camera Patrick Lin; Pixar Animation Studios character technical director Mara MacMahon.
• Computer Animation Festival – Panel & Production Talks – Cinematography of Incredibles 2 – Function and Style with Pixar Animation Studios director of photography Erik Smitt.
• Featured Sessions – From Gollum to Thanos: Characters at Weta Digital by Weta Digital visual effects supervisor Matt Aitken.
• Computer Animation Festival – Panel & Production Talks – Behind the scenes of Solo – A Star Wars Story with ILM Singapore creative director Nigel Sumner and ILM Singapore lead animator Atsushi Kojima.

Cutting-Edge Technologies on the Exhibition Show-floor

A total of 93 exhibitors from 14 countries and regions will showcase the latest developments in hardware and software applications in computer graphics and interactive techniques on the exhibition show-floor.

Some of the key exhibiting companies and brands include: ASTRODESIGN, AWS Thinkbox, BANDAI NAMCO Studios, BinaryVR, CLO Virtual Fashion, CyberAgent, Dell Japan, Digital Hollywood University, Dwango Media Village, EEZ Production Studios, FORUM8, HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES JAPAN K.K., IMAGICA GROUP, InstaLOD GmbH, NOITOM, teamLab, Too Corporation, Tsinghua University-Tencent Joint Laboratory, Unity Technologies Japan G.K., VFX-Japan Association, Visual Computing Center at KAUST, Xsens Technologies B.V., YGGDRAZIL Group, Zero C Seven and more.

Delegates who are looking for career opportunities can head to the Job Fair, held by Imagica Digitalscape and Kurihaku Navi, where the companies will present job offers from leading companies in computer graphics, film and game studios.

Key Exhibits at the Art Gallery

The Art Gallery program is a specially curated exhibition that aims to engage, challenge and entertain the conference attendees via media works. Art pieces under the Crossover theme include Candle TV (1975) by Nam June Paik, which is designed to represent two interrelated organisms in a communication system, and Mannbi (1981), a mask used in classical Japanese musical drama Noh, by Ayako Iwai.

Academic Sessions and Research Papers

For academia and industry professionals, the Technical Papers program will feature the results of state-of-the-art research on topics ranging from modeling and design to fabrication, from HDR imaging to novel displays, and physically based animation to capturing faces, bodies and hands and more. The Posters program is an interactive forum for innovative ideas that are not yet fully polished, it also showcases high-impact practical contributions, behind-the-scenes views of new commercial and artistic work and solutions that help solve challenging problems. The Doctoral Consortium is a forum for Ph.D. students to meet and discuss their work with one another and with a panel of experienced SIGGRAPH Asia researchers in an informal and interactive setting.

First-time Programs at SIGGRAPH Asia

Three sessions make their debut at SIGGRAPH Asia 2018. Real-Time Live!, deconstructs the most innovative interactive techniques on stage, while VR Theater, a part of the Computer Animation Festival program, will feature virtual reality narrative films in the newly established VR Theater. Production Gallery (Artists Behind The Scenes Exhibition), also a part of the Computer Animation Festival, is one-of-a-kind exhibit that recognizes the art, processes, and physical materials used to create major studio projects. This gallery features artwork, props, special makeups and more from recent films, TVCM or game productions. This program will be jointly operated with Born Digital of Japan.

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The 20^th edition of DigiCon6 Asia recently concluded in Tokyo, Japan. With a diverse platter of entries from 12 Asian countries, the platform provided a peek into the creative talents from around the continent.

The event also treated the attendees to an Inter BEE, a show for audio, video and communications, Inter BEE has established itself as an international exhibition showcasing top-level domestic and overseas broadcast, video, audio and lighting equipment as well as peripheral applications and solutions all under one roof.

The TBS booth at the confluence had an interesting set of showcases for the audience, including a sharp VR offering. The event also played host to an insightful chat session with Polygon Pictures CEO Shuzo Shiota.

Following the day of screening of all the regional gold winning shorts, the grand event took place at the TBS headquarters at Akasaka, Tokyo. Donning their country’s more traditional attires, members of all participating countries gathered at the venue.

An enticing performance interspersing light and dance greeted the packed auditorium. The initial set of awards were given under various categories including Innovative Art, Best Technique, Asian Perspective, Rising Star, Audience Choice, Special Mention, Next Generation and Special Jury.

In a first, the India gold for Digicon 6 Awards was awarded the grand prize. With 12 countries like Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Sri Lanka participating in the festival, termed as Asia’s Supreme Short Film Contest, Death of a Father by Somnath Pal received the most coveted accolade, grand prize of the festival.

