Inspired by the vision of Solid Waste Management Department’s staff,  the resulting commercial is a straight-forward concept to get the recycling message out to San Antonio’s new recycling participants.

On first glance the spot looks simple enough.  But actually there are quite a few of visual effects, compositing elements and rotoscoping techniques used throughout the commercial.   We think the best effects are the one that aren’t noticed.

So with SIGGRAPH 2010 Asia approaching, I had been asked by the SV Chair to join his committee in Seoul, South Korea. He had been a former SV named Tan Wei Keong ( I mentioned him earlier, remember?) I had met in 2007 in San Diego, and we had kept in touch. See? Small world. Trying not to sound too thrilled, I had quickly agreed.

By now, I had been the only person who had served on both a SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia SV Committee, and from that experience I can tell you they are _nothing_ alike. It would logically follow that I should tell you the difference between them, but for now I’ll just say I enjoy both the similarities and the differences.

SIGGRAPH 2010 in Korea was fun. It was also cold. I live in Texas. We don’t have snow. We don’t have ice. We don’t have green ice. We don’t have purple ice. Apparently there is this thing called black ice. It’s responsible for ignorant texans’ broken tail bones the world over. I can’t remember how many times I walked out of the hotel on my way to the conference center and totally busted my butt! You know the baby who burns his hand on the stove and never touches it again? Yeah that wasn’t me.

So the conference in Korea went well. It was well attended and the sessions were great. The SV program that year was a blast, and we had a TON of fun. What some people didn’t know though – was that our trip was just beginning. Three other volunteers and myself had concocted a master plan to take over E/SE Asia. It was Josh Corken, a buddy I had met in Singapore when he was an SV there. Also joining us was Benny Garcia, a former Team Leader I had worked with in Los Angeles in 2008. Last was Eugene Harng, the one I had backpacked with from Eastern to Western Japan the year before. We had also met in Singapore where he served as one of our Team Leaders. Once the conference ended we would travel to Beijing, backpack down to Shanghai, then to Hong Kong and Macau. It was an awesome experience, and although we ran into some travel delays we all managed to make it out alive once again. Benny just barely.

We spent Christmas Eve atop The House of Roosevelt, and New Years in a Times Square-esque part of Hong Kong. We were invited to a famous local artists Hong Kong home where he cooked us a wonderful traditional 7 course meal. We smoked cuban cigars on forbidden areas of the Great Wall where our Beijing friends who we also met through SIGGRAPH took us. We were continuing to forge memories and friendships first started in SIGGRAPH Asia in Singapore, or San Diego, or LA, or wherever else they started. I’m sure they’ll last far into the future as well, as we typically see each other 2 – 3 – 4 times a year. That is, as long as Josh gives me back that shirt he borrowed.

Because of the visa requirement, a lot of Americans don’t get the chance to go to China. It’s a bit of a hassle, being that it’s expensive, you have to plan ahead to get it, and it only lasts for 30 days. Not quite sure how I managed all of those but it worked out. Beijing is a crazy place. The sky is yellow and I’m not sure if it was smog or fog to be fair, but it was definitely yellow. We drove down the highways and buildings would just continue popping up in the background non stop, seemingly out of nowhere. Because of the limited sight distance it was a strange phenomenon. Also, don’t ever try to drive in Beijing. The Chinese drive on the same side of the road as us, so you might think it would be OK to drive there. It’s not. There are lanes, but they are more for looks than anything else. Nobody really listens to them, and people just drive wherever they want. Traffic lights don’t really matter either, it’s all about WHO WANTS IT MORE. I kind of like that. The worst part was the bikes. Holy wow. I’m not sure how they can drive so close together and so crazy at the same time and not die. It’s actually amazing really. Be careful stepping out onto a street though, cars and bikes swinging around corners like crazy people is common.

After visiting many of the sites in Beijing we took a trip to an area of the Great Wall with our friends from Beijing. I got to drive the winding road up to the wall and it was really fun. I drove the hell out of that Honda Accord and never looked back. Except when I saw this camel walking down the road by himself. That was just weird.

Several days later we moved on to Shanghai, where we ended up staying for Christmas. Shanghai is a great city and these days there are a lot of affluent Americans flocking here to raise their children. We visited People’s Square Park and the World Expo, both of which were fantastic.

There was a mix up on our hostel accommodations, and the 4 of us guys ended up sharing a small room with 2 Chinese girls studying English in the city for the weekend. Their English was horrible. I say that as if I speak a lick of Mandarin. We tried to help them learn new words, and they picked it up quick.

