Laika

My First SIGGRAPH

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IMG_6447I finally experienced my first SIGGRAPH conference.  I have always heard about SIGGRAPH, and while at DreamWorks Animation I would often have artists requesting time off so they could attend the conference.  While I had a pretty good idea about what it was I had never gone until this year.

SIGGRAPH is short for Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques.  It is an annual conference on computer graphics which you can imagine is pretty important for computer animation.

The conference was made up of one really large exhibits floor with all kinds of companies showing off their new technologies, and software.  It also included a job fair, panels, production sessions, discussions, art galleries, and parties every night.

IMG_6426It was a great experience, and I thought I would share some of my highlights from the week.  I took on the full conference this year, and went from Sunday until Thursday which might have been a little much for my first time.  Some of the talks were interesting, some where way to techy for me, and others I learned a great deal from.  I liked some of the conversations the best, since you really got to hear the challenges other people and companies in the industry where facing.

Lets start from the beginning… I first attended a presentation from the guys that started Aardman Animation, David Sproxton & Peter Lord.  It was interesting to hear how they started their company on a dining room table.  Aardman is known for the stop motion films; Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Chicken Run, and The Pirates.

I seemed to start the conference out with a Stop Motion Theme, since the next presentation was by LAIKA.  You might know them from the movies Coraline, ParaNorman, and most recently the Boxtrolls.  While stop motion is not something I would ever want to do I do appreciate the artists that do this kind of work.  Here is a Time-Lapse of the making of a scene.

Sunday was a lot of these types of presentations, since the exhibit floor was not open until Tuesday.  At the end of the day I went to a Fast Forward where they gave all the people who wrote technical papers on new technologies 30 seconds to introduce, and try and interest you to attend their full presentation later in the week.

IMG_6434I big thing at the conference was virtual reality, and they even had a whole section they called Virtual Village.  There are some really cool technologies coming out, and I’m excited to see where they take them.  One of the exhibits there was two boxes, and… I’m sure I will mess it up trying to explain how it works, but if you stuck your hand in one box you could feel and see the person’s hand from another box.  It is like a touchable hologram, and I’m interested to see where they take this tech.

IMG_6460I went to a really neat presentation for the 40th Anniversary of ILM.  Industrial Light & Magic is a VFX company that was started by George Lucas in 1975 to work on his movies.  Later they started doing work for other clients as well, and now have touched so many great films.  To name a few… Star Wars movies, Indiana Jones movies, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, The Abyss, Jurassic Park, Twister, Titanic, and most recently Ant-Man to name a few.  It is also interesting to note that they had a computer graphics devision that George eventually sold to Steve Jobs, and became Pixar.

Some of the talks I sounded interesting, but after they started going over the codes I realized I was in over my head.

I did find a very interesting discussion about cloud based rendering vs in-house rendering.  One of my goals of the conference was to learn more about rendering, and I got a lot out of this discussion.

I could go on and on, but I don’t want to bore some of you.  I did go to some fun parties.

On Tuesday evening I went to the DreamWorks Animation party.  As in true DreamWorks style it was a very impressive party, great food, beautiful location, and of course amazing people.  It was nice getting caught up with old co-workers, and meeting some new people.

On Wednesday I went to the Pixar Renderman party, and got to see their latest short.  I also learned about the world of collecting walking teapots.  I guess people go crazy about these things, and you can sell them on eBay for a decent price.  If you are interested to learn more here is a video from 2013 that gives a little more back story.

IMG_6428Overall it was a great time, and I learned a lot about new technologies coming out.  I plan to go next year, but not sure if I will go for the whole week again.  I got pretty behind on work, and have been spending most of this week trying to get caught up.

 

If you have not already, I hope you will join me on my journey by subscribing to my blog.  If you have any thoughts or advice I would love to hear what you have to say, so please feel free to leave me any comments below. Otherwise, be sure to stay connected with me on Twitter (@MillerAnimation). Only Time Will Tell.