Says DigiCon6 organiser from India R.K. Chand, “It is a proud moment to have Somnath’s film as the first Indian short to have won the prestigious Grand Jury Prize after 20 years of TBS Digicon6. Death of a Father is a fabulous film with a great technique and story and we are glad that it could impress the Jury in Tokyo. As the Indian organiser of Digicon6, it makes us happy at CGTantra to have supported Indian short film makers to experience this glory after years of efforts. This should surely motivate the indie and short-film makers across India to make more films in the coming years to help evolve the Community further.”

Pal’s film was lauded by the jury and audience alike, post the award ceremony. He took home the bragging rights, the gold trophy, a cheque of 500,000 Yen and other goodies.

The closing party paved way for everyone to network over scrumptious food and beverages.

The 20^th edition of DigiCon6 was an absolute success, bringing together and acknowledging talent from a plethora of Asian countries. We hope it evolves into an even bigger platform for creators across the continent, and more countries can become a part of it in the future.

The complete list of regional and main event’s winners can be found on the website of TBS DigiCon6, along with the films.

The post 20th DigiCon6 calls curtains on a successful edition appeared first on AnimationXpress.

“In the enchanted world of dreams, a killer roams free and only the author of Little Nemo can stop him…”

If the blurb of a book begins like this, it’s sure to catch the attention of any ardent reader like me. Such is the case with McCay, that released on 20 November. Published by Titan Comics, McCay is a beautifully crafted graphic novel by writer Thierry Smolderen and artist Jean-Phillipe Bramanti. The book is translated in English by Edward Gauvin. 

McCay is the culmination of a wonderful discussion that Smolderen had with French artist, cartoonist and writer Jean Giraud (Moebius) about Little Nemo, in the middle 80s. For most of his life, Smolderen has been fascinated by Winsor McCay’s work. He said, “I was twelve when I discovered the existence of Little Nemo. At that time, I was already fascinated by old comics from the golden age, but McCay instantly became one of my gods… Giraud [too] had an unconditional admiration for McCay and I had an unconditional admiration for both of them. After that conversation, they became ‘one’ in my mind.”

Response from Bramanti

McCay is a central, towering, figure in the history of the comic strip. His approach to the medium was completely different from that of his colleagues. In contrast to his colleagues who were all about comedy, slapstick, loved the mechanical world of pure action and every story was a chain-reaction, McCay was a self-made baroque artist lost in the age of Edison.

He was pursuing artistic beauty, while the other comic artists, by vocation, ignored the aesthetic dimension. The mysteries of the living body intrigued him– not in the antics of clownish, artificial ghosts- but the magnificent dreams of Wonderland, the prosaic nightmares of the Rarebit Fiend, the hunger of Hungry Henrietta, the permanent sneezes of Little Sammy – everything he drew was about the materiality and the spirituality of the human condition.

Even Gertie the Dinosaur is not a creature of fantasy. The script of the film is clever created in the way it seamlessly recaps all the essential emotions and needs of a living animal. McCay himself in a way, was a kind of cultural dinosaur who channelled very deep questions about life through the rather artificial world of comic strips and animation.

Smolderen added, “I felt both of them [Giraud and McCay] shared a kind of a superhuman intelligence of space that enabled them to transcend the two-dimensional space of the drawing paper. This is particularly noticeable in McCay’s animated movies : Gertie appears solid, completely three-dimensional in the 1913 film, anticipating computer-generated 3D animation. It started me thinking about their power in nearly magical terms. For example, I was intrigued by Giraud’s choice of pseudonym, and the way it seemed to penetrate his work. Looking closely at his work through that lens, I started noticing strange mistakes of laterality, where stuff that were at the right of a character, suddenly seemed to ‘jump’ to his left at certain dramatic moments. As if Moebius, between two images, had rotated through a superior space – a fourth dimension for a fleeting moment…When I started working on a script about McCay, I decided to ‘transfer’ this superpower to him. In the graphic novel, McCay makes sudden, involuntary trips into the fourth dimension, which gives him access to the land of dreams and nightmares.”

Smolderen has always been fascinated by the history and art of the comic strips since his early teens. He started writing articles and essays on the subject in the ’80s in Les cahiers de la bande dessinée, and very soon after that, he started writing scripts.

Since 1994, He is also been teaching script-writing and the history of the comic strip at the Angouleme School of Visual Arts while coordinating a Master and a doctoral program in partnership with the University of Poitiers. He has around forty albums of bandes dessinées to his credit,s since the middle ’80s, most of which have been translated in a dozen languages or so.