Once we got to Hong Kong we knew we wanted to scout out the city for future SIGGRAPH Asia festivities. Eugene had lived here for a short time and often visits every year during the winter months. He knew the city well and stayed with family while we were there. I fell in love with Hong Kong immediately. The city is vibrant and beautiful, and totally full of life. The people there have this sense of hope and inspiration in their faces, like they know tomorrow is going to be better than today. Hong Kong is also very diverse, there are people from all over the world there. It’s much more diverse than you might expect. It wasn’t until recently that I learned about the cages. When we go back to attend for SIGGRAPH Asia 2011, we’re working on putting together a documentary about them and the ridiculous wealth gap that exists in Hong Kong. More on that later, but we’re doing it with the Border Jumpers, a project you can read more about here.

While in Hong Kong we met a local artist working on some projects for the Chinese government. He is a very famous ink painter / illustrator who was commissioned to make several works of art for the Chinese Government to hand out to visiting dignitaries. After seeing the huge “live painting” at the Shanghai World Expo earlier that year, he wanted to create a similar animation using his panda drawings. He rolled out one he had did that was around 30 meters long. Crazy cool.

Finally, after some travel delays in Macau and leaving Hong Kong, it was time to head home. Korea and China were beautiful places, but it was back to work as SIGGRAPH 2011 planning was fast approaching.

Mentor Murray

The 48-Hour Film Project is a crazy weekend in which you and a team make a short movie — write, shoot, edit and score it — in just 48 hours. On Friday night, you get a character, a prop, a line of dialogue and a genre, all to include in your movie. 48 hours later, the movie must be completed.

We had a few meetings prior to the weekend, to go over expectations and define the crew roles the kids would have. Murray and Jeff helped out, but the kids were in charge of scripting, directing, editing, acting, sound, locations, lighting… the works!

KoolKids Crew after a long shoot day

The end result was an exciting weekend for all involved. The KoolKids Crew made in into the “Best of Show” and won Best Use of Character over 27 teams of adults for their movie “The Chair.” The kids were all great and it was fun to see them tackle a project that they would never otherwise have been able to do. They even made it onto the evening news.

Trailer

Full Movie

A few months after returning from SIGGRAPH Asia in Yokohama I received a phone call asking me to join the SIGGRAPH 2010 in Los Angeles Student Volunteer Committee. My job would be Industry Relations and Outreach. I was stoked.

Jason Jerald was the chair of the 2010 program, and had been on the committee in 2007 and 2009 when I was an SV and TL. He was working on his PhD in Computer Science at the time, while also developing technology for Digital Artforms, and I was excited to work with him. His attention to detail and perfection impressed the gunslinger style in me, and I knew I could learn a lot from him. (and I did)

Also on the committee that year was Maya Karp, the 2011 SV Chair and someone who I had first met back in 2008 while I was a first time Team Leader in LA. Maya has one of those personalities that just makes her shine. She can be goofy as all get out but sharp as a tack. She’s a task master and a gun slinger. A good balance, that one has.

Also part of the committee that year were 2 former TL’s I had worked with in Los Angeles in 2008, Christian Wittorf and someone I said I’d mention again later, Gracie Arenas Strittmatter. Christian is the guy who builds crazy tools to do jobs nobody wants to do, and with his tools he can usually do them faster than the rest of us. He pretty much single handedly wrote our entire review process so accepting our students would be as hassle free as possible. Imagine reading 1500 paper applications… Yeah, that’s how they used to do it. Now we can distribute the load and better yet, assess the applications in better detail and be sure we are getting some _really_ awesome students. The guy is awesomely ridiculous though in personal and social life too. He’s the funniest person you’ll ever meet and he always has a huge grin on his face. The dude’s got presence. It’s awesome to be around. Although I think he does still owe me a cab fare. Not sure if we settled that one or not Christian. Gracie is the one who saved my butt in 2008 in Registration. When I had a line of 20 attendees who wanted to ring my neck for a computer system I had no control over crashing, Gracie was there to help diffuse situations and let me come up for air. Unfortunately for Gracie, this wouldn’t be the last time she would be saving me from something. More about that soon.

The final 2 additions to the team were Mary Nesnay and myself. Mary handled Communications and .H.O.L.Y.C.R.A.P. was she good at it. I swear she would respond to inquiries and questions before they even arrived in her inbox. Modern day nostradomous, she was.

