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Don Moir was diagnosed with ALS in 1995. As a farmer, a husband, and a father of three, the idea of losing the ability to move around freely was a tremendous blow. Over the next four years, Don slowly lost the capacity to work his farm, move around the house, and even pick up his children.

In 1999, Don was fitted with a ventilator. The machine filled his lungs with much-needed oxygen, but at the same time, robbed him of his speech. For the next 15 years, Don communicated solely through a painstakingly slow and silent process of spelling out words letter by letter, indicating each letter by directing his eyes toward it on a printed paper while a family member recorded his selections.

After a decade and a half of expressing himself using only short, basic sentences scrawled out by another person's hand, a lucky twist of the radio dial offered Don and his family an unexpected ray of hope.

Lorraine Moir, Don's wife of 25 years, happened to be listening to CBC radio in her car when Mick Ebeling came on the air. He started talking about his nonprofit foundation, Not Impossible, and an ingenious device they'd created to give an ALS-afflicted artist back the ability to make art. "Everything that we stand for," Ebeling said, "is the concept of technology for the sake of humanity."

Lorraine contacted Not Impossible to see if there was anything they could do for Don. "As soon as I found out about Don and Lorraine," Ebeling said, "I knew Not Impossible had to give Don his voice back."

Not Impossible volunteer Javed Gangjee visited the couple in their home and worked with Don to develop a system that would help him speak through a computer. With the help of HP and the Speak Your Mind Foundation, Gangjee's team came up with a simple but effective interface to allow Don to quickly and independently compose letters and chunks of conversation which could be read aloud by a computer-generated voice.

While Lorraine sat in the kitchen reading the newspaper, Don used his new system to privately compose the first love letter to his wife in decades. When he was finished, he beckoned her into the room — where she listened, as her eyes filled with tears. It was the first time she'd heard her husband say "I love you" in 15 years.

My Dear Lorraine,

I can't imagine life without you. You've made the last 25 years fly by — and the last 20 with ALS more bearable.

I'm looking forward to the next 25 years.

Love, Don

Last year, Not Impossible co-founder Elliot Kotek delivered the keynote speech at SIGGRAPH 2014. It was quite possibly the best received keynote in the conference's 40-year history.

ACM SIGGRAPH and Not Impossible both hope that "Don’s Voice" reminds you to tell your loved ones how much you love them, and to use technology to connect with each other, instead of disconnecting. Spread the love with #VoiceYourLove.

As it turns out, The Force isn't just a figment of George Lucas' imagination. Students in the UC Berkeley chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH have come up with a fascinating virtual reality system that reads users' brain waves and changes the world around them in response. The project, called Mindscape VR, utilizes the Oculus Rift and the Muse brain-sensing headset to create an immersive VR environment where users can move objects with their thoughts and interact with their surroundings by simply thinking about doing so.

Developed by Juan de Joya, Victor Leung and Kelly Peng of the Berkeley ACM SIGGRAPH student chapter, Mindscape VR looks at ways to use virtual reality as part of a brain-computer interface, and explores alternative methods for interaction with virtual spaces.

Juan de Joya explains the group's interest in new methods of interaction:

"Right now we're using existing input devices such as mice, keyboards, or gamepad controllers to interface with VR environments. However, there is cognitive disparity between mapping user actions to keys/buttons and how individuals physically act, let alone think, in spatial terms. Unless you're really familiar with the controls, it's harder to bridge that gap when you have a head-mounted display on your head obscuring your vision.

We used the Muse headset because it's an existing device that doesn't require a lot of training to use and, as an EEG device, it is the easiest and least invasive type of interface – you just put it on your head, and make sure that the sensors are picking up brain wave frequencies. In our first iteration of the project, we used one type of brain wave frequency to allow the user to levitate and collect pebbles in a simple fantasy world. While we disabled them at launch, we do have features where the user can call a dragon to appear, change night to day, summon fireflies and shoot fireballs depending on what type of brain frequencies the Muse is picking up.