Thierry Smolderen (L) and Jean-Phillipe Bramanti

Apart from McCay, his three other graphic novels are in translation in the US. His book- The Origins of Comics, from William Hogarth to Winsor McCay was published in English by the University Press of Mississippi in 2014.

Bramanti on the other hand, studied Fine Arts in both Marseille and Angouleme. During his first year Angoulême, he met Guy Delcourt, who showed interested in his work. Bramanti always wanted to do something in the style of Little Nemo and it was one of his teachers who introduced him to Smolderen, who was already working on a project about Nemo and its creator, McCay. The two started then a cooperation and the biographical series McCay was born.

Response from Bramanti

Just like his unusual style of art that looks like poetry, Bramanti is a quirky person whose answers here, have all my heart. For many years, he completely immersed himself in this long script with absolutely no regard for deadlines, making multiple versions of each page until he was satisfied. This was his first professional work, and given the subject matter, the artistic pressure he felt was much greater than any other factor.

Talking about his experience of working with Bramanti, Smolderen commented, “As an artist, Jean-Philippe is incredibly involved and he is the most amiable and laid-back guy you’ll meet in Marseilles. I must admit that I had some misgivings about his crazy, obsessive way of conducting the project, but in retrospect, I have the utmost respect for the result, which he attained with no regard whatsoever for the prosaic demands of the trade. Originally, the story was published in four instalments by Delcourt. But I am glad that the book, as published by Titan, appears in English in its proper form, as a complete graphic novel.”

Fiction gives very powerful tools to speculate about any creative process and the subject can be quite arid if the approach is in a purely scientific way. Reminiscing about what was it like to create an entire thriller around a renowned animator and artist, the writer informed, “On one hand, you have a ‘world-engineer’ like McCay, who has the ability to build a marvellous, immersive paracosm of fantasy, full of enigmatic inventions and grotesque and beautiful ideas; while on the other, cognitive sciences can only give general hypotheses about the working of the human mind. Maybe the best way to approach the enigma of the creative process is to look into the work itself, to try and find some hidden clues of what happened in the mind of the creator – in other words to interpret the most striking imagery and plot elements of the original story as oblique commentaries on the creative processes at work. The whole plot of the graphic novel is built on this principle.”  

He further added, that the biographical and the purely fictive parts of the story fell perfectly into into place once he decided that the story would be about McCay meeting a dark alter ego in his early years, and that the plot would follow their parallel careers. “This young man, named Silas, would be the better, and would acquire the power of travelling deliberately through the fourth dimension. He was involved in an anarchist conspiracy and destined to pursue a long campaign of terror with the help of his fantastic superpower. Everything that concerns the interactions between the two men are pure fantasy, but everything about McCay’s family life and professional ascension in his different fields of interests are based on documented facts,” concluded Smolderen.

Putting the last touch to an academic essay about the works of Rodolphe Töpffer, whose 19th century picture stories laid the foundations of modern comic strips, Smolderen has three new graphic novels in the making, one of which is part of a thematic series drawn by Alexandre Clérisse. Atomic Empire, the first book in the series has just been published in English by IDW, and is very much in the spirit of McCay which explores the creative processes and fantastic mindscape of Cordwainer Smith, a real-life writer of science-fiction, whose life and career were even more baroque than McCay’s.       

McCay has seemed to carve a mark and opened a new avenue in the genre of a thriller graphic novel around the life of a renowned artist and animator by blending history and fiction.  

Snaps from ‘McCay’

The post #FeatureFriday: “McCay lives! Again…”- this time, through a stunning graphic novel appeared first on AnimationXpress.

For the longest time, the name Disney has been known for great animation. Have you ever found yourself wondering how artists, at Disney, breathe life into characters? How do they evoke such raw emotions in us through mere cartoons? Is there a method to do that- to create magic?

To find an answer to these questions, one needs to understand the finer technical points with the help the 12 principles of animation established by original Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston in the book called Illusion of Life.

In this book, that every budding animator should feast their eyes on, Johnston and Thomas examine the work of leading Disney animators from the 1930’s onwards and boil their approach down to 12 basic principles of animation. These principles form the basis of all animation work. They’re relevant for a number of different fields.

On their own, each of these principles appears simple. Even someone with no artistic ability can understand how each one contributes to the fluidity and natural feel of the project. For example, characters should anticipate their movements slightly rather than starting from an absolute zero. The movement should have an ease in and ease out motion to it, with more frames at the beginning and end of a character’s arc.

Speaking of arcs, the movement should always be in an arc shape as straight lines are less common in nature. But it’s when all these techniques begin to work in synergy with one another that the wizardry of Disney animation really shows through. These 12 principles establish a solid foundation and give animators a good starting point with some naturally-appealing characters. After that, they just mix them up in the goblet and watch the genie of animation rise.

