Hang Onto Your Socks!

Have an inner body experience during an excerpt from John Liebler''s film entitled The Inner Life of the Cell.

Don't expect the medium to be the whole message at the SIGGRAPH 2006 Computer Animation Festival, which is taking place in the spanking-new Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, July 30 to Aug. 3. The medium will certainly be there in all its state-of-the-art digital glory, but the message, according to Computer Animation Festival Chair Terrence Masson, is going to be, “Hang onto your socks and prepare to get blown away.”

Masson, the founder of Digital Fauxtography Inc., has masterminded — even micro-managed — things with the calculation of injecting humorous and passionate pieces into the show. “We have approached 2006 very aggressively to make certain that SIGGRAPH continues to be the premier event to showcase the best work in computer graphics and animation. The simple fact of record-breaking submissions has pushed the quality of the content to an all-time high,” Masson says.

Framestore CFC gives you an up-close look at pre-history exposing dinosaurs like never before, detailing creatures all the way down to their dilating pupils in Walking With Monsters.

A key element to this year's eye-popping experience will be the use of Sony SRX-R110 4K digital cinema projector on the large-format main screen of the Electronic Theater, sonically augmented with a JBL 5.1 surround sound system. Masson has even designed the customized seating for 2,500 viewers in the convention center's Grand Ballroom, and promises, “There won't be a bad seat in the house.”

But that's not all. The pre-show for the Electronic Theater will consist of the world's largest Etch-A-Sketch®, oficially endorsed by Ohio Arts, which will be digitally projected onto a 35ft. by 25ft. screen and controlled by the audience through interactive wands. And yes, the Guinness Book people have been alerted.

Of course, the greatest venue in the world does not mean much if the content is not equally great, and Masson feels that he has that base covered as well. SIGGRAPH 2006 received a total of 726 submissions this year for the Computer Animation Festival, up more than 125 from the 2005 event. From that total, 97 films were selected for exhibition — some from such far-flung places as Syria and Iran. 458nm, a student film from Germany's Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, directed by Jan Bitzer, Ilija Brunck, and Tom Weber, was awarded Special Jury Honors. An American entry, One Rat Short, directed by Alex Weil and produced at the New York-based commercial house Charlex, was honored with Best of Show (see sidebar).

Pixar Animation Studios toots its horn with One Man Band, which debuted as a short during the showtimes of its most recent feature Cars. © Pixar

Masson traces the increase in the number of entries this year to a deliberate outreach effort from him and his eight handpicked Computer Animation Festival judges: Iota Center's Larry Cuba, Pixar's Bill Polson, Sprite Animation Studio's Moto Sakakibara, University of Toronto's Jodie Jenkinson, Industrial Light and Magic's Ed Kramer, Newtonic's Glenn Robbins, Filmakademie's Thomas Haegele, and Dan Krech, founder of DKP. “I wanted to pick folks who were very aggressively outgoing in their respective areas,” Masson says, “and I stressed the point from day one that they should each go out and proactively say to people, ‘You know, I saw your thing online,'' or, ‘I saw this film at a convention,'' or, ‘I know you're doing this, because my buddy's at your company, and you should really submit this to SIGGRAPH.''”

Jurors were also selected for their specialties within the CG world and their international perspectives, not to mention their experience. In fact, all the judges can be regarded as true veterans — some, even pioneers — of this still-young industry. “The combined years of hardcore computer graphics production of the jury, plus that of myself, is something like 220 years,” Masson notes.

The devil has grown more portly and less viscious in his old age, to the point he decides to leave his kingdom of fire to extinguish his burning heart in My Date from Hell.

The end result, he promises, is an overall viewing experience with no weak links. The Electronic Theater program traditionally offers a two-hour exhibition of the crème de la crème, which is then augmented by the programming in the Animation Theaters. According to Masson, the quality and overall entertainment factor is equally balanced in the Electronic and Animation theaters based mainly on the incredible submissions and dedicated effort of the jury. “People will be blown away by the quality in both theaters,” says Masson. “Our humble goal has always been to push beyond all past expectations of the Computer Animation Festival and set the bar even higher for future pieces.” The Electronic Theater main venue will screen 37 films, while the Animation Theater venues will show 60.

