VFX/Animation Heavyweights to Descend on Stuttgart for FMX

Peter Plantec

April 24, 2007    Source: Studio Daily

FMX is Europe’s most important gathering of VFX and animation people. Folks from every part of the globe descend upon Stuttgart each year in early May to share ideas, techniques and their stories. This year promises to be amazing if you go by the speaker’s list. With more than 300 events and presentations, you’ll have a mind boggling choice. The problem for me every year is that I can’t TIVO the conference. Too many times there will be three or even four “must-see” presentations and I hate having to make a choice.

Ed Hooks is the world’s foremost expert on acting in animation, goes every year too. He flies all the way from Chicago.

“When I first started coming to FMX, there were more people on the stage than in the audience. Somewhere along the way, the event became a stellar animation attraction, and I stood in awe as tens of thousands of industry professionals would show up. Today, participation in FMX is probably my favorite time of year. I inevitably meet some of the most exciting and creative people in the industry and learn a lot. I am a lucky guy to be a part of it all.” Hooks has taught animators all over the world the essentials of how animated characters need to behave in order to sell the story or achieve the director’s vision. In years past he’s taught workshops at FMX on the subject. This year he’ll be taking a very special look at acting principles that need to underlay effective motion capture for animated characters.

Ken Perlin – whose name you know if you use Noise – will be presenting a talk about how recent techniques are bringing interactive characters to life. As a fellow virtual human researcher, Perlin looks at going beyond traditional animation toward new forms of interactive and on-line narrative storytelling. This should be a fascinating presentation because Perlin has been a pioneer in the virtual human technology movement for many years. What would make Perlin, who is very busy, go to Stuggart to deliver an unpaid talk?

“For one thing, I've never been to Stuttgart, but I know that great people will be there. I completely trust Jean-Michel Blottière’s ability to put together a cohesive group of brilliant people who are doing exciting work.”

Jean-Michel Blottière who is a key organizer of FMX, is one of Europe’s most successful, interesting and remarkable people that I know. As the CEO of NX Publishing in Paris, his expertise in new technologies and producing big events is being applied to help FMX to another smashing success. Anything Blottière is involved with is done with style, precision and, well, charm. I know that sounds strange, but you have to experience it of know what I mean. One of the things I really like about FMX is the quality of its speakers.

David Sproxton, Aardman Animation

I’m a big Wallace & Gromit fan, so checked in with presenter David Sproxton. He’s co-founder and head honcho at Aardman Studios, in Bristol, UK. He’s both a stop action animator and a remarkable business man, which is a rare combination in one man. I asked what keeps him coming back to FMX. Sproxton made some interesting points: “I think for me the pull is the talent in Europe is profound, and it’s visible at FMX more easily than at some other events. It's the right size and meeting people is easy. The animation world is really a global village. Increasingly Europe is becoming an important place to be if you want to be part of it. All sorts of factors are coming into play, which make it much more feasible for European animated films to reach a global market now, and we at Aardman understand that the non-US market is also a great place to be.”

Sproxton is one of those intriguing people you will likely run into at FMX. He’ll be presenting a significant talk on how to efficiently exploit your animation assets: “I'll be looking at how you plan, capture, hold and exploit the assets you need for secondary/ancillary rights. If my material gets sorted out in time I'll be looking at a stop frame project and a CGI project as examples.”

Aardman will have a solid presence at FMX this year, with animators Seamus Mallone, Andrew Procter and Andrew Short also presenting. Procter and Short will be talking about the CGI Commercials produced at Aardman. Mallone will talk about making the transition from being a stop-motion clay animator to CGI.

Debbie Denise, Sony Pictures Imageworks

Debbie Denise holds the remarkable title of: executive VP, production infrastructure and executive producer, Sony Pictures Imageworks. With that title, I just had to ask what her responsibilities are.

“ My job at Imageworks is two-fold. The first, as executive producer, I work with the studio, the production, and our team, to make sure that all ends are being met: creative, scheduling and budgetary. Imageworks usually has quite a few shows going at once, so my colleague Jenny Fulle and I each oversee roughly half of them. In the second position, as EVP of production infrastructure, my goal is to make sure the facility works well as a whole. Think of Production Infrastructure as the hub of a wheel, with the different departments as the spokes. Someone has to make sure we're all going in the same direction!”

