Hasta La Motion!

Spark Computer Graphics Society (Spark CG) is going to host the 11th SPARK ANIMATION 2019 film festival between 24 to 27 October, along with a career fair and two-day conference on 26 and 27 October.

SPARK ANIMATION film festival, a showcase for both established filmmakers and new talent, is open to regional, national, and international submissions. The film festival welcomes entries in the animated categories such as: Short Films, Student Projects, Music Videos, Commercials, Public Service Announcements, Self-Promotion, Game Cinematics and Trailers, and VFX Narrative Shorts.

Accepted styles include traditional, stop-motion, 2D and 3D computer animation. Animation filmmakers can submit their work through FilmFreeway by 23 August and the extended deadline is 12 September, 2019.

Every year, Spark CG assembles a jury specifically for the festival which includes a distinguished group of animators, filmmakers, indie directors and studio executives who bring a variety of perspectives, as well as a range of artistic, technical, and business backgrounds.

Since its inception, Spark CG has been committed to equality, diversity, and inclusion. As a result, each submission is reviewed by a Jury equally composed of six women and six men from four continents.

The new festival jury has announced to focus on diversity and inclusion.

The 2019 SPARK ANIMATION Jury has been selected and this year’s roster of award-winning animators, executives, and educators include: Snowden Fine Animation partner Alison Snowden; Capilano University senior faculty Don Perro; MPC Film CG supervisor Eve Levasseur-Marineau; advisor and creative consultant Glenn Entis; Stellar Creative Lab co-founder Hasmi Ferguson; Bardel Entertainment supervising 2D animation director Johnny Tesoro; Cartoon Saloon creative director Louise Bagnall; Emily Carr University President Emeritus and professor of New Media Ron Burnett; character animator and character designer Sandro Cleuzo, Animal Logic group COO Sharon Taylor, Black Women Animate founder and CEO Taylor K. Shaw; and Pixar Animation Studios story artist Trevor Jimenez.

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VFX Legion recently wrapped the visual effects for the fifth season of the CBS’s series, Madam Secretary. The LA and B.C.-based company assembled a team of over 30 artists to craft more than 100 visual effects for the show. The broad range of work includes a range of computer-generated shots, from large-scale green screens, and matte paintings to digital environments that are integral to the geopolitical issues that show’s storyline addresses.

The premiere episode begins with a bang, as a rocket-propelled grenade explodes in the Oval Office just as a pivotal agreement is about to be signed. Legion simulated dense smoke, clouds of dust and debris, adding to the chaos of the aftermath as the wounded struggle to find their way out of the rubble.

 

Madam Secretary

Creator, Writer and Head Producer, Barbara Hall’s political drama is shot in New York, with a storyline rooted in Washington, D.C. The logistics require Legion to craft photorealistic environments that replicate icon monuments, buildings, and locations in the nation’s capital, along with the variety of other visual effects that the show requires.  A computer-generated shot of the White House viewed from the perspective of Pennsylvania Avenue, and the digital recreation of the Lincoln Memorial that syncs seamlessly with live-action footage are among the visual effects that enable scenarios to unfold in the nation’s capital.

The plight of the Syrian people is core to this season’s storyline. Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord (Téa Leoni) tries to broker deals for humanitarian aid with heads of state. She seeks out the Chinese Foreign Minister at a tech conference where she finds him immersed in a VR game. Legion’s team created an entire CG virtual video game environment, replete with a horde of alien monsters that explode and shatter mid-air as he enthusiastically fires on them. Match moving his performance, artists transferred it to an avatar playing the game inside its virtual world. Looped run cycles and interactive death animations unfolding in real-time were simulated in Houdini and then rendered in Redshift.

A long establishing shot provides the ‘cold open’ for episode 506, jumping directly into the heart of the story with a hard-hitting scene with hundreds of desperate Syrians flooding the Turkish border seeking refuge. Originally shot in NY State, the producers called on VFX Legion to bolster the number of displaced men, women and children in the practical footage. The studio’s matte painters, compositors, and CG artists augmented the sequence, building a large crowd of refugees that reflects the scale of a mass exodus.