Here are Disney’s 12 principles of animation :-

01. Squash and stretch

The squash and stretch principle is regarded as the most crucial of the 12 principles of animation. The purpose of this principle is to give your animated characters and objects the illusion of gravity, weight, mass and flexibility. Think about how a bouncing rubber ball may react when tossed into the air: the ball stretches when it travels up and down and squishes when it reaches the ground. In realistic animation, however, the most important aspect of this principle is the fact that an object’s volume does not change when squashed or stretched.

02. Anticipation

Anticipation aids to prepare the viewer for what’s about to happen. A dancer jumping off the floor has to bend the knees first; a golfer making a swing has to swing the club back first.

03. Staging

The purpose of this principle is using motion to guide the viewer’s eye and draw attention to what’s important within the scene. The essence of this principle is keeping the focus on what is relevant, and avoiding unnecessary detail.

04. Straight ahead action and pose to pose

There are two approaches to handle drawing animation: straight ahead and pose to pose. Each has its own benefits, and the two approaches are often fused. Straight ahead action involves drawing frame-by-frame from start to finish. If you’re looking for fluid, realistic movements, straight ahead action is your best bet.

With the pose to pose technique, you draw the beginning frame, the end frame, and a few key frames in-between. Then you go back and complete the rest. Mainly this technique is used to enhance the dramatic effect.  

05. Follow through and overlapping action

When objects come to a standstill after being in motion, different parts of the object will stop at different rates. Similarly, not everything on an object will move at the same rate. This forms the essence of the fifth of Disney’s principles of animation.

If your character is running across the scene, their arms and legs may be moving at a different rate from their head. This is overlapping action. Likewise, when they stop running, their hair will likely continue to move for a few frames before coming to rest, this is follow through. These are important principles to understand if you want your animation to flow realistically.

06. Slow in and slow out

The best way to understand slow in and slow out is to think about how a car starts up and stops. It will start moving slowly, before gaining momentum and speeding up. The reverse will happen when the car brakes. In animation, this effect is achieved by adding more frames at the beginning and end of an action sequence. Applying this principle gives more life to the objects.

07. Arc

When working in animation, it’s best to stick with the laws of physics. Most objects follow an arc or a path when they’re moving, and your animations should reflect that arc. For example, when you toss a ball into the air, it follows a natural arc as the effects of the Earth’s gravity act upon it.

08. Secondary action

Secondary actions are used to support or emphasise the main action going on within a scene. Adding secondary actions help add more dimension to your characters and objects.

For instance, the subtle movement of your character’s hair as they walk, or perhaps a facial expression or a secondary object reacting to the first. Whatever the case may be, this secondary action should not distract from the primary one.

09. Timing

For this principle of animation we need to look to the laws of physics again, and apply what we see in the natural world to our animations. Timing is critical for establishing a character’s mood, emotion, and reaction.

If you move an object more quickly or slowly than it would naturally move in the real world, the effect won’t be believable. Using the correct timing allows you to control the mood and the reaction of your characters and objects. That’s not to say you can’t push things a little but if you do, be consistent.

10. Exaggeration

Too much realism can ruin an animation, making it appear static and dull. Instead, add some exaggeration to your characters and objects to make them more dynamic. Find ways to push the limits just beyond what’s possible, and your animations will pop.

11. Solid drawing

You need to understand the basics of drawing. This includes knowing how to draw in three-dimensional space and understanding form and anatomy, weight and volume, and lights and shadows.

While you can push the limits here, too, it’s important to remain consistent. If your world has wonky doors and a warped perspective, keep that perspective throughout the entire animation. Otherwise, things will fall apart.

12. Appeal

Your characters, objects, and the world in which they live need to appeal to the viewer. This includes having an easy-to-read design, solid drawing, and a personality. There is no formula for getting this right, but it starts with strong character development and being able to tell your story through the art of animation.

And if you have ever found wondering why certain scenes from Disney movies look familiar, it is likely that those scenes are products of a recycling technique called rotoscoping. When animators decide not to start from scratch, they utilise this technique which means tracing over animation that has already been released. Earlier on, rotoscoping allowed animators to churn out more realistic pieces of animation as they projected photographed live-action movie images onto a glass panel and traced over the image.

Snow White Rotoscoping

The projection equipment they used was called a rotoscope developed by Polish-American animator Max Fleischer. As the technology advanced, the device was replaced by computers, but the process is still called rotoscoping.

Here are a few movies that made extensive use of this method and recycled older footages:-

The Jungle book and Robin Hood

Aristocats and Robinhood

Snow White and Robinhood

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