As for me – I had once again managed to make people believe I could do something. This in itself is a great skill and I hope it will take me far. I don’t have much of a fall back. I’d say they kept me around because I can tell really good jokes… but I think that would be giving myself wayyy too much credit. As part of Industry Relations and Outreach I had 2 major jobs.

1) Organize, Promote, and Manage what we called “Special Sessions” – these are times when we invite speakers from the industry to come and spend time with the students in the program. They talk to them about their experiences in the industry, how they got where they wanted to go, etc. They are extremely intimate and often students build mentorships, internships, or even jobs out of these encounters.

2) Handle all donations to the SV program. This includes Luncheons, Meal Vouchers, iPads (thanks Autodesk!), books, money, and other shwag different companies are interested in donating to the program.

In addition to these jobs, I was also the mastermind behind the Student Volunteers Forums, a forum system that all the SV’s use to communicate before/during/after the conference. Keep an eye on those by the way, I’ve got some crazy ideas for them going forward.

So in February 2010 I took a Friday off work and flew down to beautiful Orlando, Florida, Gracie’s home where we were having our 2010 SV Committee calibration meeting. The 6 of us worked hard Friday and Saturday, and Electronic Arts was nice enough to lend us some meeting space in their Tiburon facility (Gracie’s 9-5). We worked hard, spent wayyyyy too long deciding between walkie talkies and cell phones, and then drew the Team Leaders out of a hat.

Just kidding.

Maybe.

In addition to the work, we did a whole-lotta bonding. We ate every meal together, traveled in a small van that we couldn’t really fit in, and quoted bad movies (and by bad I mean awesome). That night we played Guitar Hero and OMG Jason Jerald is a BEAST on Guitar Hero. Seriously, ask him to play sometime. I’d say Scorpion’s watch out, but I don’t think Jason would ever try to dethrone his idols. He’s a huge Scorpion’s fan.

After we thought we had everything planned, we tried to catch the last Endeavor shuttle launch out of the Cape. It happened to fall on that Sunday morning, so we drove out to at 1AM to check it out. It was cold and wet, and were all really tired. Our flights were leaving in around 8 hours so we knew it would be a long day. We waited for a few hours on the shore where we could see the launch site, but eventually they canceled the launch due to cloud cover. We were bummed. And tired. So we went to the airport. Actually we freakin’ flew to the airport. If memory serves, Christian missed his flight and Mary almost missed hers. All in all though – a great constructive weekend. We had finished a lot of work.

The next several months I spent trying to get companies to come present to our Student Volunteers. It’s harder than it seems, especially when it’s something you have never done before and you don’t really know what to expect. Lucky for me I had this magic wand called Gracie. She had done it the year before and had everything ridiculously well organized and even had quite a few contacts I could get in touch with. She had some letters written up that I was able to adapt for the year. It worked out well.

We were able to put together some great presentations with speakers from Electronic Arts, The Walt Disney Company, Animation Mentor, Dreamworks Animation SKG, Pixar Animation Studios, The Mill, and many others. Working with these people was awesome. I had the opportunity to be in touch with and meet some of the people who either A) had jobs I had always wanted when I was in school, or B) were in charge of hiring for jobs I had always wanted when I was in school. I also knew if I was going to do this job any justice I couldn’t be a fanboy. It was hard.

In addition to our Special Sessions we also hosted a lunch with some great people over at The Walt Disney Company. They served our 400+ Student Volunteers a variety of lunches that were actually really good. (I took 2). They had speakers from all different areas of the company from ABC to Disney Animation and everywhere in between. Dayna Meltzer, my contact at Disney and their Outreach Coordinator jumped through countless hoops to finance this lunch for us, and get our students lots of cool swag. Their donations to our program that year totaled in the 5 digits. I was ok with that. If you’re ever walking around the expo floor stalking people’s name badges and you see one that says Dayna Meltzer, be sure to thank her. She’s a wonderful giver and I’m not sure how Disney got so lucky to have her.