When producers discovered that the number of people on the naval vessel that was relocating them during this natural disaster needed bulking up, they scheduled a second unit shoot with Legion’s VFX Supervisor David Isyomin on set directing the action to ensure that the footage aligned with CGI. Artists then Rotoscoped out the entire foreground and added the sky, along with the additional people during the composting of the scene.
Legion added to the realism of the computer-generated bombing of the presidential palace in Nicaragua with digital fire, debris and other elements simulated in Houdini. Its team built on existing assets from ActionVFX’s library, eliminating the need to create each shot from scratch and maximizing cost-effectiveness. Another scenario focused on global warming called for a computer-generated C-130 Hercules military transport aircraft flying through a hurricane that was simulated in Houdini, rendered in Redshift and lit in Maya.

The most visual effects-driven episode of the season, aptly titled ‘Proxy War,’ required over a dozen complex shots – from a large set extension and a computer-generated abandoned, shelled-out lot in Syria, to detailed matte paintings that stand in for the demolished buildings in the background. The digital environment is the setting for children playing football when their laughter turns to terror as they hear the sound of a cluster bomb just before impact. A scene opening with officials walking through the take-off of a CG MiG aircraft via satellite and ends as they drop the cluster bomb.
Madam Secretary shines a light on an issue ripped from today’s headlines in an episode that opens with a Mexican woman and her young son as their long trek through the Sonoran Desert ends as they reach the US border. After assurances of help from the border patrol, the scene closes with the mother’s arrested as the son boards a bus headed to a detention centre.

The establishing environments, a barren desert landscape and the parking lot of a US sheriff’s office, were created by Legion’s Matt Painter Marc Adamson and Compositor Eugen Olsen. Ruy Delgado handled the camera all of the match moves in the scene.

We will keep you updated on further development.

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The origins of indie video games can be traced back in the 1970s, when there was virtually no established computer gaming industry. Joyce Weisbecker considers herself the first indie designer, having created several games for the RCA Studio II console in 1976 as an independent contractor for RCA. Since then, the journey of indie game developers paced up in the hunger of creating something fresh and new.

Today what drives the indie game developers is the passion. For passion some left their regular jobs and some academically choose game development, that’s how the indie game developers have increased in numbers over the past few years.  Today overall gaming industry in India, pegged at Rs 5,540 crore (FY19), is poised for high growth, with a likely 22.1 per cent CAGR taking it to Rs 11,880 crore by 2023, as per KPMG India. Here are few indie game developers’  upcoming games which aim to create a mark in the industry.

In the shadows:  The game is from the developer Paybae simple with puzzles which use various shadow shapes to tackle deceptively tricky problems while avoiding entities that lurk only in the shadows.  Every level in the game has multiple solutions to it and it will depend on the players.“It can be easy for one to cross one level and it can be difficult for the other one to cross the same level. The catch is how one crosses one level by creating their platform with the skill of combination,” PlayBae founder Nakul Verma said. The game will be available on iOS and later might be on Android mobile devices, since shadow calculation for android systems in Unreal or Unity can be heavy and expensive. The game will be published Verma is aiming to publish the game in June or July.

1947: Indian Naval front:  It is a tactical shooter game from the indie game developer Neosphere where the player gets a chance to control iconic Indian Navy ships like Vikrant, Brahmaputra, Veer, Rajput and more. Besides controlling the warships and its armaments, the player can also fly jets and choppers of the Indian Navy Air Squadron which were used during the 1971 war in some missions. The game will have 12-15 levels with an estimate of four to five hours of gameplay which will narrate the actual war scenarios that had occurred between November to December 1971. The working on the game began in 2017 with a plan to launch the game by December 2018, but due to some technical challenges, they missed the deadline and now are planning to release it in the Q2 of 2019.