Phoenix

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Being someone that has always wanted to start their own animation company I have always had a respect for those entrepreneurs that have already done it.  There is of course Walt Disney, but there is also the less known people such as Will Vinton.  I learned about Will and his studio a few months ago, and was surprised I never heard of him before.  Starting your own company there are so many decisions that you have to make on a daily basis, and any of those decisions could be the one that causes your company to fail.  Will made a wrong decisions that cost him his studio.  Will Vinton is credited with coming up with the term “Claymation”, and was even trademarked by him.  He won an Oscar, and several Emmy Awards for the work that his studio did.  Even if you don’t know him you might know his work.  His company Will Vinton Studios made many classic claymation feature films, TV series, TV specials, and short films. His commercial work is what I remember the most, and it includes the California Raisins, the Domino’s Pizza Noid, and the M&M’s Red, Yellow, and Green characters.  Will’s company was doing really well, and taking on many more projects.  Many felt his studio was growing to fast, and that is how he lost control of it.  By the end of the 1990’s the studio was seeking funds for more feature films.  One of the key investors was Phil Knight, the owner of the shoe company Nike, Inc..  Part of the deal for Knight to invest more was that he would require a larger stake in the company.  He also got his son Travis a job at the company as an animator.  Travis previously had a failed career as a rapper under the name Chilly Tee.  You might be thinking I’m getting off subject, but this is where things went wrong.  In 2002, Will Vinton ended up losing control of Vinton Studios when Phil Knight became the majority shareholder in the company.  Eventually they decided that Will was no longer needed, and he was fired from the company he started.  Phil Knight ended up putting his son Travis in charge of the company, and the company was later renamed to Laika. You may know Laika for their feature films Coraline, & ParaNorman.  This story sounds very similar to the story of Steve Jobs with Apple computers, but the difference is Steve was able to come back and retake over his company. When I read about this a couple of months ago there was no happy return for Mr. Vinton, but I read an article this morning about how he is trying to make a comeback.  His new company Vinton Entertainment announced a co-production deal with Gnosis Moving Pictures for a series of animated features directed by Vinton.  You can learn more about these projects check out this article, but this is not the focus of my post.

Maybe this will prove to be successful for Will Vinton, and maybe not.  The important thing is that even though he had fallen down, he was able to rise from his failure to try again.  This and many other stories are things that I try and learn about, so that I can hopefully not make the same mistakes.  One of my biggest fears is to pour my heart and soul into this company of mine only to have it fail.  I know there is a lot I still don’t know, and these last 2 weeks I have learned a great deal.  I will continue to learn from my own mistakes as well as mistakes made by others.  This can be very scary realizing I’m flying blindly, and if I knew yesterday what I know today, maybe I would not have made the same decision that I made yesterday. This reminds me of one of the things Steve Jobs said during his Stanford commencement speech.

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well worn path; and that will make all the difference.”

So even though I might make some wrong decisions I have to believe it will all work out in the end. In high school I was a pole vaulter on the track and field team.  Holding the end of a 12 foot pole, running as fast as you can, planting the pole in a box that made the pole to bend, and shooting you high into the air taught me a valuable lesson that I feel applies to this adventure of mine.  Pole-vaulting can be very dangerous, but you have to run into it with full confidence, because any hesitation or doubt will slow you down and not give you the speed you need to get you up and into the mat.  The times I second guessed what I was doing I would get shot up and backwards into the air away from the soft pole-vault mat, and onto the hard track.  Whenever that happened we had a rule that without a moment to think about it you had to try again.  If you let yourself think about that fall it would shake your confidence, and once you lose your confidence it was much harder to get it back.  After every fall you had to get up and try it again.

Phoenix

By sandara.deviantart.com

The Phoenix is a mystical bird that every 500 years(depending on the version) would consume itself in its own flames only to be reborn from the ashes.  I have always loved the story of the phoenix and its rebirth, and have always used it as a source of inspiration and motivation.  In a way I have always thought of the Phoenix as my Spirit Guide.  No matter how many times I might fail I will always pick myself up, dust off the ashes, and try again with a renewed energy, and a greater knowledge from my previous mistakes. As the saying says “What does not kill me makes me stronger”. Believing in this gives me the confidence to go after my dreams regardless of how “dangerous” it might seem.  As Steve Jobs and now Will Vinton have done, they had risen from the ashes of their failures, and were symbolically reborn to try again. There are countless of stories in the business world of people being reborn to come back from failure.  I know I don’t want to fail, but I can’t let the fear of failure shake my confidence.  If I do fail I will look to the Phoenix and rise out of the ashes to start again.  I hope that any of you that has or will have setbacks will have the courage and strength to rise again to make your dreams come true.

Please share in the comments any other stories of rebirth that you personally have had, or that you have heard about.

 

If you have not already, I hope you will join me on my journey by subscribing to my blog.  If you have any thoughts or advice I would love to hear what you have to say, so please feel free to leave me any comments below. Otherwise, be sure to stay connected with me on Twitter (@MillerAnimation). Only Time Will Tell.