At this point I’m not sure what it is about our business – but it seems like they all get one thing REALLY right. And that’s who their outreach people are. We ended up organizing a fantastic studio tour of Dreamworks Animation SKG in Glendale, in addition to the Special Sessions they presented throughout the week. Jim Conrads gave us a wonderful tour and explained all the perks of working at a place like Dreamworks. I wonder when Geomedia is getting a Starbucks in our office…. hmm, I’ll have to ask about that. They’ve also got a beautiful campus there, and although I’ve heard stories about the hidden pub I didn’t get to see it. Maybe next time. Then, in addition to alllll of this, Dreamworks also threw down a lot of money to sponsor our Student Volunteer Hats in 2010, a staple of the SV program and uniform. The hat designs were SEXY as can be (yes, I designed them) and the quality Dreamworks was able to source was perfect.

Our raffle that year ended up being completely stupendous. We hold the raffle based on which students were best performing and didn’t miss shifts. Part of it is also random and luck of the draw! We had a company on the show floor donate the monitors from their booth. We had Autodesk’s Jennifer Goldfinch give away a freakin’ awesome iPad and case along with several FULL licenses of Autodesk Maya and other products. Pixar gave us some teapots and posters, along with several other companies donating some really awesome shwag.

All in all 2010 ended up being a wonderful conference for me. I had learned a lot about SIGGRAPH, the inner workings of our industry, and better ways to network with people. One of the best things you can do when trying to “get to know” people, is simply that – just get to know people. Those are the relationships, networks, and connections that last. I remember the people who’s names I’ve scribbled on the back of my badge because we had an interesting conversation much better than the names on the piles of business cards I have back at home.

Next up, SIGGRAPH 2010 Asia, in Seoul, South Korea.

SIGGRAPH 2011 marked the 38th SIGGRAPH conference since its inception in 1974. SIGGRAPH stands for Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques. I’d love to think that in 1974 they just called it Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques, and when people asked about the long name they simply responded, “Yeah, we’re working on it.” /Agent Coulson Voice. You can read more about SIGGRAPH 2011 in the blog post I’ve authored here.

So, as part of the annual SIGGRAPH conference, there is a group of particularly awesome and dedicated students and industry professionals called the Student Volunteer Program. This is a highly prestigious program where only a few hundred students are accepted from a field of over 1500+. They are asked to volunteer to help run the conference and get some valuable face time with their future industry peers. There is a lengthy and intense application process determining need, want, dedication, and other traits necessary of a SIGGRAPH Student Volunteer. Once accepted, students enter into a very elite fraternity… of assassins… and get to meet Angelina Jolie… and bend bullets. Ok only part of that is true.

I started as a Student Volunteer back in 2007 when I was still in college. I worked various jobs in E-Tech trying to translate for some Japanese wind-vision presenters, or checking membership ID numbers at the membership booth. I also got to meet the inventor of the original Nintendo Power Glove. He was working on stereoscopic microscopes. Live germs in 3D! Heck yes. By the way, did I mention I _don’t_ speak Japanese? One of the first people I met that year was a guy from Singapore named Tan Wei Keong. He and I worked various shifts in E-Tech together, and I’ll talk more about him later.

The following year I applied to be a Team Leader, one of 20-ish students selected to lead the other 400. As a Team Leader you are selected to run certain venues at the conference, and you are the first level of questions/problems/conflicts/explosions that happen at that venue. So as a first time Team Leader and only a second year SV, I was given the Registration Hall, and we were in Los Angeles. Typically TL’s have partners so they can cover for each other and help out when things start to get crazy. But not me. For whatever reason I didn’t have a partner. Awesome.

On day 1 I showed up to Registration and was greeted by a line of 15,000 strong. I had 3 SV’s on shift that were supposed to serve a mob of 15k. Stubbornness took the better of me and I wasn’t going down without a fight. I strapped into my blue vest (the signature uniform of a Team Leader) and put on my SV Hat and got to work. Ten hours later I was wondering when I might get lunch. The day had flown by. At some point I reported to the office how ridiculously small my team was, and they sent me some backup. I also had help from a very dear friend who had run Registration before. I’ll also talk more about her later – her name is Gracie and as it turns out we went to highschool some 5 miles away from each other. (Small world huh?) By the end of the week SIGGRAPH had totally changed my life. I had met some amazing people in Los Angeles and totally made friends I knew I’d never forget. I also think I had earned my metaphorical stripes, as the sole Team Leader in charge of a Registration Hall that signed up 28,000+ attendees, not all of whom were always the most pleasant to help.

It was also at SIGGRAPH 2008 in Los Angeles that I had heard about a new SIGGRAPH conference that was coming in a few months – SIGGRAPH Asia in Singapore. I wanted to know more, but unfortunately I found out that the time to sign up for volunteering for this program had passed. Unacceptable. I figured at this point I had tricked enough people into thinking I was semi useful – surely there was someone else who might take the bait again.

