Computer Animation Festival Fact Sheet

Chair: Jinny Choo, ONCOMM

Conference: Wednesday 10 December - Saturday 13 December
Exhibition: Thursday 11 December - Saturday 13 December

The Facts

  • A world-class festival of outstanding work from all over the world: animated shorts, feature films, visual effects, interactive CG art, scientific visualization, machinima, games, and real-time graphics. The Computer Animation Festival presents creative achievements in every genre, plus "hybrid" innovations that mix state-of-the-art animation techniques with traditional storytelling approaches.
  • The Computer Animation Festival presents two main components: Juried screenings that provide insights on current international trends in computer-generated animation and visual effects. Invited screenings featuring intriguing collections of world-renowned works.
  • The Festival received a total of 685 submissions from 44 countries. 43 percent of submissions came from Asia, 25.5 percent from the United States and 30 percent from Europe.
  • Sixty-eight pieces from 14 countries were selected for the final screening. This is an acceptance rate of 9.92%. Seventy percent of the selected works are entirely new materials. Twenty-nine submissions will be featured in the Electronic Theatre, 17 submissions in the Animation Theatre, and 22 submissions in the Special Programme. OVer 100 works in 10 curated screenings will be presented in Invited Programmes.
  • Awards: the winners of the awards will be announced at SIGGRAPH Asia 2008. One submission will be awarded Best of Show and two submissions as Jury Special.
  • The Computer Animation Festival offers several special events in the form of talks, studio presentations, and panel discussions.

A Quote from the SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 Computer Animation Festival Chair:
"I'm very delighted to be part of this challenging process, and it's been exciting to see the SIGGRAPH ASIA 2008 Computer Animation Festival take shape. At the very beginning, we were worried, especially about the number of new materials we would receive with our submission deadline really close to that of SIGGRAPH's Computer Animation Festival. However, over 70 percent of the selected works are new materials compared to the SIGGRAPH 2008 show. The work from the internationally renowned production studios attracted our attention at the jury meeting, and at the same time, idiosyncratic and imaginative student work amazed us as well. Now, we are ready to present the cutting edge of technology beyond genres and techniques. The SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 Computer Animation Festival is your opportunity to discover the full international spectrum of creativity and technological innovation. I hope you share our passion for animation and become part of the festival!"

Computer Animation Festival Screenings

Juried Screenings
Electronic Theatre
A popular feature of the SIGGRAPH conference for many years, the Electronic Theatre offers some of the world's most remarkable work selected by a distinguished international jury. In addition, works presented in the Electronic Theatre are eligible for festival prizes. The Best of Show and Jury Awards will be announced during SIGGRAPH Asia 2008.

Suntec Movie Theater
11 December, 19:00 - 21:00 12 December, 19:00 - 21:00 13 December, 16:00 - 18:00, 19:00 - 21:00

Animation Theatre
This programme chosen by a jury of experts presents an intriguing collection of animated works in all forms and explores innovative and exciting works.

Invited Screenings
Works selected by the Computer Animation Festival curators in several categories:

Special Programmes
Award Winners from previous Computer Animation Festivals

Studio aka Special
London-based Studio aka is an animation production company known internationally for its idiosyncratic and innovative work.

Promising Student Work
Gobelins, l'école de l'image
Korea National University of Arts
Supinfocom

Australian Panorama: Tasting the Diversity of Australian Animation
Australian animation is recognised for its diversity and inventiveness. This screening presents current Australian animation trends in various techniques, genres, and styles.

India Focus
Exploring the landscape of the latest in Indian animation.

JMAF Showcase
Award-winning works from the 11th Japan Media Arts Festival, presented in coopration with the Art Gallery & Emerging Technologies.

Production Studio Panel: Challenges for High-Quality Production and Training of Staff in Asia
Friday, 12 December 2008, 15:45pm - 17:30
Suntec Movie Theater
This panel looks at different approaches to setting up a new studio in Asia and generating high-quality output. Topics include challenges related to knowledge and technology transfer to Asian staff and studio, and how to handle an international production team in many locations across the globe in different time zones. The panel also looks at mentorship and training and how to grow a local CG community and high-quality talent pool.