The Bonfire 2: Xigma games founder, designer and developer Himanshu Manwani is currently working on the sequel of the game The Bonfire: Forsaken Lands titled as The Bonfire 2. The game will be a survival simulation game where one has to build, craft, gather resources during the day and defend them from monsters and raiders attack during the night. The primary objective of the game is to survive and manage resources to advance and thrive players’ small settlement. The sequel also increases the simulation aspects, as the AI workers can be seen walking to a building, picking up resources and then using the resource to construct a building or craft an item. Also, the scope is now at least thrice as big, so more content and definitely more gameplay hours with a fair amount of re-playability. The studio is planning to finish the game by the end of this year, although, that depends on the quality of the game. If they are not satisfied with the game quality which is expected to be high international standards by the end of the year, they might push it for early next year to add that extra layer of polishing.

Cursed Arena:  Cursed Arena will be a freemium game by the studio Street Lamp Games which is currently in its Alpha stage. The Game is all about saving animals(sheep, boars, wolves and more) from various unique obstacles in an arena. Group of 4 animals will be generated in a level, where at least 2 animals should survive till the round end to proceed to further levels. The player controls the animals by moving the joystick on the screen to avoid the obstacles. “We have created multiple arenas with one unique boss to each Arena and every arena has its own theme such as spikes, poison, fire, and more. Player not only just saves the animals but also needs to fight the bosses at the end of every arena,” said Street Lamps Games CEO and founder Deepak Gurijala. The game will probably launch in September or October this year. They are planning to release the game for mobiles, PC and Nintendo Switch.

MUKTI: underDOGS studio upcoming game MUKTI is a first-person story exploration game that tells a gripping story about life and pursuit of freedom. It’s like a Sundance movie where you face a series of emotions from being happy and crying at times. If you just focus on the story, the game is designed as a three-hour journey, but if you’re an explorer, you can dig and deep dive in the historical and cultural aspects that represent India. The game would then go on for over six hours. Overall players can experience a meaningful story with a series of emotions and a pinch of exploration, that needs to be heard as expressed by CEO and founder, Vaibhav Chavan MUKTI. The game is compatible with PC and MAC.

There is an indie game developer lurked inside every gamer and thus the list is endless. Therefore stay tuned for more!

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The dates have come! Rick and Morty are returning for the fourth season this fall including 70 brand new episodes over the next few years exactly as Adult Swim announced last year.  

Created by Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland, Rick and Morty season four will begin airing in November. In a video aired during Warner Media’s 2019 upfront, Rick and Morty appeared to tell the audience about their upcoming episodes.

Both Harmon and Roiland have been open about making a show as sharp and satirical as Rick and Morty, and the troubling fandom tendencies that have grown out the show. Season four and beyond would be an undertaking, and they are prepared to take their time getting it right.

Roiland revealed to Polygon: “We’re super excited that, for the first time ever, we’re locked in, we know what the future is, we have job security. Harmon is in great spirits, we have a great writers’ room. We want the episodes to stay good, but we do also want to try to turn them around a little quicker now that we have this big order, I think it gives us the ability to be faster. We’re not going to do these long breaks, these chasms in between seasons anymore. We’re going to schedule vacation time and just keep the machine going. It’s going to be really cool.”

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Former Sony Pictures exec Randy Lake has just been announced as the new chief operating officer of DreamWorks Animation. Starting in July, he will oversee the studio’s strategic planning and primary business operations, including feature and television production, post production, business and legal affairs, finance and technology.

Lake joined Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2006 and was promoted 10 years later to president, studio operations and Imageworks, to oversee all operations and strategy. Before Sony, he served at Booz Allen as a strategy consultant to the entertainment, media and technology industries.

DreamWorks Animation president Margie Cohn announced Lake’s hire and in a statement said, “As we solidify our leadership team, Randy provides a strong strategic vision that will be beneficial to the entire studio as we partner in taking DreamWorks into the future. His years of experience working cross-divisionally will allow us to expand upon the successful collaboration between our film and television divisions, as well as with our colleagues at Universal, furthering DreamWorks position as one of the most prolific animation studios in the world.”

Prior to Sony, Lake was a strategy consultant to the entertainment, media and technology industries for Booz Allen in New York, London and San Francisco. Now, Michelle Grady will be promoted to EVP and oversee Sony Pictures Imageworks.

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