His name was Jim Kilmer. Jim is one of those super high level thinkers who sees everything from the 30,000 foot view, but also knows how many blades of grass are in each square mile. It’s kind of scary really. Anyway, I had been told that my only chance to attend SIGGRAPH Asia was to talk to this person, and I had no idea what he looked like or where to find him. To be honest, by the end of the week I had almost given up – a mixture of exhaustion from my stint in Registration that week and the little bit of sleep the Team Leaders were getting because of parties and working so early day after day.

By the end of the week we had been invited to the wrap party the organizing committees throw for all the important people at SIGGRAPH. Note when I say invited I really mean “crashed”. And when I say important people I didn’t mean me. So if you’re wondering what I was doing there, join the club. Anyway, I’m standing in line with my one and only holy free drink ticket the chair of the Student Volunteer Program (Josh Grow) had given to all the Team Leaders, and there are two people in front of me talking about SIGGRAPH Asia. I happened to catch a glance of one of their badges. Jim Kilmer. Schweet. Poor guy. Long story short, I harassed him for a good 20 minutes about SIGGRAPH Asia and how much I had enjoyed being a Team Leader this year in Los Angeles. I told him I’d love to attend the conference in Singapore, so he gave me his email address.

Within a few weeks of arriving home I sent him an email – a shot in the dark I figured. Somehow he remembered me, and in a few months I was setting sail for Singapore to join the Student Volunteer Program there as a Committee Member. I helped with logistical support during the conference there, mostly manning the office and making sure to put out fires when they arose. It’s not typical for an undergraduate student to be sitting on a conference sub committee, but it was quite an honor that my ambition refused to pass up. I think I learned an important lesson in that whole experience. You don’t get what you never ask for, and you’d be surprised what you DO get if you’d just ask. So you know that annoying guy who puts his nose everywhere and asks all those questions? Yeah, that’s me now.

SIGGRAPH Asia in Singapore was pretty small – and I think ultimately a bit of a loss for the organization. At least in real dollars. Anyone who attended knows the strength of the friendships that were formed there, and the bond cemented between existing ones. Many of my very best friends today were people I met in SIGGRAPH Asia in Singapore. In fact, many of us have traveled the world together since. We’ll get to that later, but here’s some of us on the Great Wall of China just because I like to brag.

The following year SIGGRAPH was held in New Orleans. I was chosen again as a Team Leader, and again was chosen to run Registration. Lucky for me they had given me a partner this time (Melissa you are awesome), and on the first day I had 18 SV’s to run my venue. Apparently my whining the year before had paid off. Things went incredibly smooth, and with the exception of the NOLA plague everyone caught on the last day, New Orleans was full of fun memories.

Nico Gonzalez, who was the SV Chair that year and is now part of SIGGRAPH Student Services (S3) had ordered these psychological evaluations for everyone. They were awesome. We each took these series of tests and questionnaires to determine our personality traits. We were then paired with people we might or might not get along with during the conference. It was pretty cool. I thought my psycho evaluation was pretty accurate. There was a list for, “What to do when speaking to Jeremy,” and it said, “Thank him for his time.” That one was probably my favorite.

New Orleans was my last chance to become a Team Leader, as I had been a student already for 4 years. I had the chance to move up to a Committee position, so I applied and was hopeful. If I didn’t get it, I would probably be an attendee again, or find another way to contribute. As far as the Student Volunteer Program was concerned though, the buck stopped here.

In the meantime, I attended SIGGRAPH Asia in Japan where I also helped the committee with various logistics both pre-conference and on site. Japan was an amazing place, and after the conference I went backpacking from Yokohama to Tokyo to Mt Fuji on to Osaka, Kobe, Nara, and Kyoto with a friend I had met in Singapore, Eugene Harng. We spent Christmas on a rooftop in Kyoto with an Englishman and 2 Australians we had met, and to be honest I’m not quite sure how we made it home alive. But that’s a whole-nother story. By now though real friendships had taken hold, and I was meeting people from all over the world, from Eastern Asia to Northern Europe, and from India to South America.

Stay tuned.

So SIGGRAPH 2011 has finally ended and I’m back at home in sunny San Antonio after about 3 hours of sleep. Had a bit of an airport / flight scheduling catastrophe which put me in SA about 12 hours after I had expected. CLASSIC US Airways. Although I have to admit I was impressed that my luggage had arrived when I landed at SAT, and to be fair the US Airways employee who helped me out at Sky Harbor was very polite and accommodating.