We found that the simplicity of using one's thoughts to do things is a pretty gratifying and empowering experience. We had a kid try it out at launch, and as he started levitating the rocks he brought up his hands as if he were a Jedi. How cool is that? It's these kinds of seamless, easy-to-use experiences that underlie the potential of immersive VR as a medium."

The first iteration of Mindscape VR is available to experience as part of the Cognitive Technology exhibit at the San Francisco Exploratorium, which will be open during select dates through the month of February. The project continues to evolve as the team works to enhance the extrapolation and visualization of Muse-collected brain wave data.

These days, student films are not in short supply. An increasingly large number of schools offer programs in computer animation, and sites like Vimeo and YouTube are teeming with student films — some of which rival those of major production studios in terms of quality (though typically not in length). A notable addition to this ever-growing list of artificial eye candy is "Rugbybugs," a short trailer made by German students enrolled at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. The film was produced for the 2014 FMX (Film and Media Exchange) conference, and was so well received that it went on to win a Visual Effects Society Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Student Project. "Rugbybugs" was directed by Carl Schröter, Martin Lapp, Emanuel Fuchs, Fabian Fricke and Matthias Bäuerle, and produced by Alexandra Stautmeister and Anica Maruhnand. We spoke with director Carl Schröter about the project, the finished animation, and how everything came together.

How does it feel to be a VES award winner?

To be honest, it’s an amazing feeling. It was a huge honor just to be around the top names in VFX — but going up on stage and accepting an award was simply incredible. We even got the chance to meet some of our amazing competition in person! All in all, we had a blast in LA, but now everyone is already secretly thinking about bigger and better ideas…

Did you have any idea that your film would be so successful when you were creating it?

Of course everyone was hoping for the film to be successful, as with every project. But we would had never dreamed about winning an VES award or that we'd even be nominated. The first sign that we were on the right track came with the confirmation that the FMX selected our film to be the main trailer for the 2014 conference. After that things just kept getting better!

You've probably viewed your film quite a bit since its creation. Now that you've had time to think about it, are there any changes you would make?

Of course there are many things that we would change, now — mainly, tighter integration and a few bits of animation here and there. In the weeks after the deadline, it seemed like new flaws popped up with every viewing. But, like every project, it’s a matter of time, and by now we love “Rugbybugs” for what it is.

FMX Trailer 2014: RugbyBugs from FMX Conference on Vimeo.

What was the largest difficulty you encountered while producing the film?

There are actually two things. We had a team of 5 directors on this project. That means lots and lots of talking to get everyone on the same page and to agree on the same things. But we got used to this, and ended up being pretty efficient in making decisions. Another difficulty we had to overcome was to initially convince the school and staff that we could pull off what we had planned. But after the first tests and a detailed animatic, everyone was on board.

What was the best part about producing the film?

By far the best part of the production was to build the miniature forest sets. Gathering all the materials, working with zoos and coming up with creative solutions to create a lush forest floor in the middle of winter was a fun challenge. Also, combining CG and self-built sets is a very rewarding experience.

Producing content is hard. Was the working pace relaxed, or was there a sense of urgency?

Before it was internally announced to be the next FMX trailer we had a different deadline, which was much earlier. We had to push quite hard to meet all the requirements. After that, everything went a lot smoother, thanks to our great producer-duo. A solid schedule kept our weekends free of work until we entered the final crunchtime. All in all, it was rather relaxed.

Are there any tools you wish existed that would have made creation of the film much easier?

I would have loved to use Nuke Studio on the project. Back when we started “Rugbybugs”, we used the first version of Hiero to create and maintain our edit. It lacked a lot of features we needed, though, so we ended up creating scripts and workarounds ourselves. Today, assigning shots, keeping a up-to-date edit and managing versions is a lot easier.

Did you play around with other concepts before "Rugbybugs" was firmly established?

