Flight to the Center of the Milky Way This visualization, produced by Donna Cox at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, was featured in the “4K” Animation Theater.
Alter Ego This animated short, shown in the “Storytelling” themed theater, was created by Kuba Gryglicki from Studio Mansarda in Poland.
Jet Production from a Rotating Black Hole This still, from an animation submitted by Donna Cox at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, debuted in the “Science” theater.
There is often a misconception that the SIGGRAPH Animation Theaters are looked upon as a second-place prize for those not selected for the Electronic Theater, but that is far from the truth, says Computer Animation Festival chair Paul Debevec of the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. “This year, even if every single piece in the Electronic Theater were to disappear and we had to build a new one, we could do it [from the Animation Theaters], and it would still be great.”
The Animation Theaters featured amazing reels that were organized by theme. One highlight was an entire reel of scientific visualization, including space imagery, among them “Solar-Terrestrial Interaction from Cosmic Collisions” by the American Museum of Natural History.
In all, 905 pieces were submitted to the festival. One reason for this record number, Debevec notes, was due to SIGGRAPH’s electronic submission system. Last year, electronic submission was a successful experiment; this year it was an established way of getting movies to the jury, which was magnified by an enormous international outreach effort, he says. As a result, the final content of the show reflects that larger pool of content to draw from; the jury could be more choosy about what it put into the show. “This year’s content is the strongest I have seen going into the show, and I hope we have put it together and in front of people in a way that is worthy of the submissions,” says Debevec.
In last month’s Portfolio, we featured a number of selections from the Animation Theaters. This month we are once again devoting these pages to images from this grand event. —Karen Moltenbrey
Physics on GPUs Featured within the “Science” theater, this animation is presented by Takahiro Harada, Seiichi Koshizuka, and Yoichiro Kawaguchi from The University of Tokyo in Japan.
Chaos Theory This presentation is from Barna Buza, Zoltan Szabo, and Gergely Szelei from Conspiracy in Hungary. The animation appeared as part of the “Music” theater.
L’Odyssee de la Vie An animation from director Niels Tavernier from Mac Guff in France, debuted in the “Science” theater.