Vancouver was an amazing venue and I’m pretty sure SIGGRAPH will be heading back soon. According to Business Wire SIGGRAPH 2011 was Vancouver’s largest convention ever. I’m sure there were a number of factors behind the scenes that I don’t know about, but the biggest worth mentioning was definitely the involvement of the Vancouver SIGGRAPH Chapter. Holy crap. They were everywhere and anywhere helping to promote the conference and increase attendance. It’s almost like they had some sort of interest in this being successful. Kudos to everyone involved with the Vancouver chapter, excellent work!

As for my involvement this year, I was working with the SIGGRAPH Student Volunteer Program as the Head of Industry Relations and Outreach. I’ll get to what that job entails in another post, but suffice to say it reeks of awesomeness. In that post I’ll also give some quick background about SIGGRAPH and the Student Volunteer Program in general.

The first day of SIGGRAPH I helped organize a talk with Karen Moltenbrey, Chief Editor of Computer Graphics World. Karen invited several industry professionals to come and speak to our army of Student Volunteers about how they got where they are, and some of the things they’ve learned along the way. As a quick side note – I consider Karen a friend and a bit of a personal mentor to me, and I can’t say enough about how wonderful she is. Anyway – the panel included Greg Butler (Moving Picture Company), Troy Brooks (Digital Domain), Jason Dowdeswell (Image Engine), and Matt Ward (Rainmaker). They covered everything from the relationships they’ve built at SIGGRAPH, to their experiences working with each other at other companies like ILM, and finally to how 3D (stereo) is dead (Good because I didn’t wanna buy one of those TV’s anyway). Another thing I found particularly awesome was how confident they were in Vancouver’s film/tv/FX industry. Vancouver is a super happening spot right now! Autodesk’s Jennifer Goldfinch also gave a quick intro about some of the things Autodesk would be offering throughout the week. If you’re lucky enough to know Jennifer you know how passionate she is about giving back and helping the industry’s new talent as much as possible.

One of the hottest early venues this year was the Studio, a place where attendees can go and play with software, hardware, toys, and other cool stuff hands on! I saw lenticulars being made, 3D models being printed, games being developed in Unity, and lectures being given all in a single giant room. It was really neat to watch the vibe and atmosphere in there. Of the lectures, a colleague and close friend of mine, Zeb Wood, presented in The Studio about Real World Camera Rigs inside of Maya. I didn’t get a chance to catch the whole talk, but I’m totally trying to figure out a way to get him down here to present it to the local university! Zeb is a professor at the Art Institute of Indiana and one of the founders of Indiana Uploaded. In addition to Zeb, I also saw Newtek’s Graham Toms would be presenting later in the week… unfortunately I found out he wasn’t able to make it. Too bad really – I know he would have blown people away! We missed you Graham – maybe next year?

Right next to The Studio was the Art Gallery and Emerging Technologies. As usual, both were fantastic. E-Tech (as it’s more commonly known) had some amazing technology this year, some of them being a pregnancy suit, a water visualization device from Walt Disney Imagineering, and a laser hologram device I would describe as a Star Wars Princess Leia machine. Hands down though, the coolest presentation was from IDEEALab who presented PocoPoco. It was a musical interface device that allowed users to create music from turning, twisting, pressing, and holding 16 buttons on a small grid. It’s really way too hard to describe with any integrity – just watch this [video]. I stood there for at least 30 minutes watching these guys perform. Simply amazing.

I can’t talk much about the Technical Papers because they are a bit over my head. Actually in full disclosure they are WAY over my head. I’ll typically attend the Papers Fast Forward as the last 4 SIGGRAPH’s I’ve been involved in helping put it together in one way or another, but beyond those comedic 1 minute performances I tend to steer more towards the Sketches, Courses, and Talks.