There were quite a lot, to be honest. In fact, we started with an even bigger team and developed a little tool, which randomly connected story blocks. That tool turned into the base idea of the ITFS 2014 trailer “Plotomat.” After some space stories and robots (of course), the idea for “Rugbybugs” finally came to our minds.

Where do you see yourself in a few years, ideally?

That’s always a tough question to answer. For now, everyone on the team focuses on their respective diploma projects. We often loosely play with the idea to launch a company ourselves. But first, most of us will either join bigger studios to work on bigger scale film productions, or freelance in the commercial world.

Since its refounding last summer, the London Chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH has hit the ground running, hosting at least one computer graphics event every month. The events have been well attended, and open to anyone and everyone in the London computer graphics community. With a mission to promote, inform and connect the London CG community, London ACM SIGGRAPH is emerging as an exceptional addition to the ACM SIGGRAPH family.

A few highlights from London chapter events over the past seven months are detailed below, courtesy of London ACM SIGGRAPH.

Eye Candy Show

On the 17th September, 2014, Shelley Page (Head of International Outreach at DreamWorks Animation) brought her delightful Eye Candy Show to London, an ever-changing selection of student and independent animations with an insight into the making of each animated short film. The quality of this varied selection from around the world really was truly inspiring.

The Making of Duet

On the 21st September, 2014 Glen Keane showed us how he made his latest short film “Duet” with Google ATAP. After leaving Disney Animation, where he spent several decades crafting many of our childhood favourites, he embarked on a new adventure to create a virtual reality experiment. On a more personal note, he also shared his valuable experiences and how he gained a sense of self-accomplishment as an artist, which struck a cord with many in the audience.

Bring Your Own Animation

On the 30th September, 2014, we collaborated with HP during their ZED pop-up studio. We held a special Bring Your Own Animation (BYOA) event where professionals mentored aspiring animators on a short animation project. The eight BYOA @ ZED participants had two days to complete the animation task. This was a great opportunity for those starting in the animation industry. Take a look at the resulting BYOA collaboration between the animators and their mentors. To get a sense of the event, our friends at Intel have put together this behind-the-scenes video.

The Boxtrolls

On the 10th December, we had the pleasure of welcoming Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi for a screening and Q&A of their film “The Boxtrolls.” Another bundle of stop-motion goodness from Laika. We also had the opportunity to meet (and touch) Eggs, Fish, Winnie and Archibald Snatcher.

Visit the London ACM SIGGRAPH website for more information on upcoming London events.

The Spring Conference on Computer Graphics (SCCG) is one of the oldest annual meetings of the computer graphics community in Central Europe, and covers a wide variety of topics on computer graphics, image processing and imaging applications. This year, SCCG will be held in cooperation with ACM, ACM SIGGRAPH, Eurographics, and a number of other well-known computer graphics organizations.

The philosophy of SCCG is to bring together top CG experts and young computer graphics researchers, and to provide a communication channel for the East-West exchange of prospective ideas. The exchange of such ideas will be facilitated by an idyllic backdrop this spring — SCCG 2015 will take place in a rebuilt 15th century castle nestled in the Little Carpathian mountains of Slovakia (roughly 120 kilometers from Vienna).

For those interested in submitting to SCCG 2015, submission deadlines are close at hand. Full papers are due by February 8, 2015, and short papers and posters are due by March 8, 2015.

Potential paper and poster topics for SCCG 2015 include rendering, geometry modeling, natural phenomena, visualization, image processing, computer vision and more. The conference organizers welcome posters covering recent research work, late-breaking technical results, and work in progress. Post-conference proceedings will be published in the ACM Digital Library. Full-length scientific papers for SCCG 2015 will be handled through Elsevier Computers & Graphics journal paper reviewing system. Papers exhibiting high quality will be published in a special section of the prestigious Computers & Graphics journal. The remaining accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings, and later published on ACM Digital Library.

For more information on submitting to SCCG 2015, or registering for the conference, visit the SCCG 2015 website.