Moderator
Shuzo John Shiota
Polygon Pictures

Panelists
Saraswathi Balgam
Rhythm & Hues India

Tim Cheung
Imagi Studios

John Sanders
Tim Smith
Lucasfilm Animation Singapore

Festival Talks
The making of works selected for the Electronic Theatre

SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 Computer Animation Festival highlights include:

Animated Shorts

This Way Up
Laying the dead to rest has never been so much trouble. A.T. Shank & Son have a bad day at the parlour when a falling boulder flattens their hearse. Emotional and literal pitfalls lie in wait for the odd couple as they make their way cross country with just a coffin for company. This short animated caper puts the fun back into funeral as their journey and relationship unravel on an epic scale.
Smith & Foulkes
Nexus Productions Ltd
United Kingdom

KUDAN
A 3D computer-animated fantasy film. Unlike the mythological Minotaur in Western culture, a Japanese monster Kudan has a human head and the body of a cow. Kudan is born from a female cow. It speaks a human language, predicts war or disaster, and dies in the three days. This story is about a man who is accidentally transformed into a Kudan. One day the man, who doesn't communicate with his son, receives a box by mail and he finds a strange helmet in the box. He is transformed into a Kudan when he wears it. Although his body stays in this world, his head is in another world. The helmet is a door to this other world where spirits of human beings, including the spirit of his son, form giant ctrees. As he explores the world as a Kudan, he sees that the roots of these trees are individually connected to all the people in the real world, and they are sometimes pruned by strange creatures. He sees that they are cutting his son's connection. He becomes distraught and tries to help his son.
Taku Kimura
Links DigiWorks Inc.
Japan

Keep Right
Sunoki suffers paranoia from following all the instructions on the sign posts and manuals. He recognizes even persons as pictograms, but for him the world is very confused with immoral conducts and disorders. One morning, Sunoki faces a couple of difficulties on the way to the subway. However, he solves the problems one by one with his dutiful obedience to the rules. Eunomia, a goddess of regularity (the character of an old lady), happens to watch him and plots to reform the chaotic society that surrounds him.
Yang Sunwoo
Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
South Korea

Visual Effects

"I Am Legend": Making an Alternate Ending
In this alternate ending of the motion picture "I Am Legend," the full CG infected characters interact with our hero, played by Will Smith.
David Schaub
Sony Pictures Imageworks
USA

It's Mine
Leave it to Coke to turn a peaceful Thanksgiving Day Parade into an epic battle between iconic cartoon characters just in time for Super Bowl Sunday. On a crisp fall morning, the viewer is introduced to a bird's eye view of New York City's Central Park during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. A playfully intense fight occurs between Stewie (The Family Guy) and the classic superhero, Underdog. They soar through the Manhattan sky hovering and tumbling amongst the city buildings, and their handling ropes dangle beneath, as they duke it out for a floating Coke bottle. But, instead, a different loveable loser wins out in the end!
Nicolai Fuglsig
The Mill
USA

Guinness "Tipping Point"
The team, led by 2D Flame op Neil Davies and 3D Supervisor Jordi Bares, worked with agency AMV BBDO to ensure that this ad's "domino effect" was absolutely seamless, but also that it looked atmospheric. Flame was used to enhance the cinematic feel of the opening shot, to age the texture of buildings and to add in extra villagers to make the film picturesque. The biggest achievement in Flame was compositing the four end pint shots into the rest of the film so seamlessly. The hardest challenge for the Mill was the "pack shot" - the first time ever that Guinness hasn't shown a real pint glass at the end of one of its commercials. The initial aim had been to build a set in Argentina, but the difficulties of the location's 4,000-foot elevation put a stop to that, and the CG pint glass was instead created at the Mill in London. Avoiding traditional 3D techniques, and after much research and testing to find out just how fast the pages of the books should turn and how many were needed, the decision was made to use Houdini software, a first for The Mill.
Nicolai Fuglsig
The Mill
United Kingdom

"Hellboy II": The Golden Army
After an ancient truce between humankind and the invisible realm of the fantastic is broken, hell on Earth is ready to erupt. A ruthless leader who treads the world above and the one below, defies his bloodline and awakens an unstoppable army of creatures. Visual effects company Double Negative in London worked closely with the film's director, Guillermo del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth," "Hellboy)" to help him create his vision of this fantastical world for the Universal Studios' production of "Hellboy II: The Golden Army." Guillermo del Toro
Double Negative
United Kingdom