One of my favorites was the Sketch from Texas A&M’s Department of Visualization and Dreamworks Animation SKG. The premise was simple – Dreamworks would sponsor artists to come and speak to TAMU students for a week at a time for the length of time the course was being taught. Students were in groups of 5 and responsible for producing a short film based on certain guidelines set by the course and the Dreamworks artists and animators. The results were fantastic, but according to TAMU the process was what really shined, and I believe them. As an educator who has taught the spectrum of 3D animation and game design courses at the University level, this type of class is a dream. To have a big studio showing up and basically saying, “This is what we’re looking for when we hire you, do it this way” is priceless. On the Dreamworks side, when I saw the names Jim Conrads and Marilyn Friedman – the Dreamworks Outreach overlords, I wasn’t surprised they were involved. These 2 are consistently finding ways to give to students and help people get a foot in the door in the industry. I’ve worked with both of them during my tenure as Industry Relations and Outreach Coordinator on the SV Committee, and people like them are few and far between. They are losing sleep to help us organize, skipping lunch to give us studio tours, and dodging flights to talk to our SV’s onsite at SIGGRAPH. A truly sincere and heartfelt thanks to both of them.

The Keynote this year was given by Cory Doctorow. A quick bio; Cory is a Canadian science fiction writer who has sort of championed copyright law and is a proponent of the Creative Commons organization. His main message was how copyright does nothing to serve content creators. In the current ecosystem, content creators have no authority over how their work is owned, distributed, or redistributed. All of that power lies with publishers and other entities like iTunes and the AppStore. It probably doesn’t do it any justice to try to describe it to you, you can hear it from the man himself below.

Other topics covered were things like how Disney handled hair and water in Tangled. Some of the technology behind Rapunzel’s hair was based on some r&d done on Bolt back in 2008. They also talked about the water sequence after escaping from the Snuggly Duckling and breaking the dam loose. Impressive stuff. And for the record, Tangled is one of my favorite 3D films to date.

Dreamworks gave a lot of insight into various parts of making Kung Fu Panda 2. I have yet to see the film but it looks nothing short of amazing. Rob Vogt came and spoke about the approach to rigging Lord Shen’s tail which I found particularly fun. The PDF’s of these sketches are available on the SIGGRAPH Full Conference DVD by the way incase you grabbed one. If not you can find them here.

Dreamworks had two other very interesting talks about how they produced cities in Megamind and Panda 2. Using the same technology behind Procedural’s City Engine, they were able to build entire cities and make them look completely fantastic. Here at Geomedia we’ve been playing around with the CityEngine technology and we were floored by just the demo scripts and rules!! I can’t imagine seeing how the pipeline worked over there at PDI/Dreamworks. Imagine setting up rules, laws, frameworks, etc., and after drawing some roads having a fully populated city! That’s sort of what CityEngine does. It’s a very unique piece of software and also started as a SIGGRAPH paper back in 2001!

Finally, Pixar had several awesome presentations about how they lit vehicles in Cars 2. The write ups on the DVDs for those are great if you can snag one. They also talked about the Ocean Mission in Cars 2, and how they created the water surface and interaction, as well as their approach to lighting it with volumetrics.

Ok, I have a confession to make. I actually missed the Electronic Theater this year. I was so busy between working with all my buddies up in the SV Office, swapping shifts for Student Volunteers, trying to make sure I secured Autodesk party tickets, and taking 20 minute boost naps that I never got a chance to catch it. I saw parts of the CAF and it was impressive so I can’t imagine how good ET must have been. If you missed it as well, make sure you pick it up on DVD!!!

Finally – the Exhibition Floor. There was a lot of different things going on this year, and a few noticeable absenses. Newtek and Lightwave were nowhere to be found, something I thought strange after their awesome performance with Lightwave 10 last year. Maybe they’re still coasting off all that success. As a fellow San Antonio company we wish them nothing but the best!

I noticed several studio absences from the show floor, and many of them had relocated to the job fair. I’m sure the rent is cheaper there, and most of them are only taking demo reels and looking for new talent anyway. Companies like Pixar though who still have services and products like Renderman were definitely visible. And of course, they can’t handle a 2000 person teapot line in the job fair anyway.

Speaking of the teapot, this years generic teapot was particularly cool. Sporting a race helmet and flames this thing was made to move! I’ve heard stories about the Renderman version having a Canadian flag on the top, although I have yet to see it. I managed to snag 2 on different days, but gave the second away to a friend. Also handed out this year was a really great double printed Cars 2 poster. I swear one of these days I’m going to go into my closet and pull out all 20 Pixar poster tubes I’ve got in there and get them properly framed. I just cant bring myself to tacking them to the wall.

There’s no way I could possibly tell all the awesome happenings in Vancouver this year, and probably no way I should tell everything either! Make sure you’re in Los Angeles next year and join the family!! I’m home!