More and more, Hollywood executives are beginning to look to the world in general for talent and FMX is certainly one of the key venues to do that.

“I heard great things from the Imageworks people who went to FMX last year; so I was happy to be invited. We live in a global village, where people telecommute, interact and work with others across the globe. Imageworks has been working with India for the past several years and it's proven to be a great success. Having attended Imagina two years ago, I always look forward to being able to discuss new technology with people in Europe and/or wherever the artists are!”

I asked Denise to tell us just a bit about her talk. She’ll be saying a lot more at FMX of course, but here’s just a teaser. “I'll be approaching Performance Capture with the director in mind; and I'll be discussing the challenges the technology creates for creative implementation. Performance capture technology is constantly changing. Right now, at Imageworks, we're improving our current marker-based technology (including hi-res) and implementing markerless capture.” Actors love the idea of markerless capture as it makes their job a lot easier and is less time consuming. I’m looking forward to what she will tell us in her talk entitled: “The Art of Motion Capture.”

If you’re into character animation you’ll want to catch the entire day of cutting edge technology for simulating the look and feel of human acting performances. I’ll be hosting with my associate Christophe Héry from ILM. The forum is simply not to be missed.

Terrence Masson, independent VFX Supervisor

Terrence Masson will be making his third appearance at FMX this year. As an independent VFX Supervisor and Senior Technical Director he has contributed to over 20 major film projects including Fantastic Four, Hook, True Lies, The Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition, Spawn, Batman Forever, Small Soldiers and Star Wars Episode I: Phantom Menace, and to be honest, many other FX pictures you’ve seen and loved. Having developed the animation technique used to create South Park, he has also chaired the SIGGRAPH Animation Festival last year.

Masson knows his way around this industry, so I asked him to compare FMX with SIGGRAPH. “My first presentation at FMX was in 1999, so it's been great to see how far the festival has come since it's beginning in 1994. SIGGRAPH is in its 34th year and attendance is about 30,000 – more when it's in LA. I think FMX'06 attendance was just over 5000, so the size is quite different. FMX is a much more focused production, lecture oriented conference; absolute top notch – world class in every way. SIGGRAPH has a very broad mandate with roots deep in papers and education with more than a dozen chaired venues such as Art Gallery, Emerging Technologies, Special Sessions and of course the Computer Animation Festival, to name a few. I think the two conferences are a great compliment to each other.”

Terrence will be presenting a very interesting and fun interactive look at the history of our industry.

Arthur Shek, Disney

At FMX 05 Disney’s Arthur Shek gave an inspiring talk about new animation tools that he was developing at Disney. This year, he and colleague Jeff Bunker will be presenting a talk focused on the development of the Robinson’s film and game coordination.

“Avalanche Studios is a game company which creates games based off our Disney Animation properties,” notes Shek. “Jeff and I will be sharing a bit about how our two studios collaborate creatively and technically, even though we are completely separate divisions. We'll present some about how the filmmakers and game designers worked together to present a coherent but unique vision. We'll also talk about how we're trying to combine the best of both worlds (animation and gaming) in our technological innovations going forward.”

Chris Watts VFX Supervisor on 300

Chris Watts was the VFX Supervisor on 300, a difficult job keeping tabs on 17 staff and over 500 VFX artists working in 10 different VFX houses in four countries on two continents. Watts will be co-presenting with Stephan Trojansky, developer of Flowline, the advanced fluid dynamics system used to create the water battle sequences in the film. Watts will share some of his experiences and Trojansky will talk about how he created the stand-out ocean effects that made the water battle possible.

“The experience was a treat because we had a team that worked well together,” notes Wats. “We had to use advanced technology to make up for a not-so-advanced budget for such an ambitious film. For example we had Quicktime HD concept temp dailies comped and ready the next day. The director and designer could make adjustments and perfect the concept paintings we worked from.”

