The jury this year received more than 500 submissions, of which 104 have been selected. Of those, 89 pieces will appear in the Daytime Selects reels in one of the categories: Advertising, Games, Demoscene, Shorts & Features, Traditional & Stop-Frame Animation, Student Films, and Visual Effects. In addition, a reel from the Japan Media Arts Festival will be highlighted as well as the Keynote Session directors' reel. “It’s possible to spend an entire eight hours at SIGGRAPH just watching the best CG from the past 12 months,” says Jason RM Smith, festival director.
Meanwhile, 33 pieces will appear in the Electronic Theater. “We aim to make it as easy as possible for the attendees to see work that’s of most interest to them. All of the projects screened are top of their class, but SIGGRAPH time is valuable – there’s always so much going on,” says Smith. “We thought it would be useful to know what’s being screened at any particular time to help with planning [the week].”
Square: Thomas Mann (Still)
This year, 239 submissions to the Computer Animation Festival were from students, and one student animated short, “A la Francaise,” from Morrigane Boyer, Julien Hazebroucq, Ren Hsien Hsu, Emmanuelle Leleu, and William Lorton, took the Best in Show Award! “Lost Senses,” from Marcin Wasilewski, received the Jury Prize. Best Student Project went to “Rollin’ Safari,” from Kyra Buschor, Anna Habermehl, and Constantin Päplow, with Best Student Project Runners-up awarded to “Sleddin’,” from John Pettingill, and “Harald,” from Mortiz Schneider.
not over: Toru Hayai (Taiyo Kikaku Co., Ltd.)
As usual, there will be some curated works this year, which allows for the inclusion of last-minute VFX clips from some of the summer’s blockbusters – always popular with the attendees, Smith points out. Overall, there are more submissions from Asia and Europe, thanks to an international outreach effort. Game cinematics made a strong contribution this year, too, so much so that the genre has its own screening category in Daytime Selects this year.
Dell, Thomas: Bjoern Ruehmann (MPC)
A Demoscene reel, provided by Scene.org, shares a unique and often unrecognized area. Everything screened in this category is procedurally generated from code, written under incredibly tight constraints – such as a maximum file size of 64k – and captured from real-time playback. “This work has to be seen to be believed,” says Smith. “It’s visually creative and inspiring, while technically unbelievable.”
Gran Via: Jorge Blanco (Ilion Animation Studios)