Starting with our very first meeting, through our live-action shoot featuring all the players, to the very latest delivery, collaborating with the Spurs organization has been nothing short of a first-class experience.

Throughout the year we’ve had the opportunity to create a vast and diverse collection of showcase pieces for the Spurs. From player introduction videos for the AT&T Center Lighthouse Jumbovision and in-arena LED content, to broadcast graphics, playoff intros and more, we’ve thoroughly enjoyed being a part of the team.

Every step of the way… Concept, creative direction, live-action shoots, audio, editing, visual effects, animation and revisions, they’ve collaborated with us and motivated us to produce the best work possible.

What can we say, this is simply an amazing organization of consummate pros. On behalf of all of our staff and crew, thank you SSE for choosing to work with Geomedia.

GO SPURS GO!

As the 2010 holiday season fast approaches, it’s the time of year when we’re starting to not only schedule projects for 2011 but also invest some energy in reviewing the year gone by. It’s sort of annual tradition around here as it gives us a chance to celebrate what’s working and see if we can identify new strategies to help Geomedia continue to grow as a full service San Antonio production company.

While going through this process, one of the bright spots of 2010 that really stood out for us occurred back in February during the American Advertising Federation San Antonio Addy Awards. Geomedia has been a participant at these awards for many years (not sure we’ll ever live down our custom built Devo hats ) and it’s always a thrill when we can help one of our advertising agency clients earn some recognition from their peers in the industry for a project we know firsthand how hard they worked on. Some of those winners this year included Creative Civilization, The Atkins Group, Texas Creative and Synthetic Pictures.

Congrats!

Perhaps the highlight of the night for us though was the 2 Gold and 1 Silver Addy Awards the campaign for Goodwill of San Antonio earned. Not only because the organization is filled with wonderful people concentrated on helping others (and San Antonio Corporate Strategy & Advertising firm Bradford Lawton was great to work with), but these awards marked the first time Geomedia was recognized for our Cinematography.

These kudos felt especially warm and fuzzy in that they’re in large part the result of a multi-year concerted effort to build out our Geomedia live action production department. Some key milestones on this journey included Zach Nasits joining the Geomedia team as our DP in 2007, our acquisition of a Red One Digital Cinema Camera in 2008 and putting our Geomedia grip truck on the road in 2009.

Being able to integrate all these resources into our workflow has been key, and now seeing the culmination of those efforts start to bear fruit and hearing how happy our clients are to be able to get high quality 3D Animation, Visual Effects and now Live Action all under one roof in San Antonio is what Creative Atmosphere is all about.

related links:

San Antonio Business Journal article on 2010 American Advertising Federation San Antonio Addy Awards.
American Advertising Federation-San Antonio on Twitter
American Advertising Federation-San Antonio Facebook Page
Goodwill of San Antonio on Twitter

We are pleased to bring home the coveted Gold Addy statues for our work in two categories, Video Sales Presentation with “Presentation” for >Dell and Special Effects, Video or Film with “Motociclista” for ActII.

We also received a bronze Addy for the visual effects work on “Obras”, an uniquely stylized animation spot created for the government of Mexcio City.

There was an amazing array of creative work in the competition, and we’re certainly proud to be amongst this year’s crop of winners.  Here’s a link to a complete list of all the 2009 Addy honorees.

This investment was our acquisition of the building that Geomedia has called home for over a decade now.

The driving force behind this move is a desire to customize Geomedia’s trademark creative atmosphere to a degree higher than one can accomplish when you rent as opposed to own.

As part of this process (which we’ll be sharing more of as it progresses) we’ve been able to free up about 1200 900 square feet of professional office space.

That space is now available for lease.

We think it would make an ideal spot for perhaps some type of small creative shop – whether a design house, tech start-up, medical/science research team, public relations company…you get the idea. But the space is quite flexible, on the ground floor, and build to suit to a certain extent, so we are open to hearing other good ideas.

We can’t vouch for the landlord, but the place is nice and professional, so if you know of a small company looking for some office space to lease in the San Antonio Medical Center area, give us a call at 210.614.5900 and ask for Murray, or you can email him at murray at geomedia dot com.

You can read more about the office community we’re located in here – The Vistas. You can also take a tour of the current Geomedia facilities located in the same building here.

Tags: San Antonio Business Journal Commercial Real Estate Listings; Loopnet San Antonio Commerical Real Estate for Lease; Cityfeet – San Antonio Executive Suites