PHONE BRAVER 7
The protagonist is a high school student, Keita Amishima, who has recently moved to Tokyo. Being a bit on the shy side, he's had real trouble fitting in since the move. One day, he finally decides he's going to run away from home to get away from it all. However, on the way he gets stopped in his tracks by a runaway construction vehicle. At the scene, he runs into Sosuke Takimoto and a curious cell phone named Seven that can move around on tiny arms and legs. In order to protect Keita from the out-of-control construction vehicle, Takimoto sacrifices his life. Seven asks for Keita's help, and though bewildered, he manages to help Seven reach the network access panel in order to stop the machine. This is how Keita gets mixed up in the dealings of the secret anti-cyberterror organisation known as "Under Anchor," of which the late Takimoto was an agent. In the sequel, Keita goes on to take Takimoto's place, and together with Seven, they go on to fight against cyberterror.
Takashi Miike
OLM Digital, Inc
Japan

Promotional Animation

BBC iPlayer "Penguins"
Filmmaker and writer Terry Jones is the latest star to feature in an ambitious marketing trailer for BBC iPlayer. The 90-second trailer shows Terry following a unique colony of Adelie Penguins as they fly thousands of miles across the frozen wasteland of Antarctica to the Amazon Rainforest. It was shown on air on April Fools' Day in tandem with a viral campaign which was launched online.
Vince Squibb
Darren Walsh
Passion Pictures
United Kingdom

Guinness
Inspired by Studio aka director Marc Craste's short film "Jo Jo In The Stars," AMV creatives Bern Hunter and Mike Bond asked Marc to create two rugby teams composed of similarly wonderful characters who inhabit a rugby arena within a pint of Guinness. In the glimpses of the fast-paced game we see the teams face each other down on the rugby pitch, but we are kept guessing as to whether a try is scored or not. Using XSI to create the world and characters, Studio aka painstakingly built the teams of players with sophisticated rigs to allow for maximum dexterity on the pitch by the animators, who brought their considerable character animation skill to interpreting the game of rugby in a challenge that director and studio embraced with dazzling effect.
Marc Craste
Studio aka
United Kingdom

DELHAIZE
As usual, time was a challenge, but we could rely on our production pipeline to get the job done. Over the past few years, we built a strong pipeline around Maya, allowing us to avoid the limitations of reference scene files through in-house automatic setup and vertex baking software, and a clever texture file handling. It gave us flexibility to go back and forth painlessly between design and modeling/texturing, which allowed a great creative freedom.
Fraggleboo
Chez Eddy
France

Video Clips

The Making of Street Fighter IV
For the cinematics for the new Capcom game Street Fighter IV, we wanted to get a look that evoked the misty feeling of Asian ink-brush painting but also brought out the furious action inherent to the game and made it clear that the characters and cameras really existed in 3D. In terms of direction and action, the game is based on nearly instantaneous actions on the part of the characters, so when the characters are moving we made them move quickly and intensely. Between actions, we hold poses and allow some contemplative space where the subtle motions of the inks and colors play out. This new direction for a cinematic look has been enthusiastically embraced not only by the series' fans but also as an art form, and a number of segments to be used both in-game and for promotional use are in production.
Toshio Ohashi
Polygon Pictures Inc.
Japan

Blizzard Entertainment's StarCraft II Announcement Teaser
Blizzard Entertainment's "Building a Better Marine" teaser debuted in Seoul, South Korea, to a stadium of 17,000 ecstatic Blizzard gamers as part of the initial announcement that StarCraft II was in development. The company decided that there would be no better way to make this announcement than with a full CG short developed by the Blizzard Entertainment film department. "Building a Better Marine" takes the viewer through the process of creating one of the game's most basic units, the terran marine, and shows the epic scale of even the most mundane aspects of the StarCraft universe. Coming nearly 10 years after the release of the original StarCraft, this film is a visual representation of Blizzard Entertainment's affinity for the gritty sci-fi characters and settings that distinguish the critically acclaimed series, and the company's eagerness to share the next chapter with players around the world.
Nick Carpenter
Blizzard Entertainment
USA