VICON, developer of Academy Award ®-winning
motion capture systems, announced today the launch of the first ever VICON
Film Festival: A Celebration of All Things Motion Capture and Animation, to
be launched at SIGGRAPH 2007. VICON rolls out the red carpet for the
festival at Booth #902, August 7-9, at the San Diego Convention Center.
"We're thrilled to be launching the first film festival ever to celebrate
motion capture in animation," commented Robin Pengelly, Vice President,
Entertainment Division, VICON. "With this contest we're making motion
capture accessible to many artists who may have never had the opportunity
to work with capture data before-and we look forward to exposing the next
generation of film and games creatives to the flexibility of animating with
motion capture."

The VICON Film Festival is an international competition to find the most
creative and entertaining use of a series of captured movements in a short
animated movie. With a grand prize of $10,000, the competition will be
open to original short films (between two and five minutes) using motion
capture data provided via the VICON Film Festival website,
www.vicon.com/filmfestival/

Selected films will be posted on YouTube for public voting, and the top ten
entries will be submitted to an independent judging panel comprised of
industry experts including Mike Sanders – ILM, Eric Furie – USC School of
Cinematic Arts, Takashi Fukamoto – Links Digiworks, Gary Roberts – House of
Moves, Chris Mais – director and writer of the award-winning Smile and
Darren Waters – BBC Technology. The winner will be announced in June 2008.
Media sponsors for the competition include VFXWorld.com, Computer Graphics
World and Digital Arts Magazine (UK).