Out of the total number of entries, 38 were student works, but they were not categorized in such a way for the judging. “I removed that [student] designation for the jury so that an individual student film from Des Moines, Iowa, was judged with the same criteria as ILM's effects reel,” Masson says. And how did the student films rate? Some knocked the jury's proverbial socks off, he says — particularly those from Europe.

Psyop puts musician Sheryl Crow in a whole new world in its Animation Theater entry Good is Good.

“The international students, frankly, far and away blew away the North American students across the board in terms of quality, creativity, originality, story, character animation, visual effects, aesthetics — everything,” Masson states. “Probably eight or nine out of 10 student works didn't make it to the second round [of judging].” Masson did add that there were some surprising successes from unexpected North American schools including Brigham Young University, which is represented in the Animation Theater with the short Petshop.

Of the European schools, France's Gobelins L'Ecole de L'Image and Germany's Filmakademie made the most impressive showing with five and three pieces, respectively, accepted into the exhibition (including the Special Jury Award winner 458nm, which Masson describes as “absolutely brilliant”). Masson also says that commercials were a hot source of quality digital work this year — more so than the big tent-pole feature films. “We turned down most of the work submitted by the big major effects and animation companies, because the quality has been so high for so long, we've just seen it all,” Masson says.

Exemplifying exceptional skills in creature animation, Framestore CFC''s work on the underwater scenes and merpeople in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is included in this year''s Animation Theater.

Having said that, though, Electronic Theater attendees will see two how-we-did-it clips from King Kong, courtesy of New Zealand's Weta Digital, and get a peak at Monster House: There Goes the Neighborhood and Open Season: Separating the Trees From the Forest, both from Sony Pictures Imageworks, as well as One Man Band, the new Pixar movie. Animation Theater attendees, meanwhile, will revisit Hogwarts through a clip from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, featuring work from Britain's Framestore CFC, which has four other pieces in the show. But Narnia will go unchronicled, Batman won't begin, and Willie Wonka has already been retired.

So what was the jury looking for? Masson breaks this year's criteria down into three critical areas: story, animation and aesthetics, and the overall look of a film. Oh, and humor — lots and lots of humor. “One thing I really wanted to come through on this show was wacky, slapstick, outrageous, over-the-top, funny stuff,” Masson says. “Everybody that I picked as a juror mirrored my personality in that way: They were very outgoing, gregarious, funny people.”

OK, so this year's Best of Show, One Rat Short, is not exactly Tom and Jerry in terms of anvils and pratfalls, even if it does feature more genuine emotion than you're apt to find in Poseidon or MI:3. All that means is that the SIGGRAPH 2006 Computer Animation Festival is bound to contain a wealth of unpredictable delights.

Most filmmakers employ rats when they want to disgust the audience. Those at the Manhattan-based Charlex, however, are using them to move the audience.

One Rat Short, the 2006 SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival Best of Show, is a startlingly evocative and effective love story between a gutter rat and a white lab rat. It is also the Emmy-winning commercial shop's first longer-form narrative film, and came about as a recruiting tool, according to writer/director Alex Weil, also Charlex's founder and creative director.

“I was competing with people who do features and entertainment work, so if I wanted to get talent in here I would have to do something besides commercials that had an edge to it,” Weil says. Starting out with a more comedic tone, the project's look evolved into a much more gritty, high-contrast, hand-held one that juxtaposes grim mean streets with a starkly futuristic research lab.

And turning photorealistic rats into convincing romantic leads was no easy task. “So much of it had to do with how we shot them, how we staged the scene,” says lead animator Pat Porter. “All of the parts — the music, the lighting, the staging — came together to let their emotions come through.” Some artfully acted head movements and a lot of restraint also helped.

“The first few passes, we did a lot with the faces, but it looked cartoony,” adds lead animator Tony Tabtong. “We found if we held back, we could get a lot more emotion out of it.”

The team used both Autodesk Maya 6 and 7 to animate and Mental Ray for the rendering, as well as many proprietary tweaks, notably shaders. While changing software versions mid-stream is never recommended, the film's producer and art director Bryan Godwin notes, “There were numerous advancements in the export technology and hooks for Mental Ray in version 7 that were worth going through the torture of upgrading.”

The SIGGRAPH Best of Show award is just the first stop on the Festival trail for One Rat Short, which might ultimately lead to long-form film production, according to executive producer Chris Byrnes. “I don't say it lightly, but we feel we know we can do an independent feature film,” Byrnes says. “We have the talent and the crew, and we learned enough.”