I asked Watts about working with Scanline, the Munich based VFX house that created the amazing water shots using their proprietary fluid dynamics system, Flowline. “Scanline was amazing. The film absolutely had to have that ocean battle, but there was no budget for it and there were no massive tanks or ancient ship builders in Canada that could have handled the job even if we did have the budget. The studio wanted to cut the scene, but I heard about Scanline and Stephan through friends and the great fluids work they did on Poseidon with MPC; so I contacted Stephan. Stephan said they could do it within our budget, and the result was stunning. If you look closely you can see amazing detail in the ships with people falling from the rigging. Stephan really ‘got it’ he knew exactly what I was looking for and delivered it.”

Although Trojansky is German, he speaks fluent English and I can vouch that he is a most engaging presenter. I think this is one to catch if you can.

More Highlights and Must-See Speakers

If you’re a character animator you probably know the name Steven Stahlberg. He’s one of the world’s top designers of digital women. He’ll be one of the speakers I’ll be hosting on May 3 in the all day Virtual Humans Forum. Stahlberg will be sharing some of his design process with us. But he’s just one of the world class people who’ll be there. My co-host, Oscar winner, Christophe Hery from ILM will also be talking about how he rendered those amazing sequences with Davy Jones in Pirates II. The mesh for Davy’s head – sculpted in Z-brush – had, like millions of polys…I’m curious how it was done. Christophe and I have a super line up for you

Christophe Héry, Industrial Light & Magic, "Digital cloning at ILM, in particular Lemony Snicket's baby and Pirate's Davy Jones" Christophe is responsible for much of the new technology being developed in ILM’s R&D labs, and he’s recently been elected to the FMX Advisory Board.

George Borshukov, CG Supervisor, Electronic Arts, "Universal Capture: from The Matrix Films to Interactive Entertainment Applications" George, was the technical designer behind the bullet-time sequence in The Matrix. This Technical Achievement Award winner switched to Electronic Arts in 2004 where he has been developing universal capture techniques for real-time applications.

Thomas Kang, Senior Consultant and Engineer, Softimage, "The Changing Face of 3D Character Animation" Thomas Kang has been integrally involved with Michael Eisner, in the development of such an advanced system for facial animation: Softimage|Face Robot.

Volker Helzle, Institute of Animation, Visual Effects and Digital Postproduction, Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg, "Recreation of a passed-away actor" Volker Helzle directs research projects at the Ludwigsburg Institute of Animation. His team demonstrates the digital re-birth of a famous actor who has long-since passed away - as he would appear today, at 81 years of age. The results are visually and dramatically realistic. The truly excellent part of all this is that the remarkable face animation system used to create Volker’s sequences is available to you free of charge. How is it possible to offer this software that would normally be quite expensive for free? “Research and Development at the Filmakademie is founded by the state of Baden-Württemberg. The funding regulations require us to work non-profit,” explains Helzle. “Since the release of our Facial Animation Toolset which was announced at the FMX Virtual Humans forum last year, we received a lot of positive feedback. As of today we have more than 3300 registered downloads from all over the world. If your readers are interested, they can request a copy of the Toolset at research.animationsinstitut.de/ . You’ll want to catch Volker’s talk. He’s an appealing presenter with exciting material that you will learn much from.

Steven Stahlberg, Freelance Artist, "Creating Realistic Attractive Women" Internationally renowned digital artist Steven Stahlberg talks about the process of creating digital imagery of women, both technical and creative - from idea and anatomy to modeling and shading.

On Friday May 4, Christophe and I will join the rest of our speakers in a substantial session devoted strictly to questions and answers that couldn’t be addressed during the forum. Last year there wasn’t enough time for all the questions… this year there will be.

And oh so much more...

The all day virtual human’s forum is only one miniscule event within FMX. With more than 300 presentations, workshops, seminars, screenings, award shows, parties and so much more, you’ll have to make some hard decisions. I strongly encourage you to take a look at www.FMX.de, where you’ll find the full schedule. This is an event you should plan in advance, and then abandon your plan as your experience evolves. The site is available in English and the schedule has to be seen. I know it’s expensive to fly to Europe for a conference, but you won’t regret the investment.