The Electronic Theater presents the best of the CG industry every year at SIGGRAPH 2011 – here’s 3D World’s top picks from last week’s screenings
The screenings at SIGGRAPH for the Computer Animation Festival cover a whole range of industry sectors and topics. We see student shorts, full-length studio animations, VFX sequences, clips from the conference technical papers, and commercial projects.
In our top picks we’ve focused largely on the short animations. By the time the Hollywood movies make it to SIGGRAPH, they’ve usually been released, or covered in some of the presentations throughout the week, while the technical papers are also shown at the conference.
We get excited by the stuff we haven’t seen before, or the films we’ve only seen a trailer of due to somewhat archaic rules at the festivals that prevent shorts getting an online release while on the circuit.
Some of these are starting to trickle out these days, but even so, just a trailer will give you a tasty look of these excellent examples of 3D animation:
dir. Tyler Carter, Brigham Young University
Made by Brigham Young University students, and written and directed by Tyler Carter, DreamGiver is a film about a mysterious being that delivers dreams to sleeping people.
When an orphan boy’s book on Ancient Aztec Mythology comes alive, the DreamGiver has to save him from his own nightmare.
The film doesn’t break boundaries but it’s beautifully made and the story is expertly told, using a variety of techniques, including some breath-taking visual effects, and a mix of 3D and 2D animation to represent the real world, and the dream world.
3D World hasn’t had much experience with the BYU students in the past, but we’ll definitely be checking out more of their work.
Take a look at this video from BYU that talks about DreamGiver, including clips from the film:
—
Damian Nenow, Platige Image
Now this one blew us away, plain and simple.
Paths of Hate is one of the latest projects from Polish studio Plastige Image, who also support some of renowned short film director Tomek Baginski’s projects, including the excellent Fallen Art.
This film tells the story of the demons that can be found deep in the human soul, represented by two fighter pilots on screen, the intense tale sees the pair on a path of destruction and hate.
Visually speaking, the film, which took 2 years to produce, is incredible to watch – and the detail is immense, as explained in a post on Optimum Wound, which notes the cloud-filled environment, 10 square kilometers of 3D Alps, and the multitude of rivets and screws that were manually deployed in constructing the planes.
It’s no surprise that Paths of Hate managed to scoop the Jury Award – when the film was shown in the Electronic Theater the tension was very real, and there was a noticeable pause before the wild cheer after the film finished: a deserved victory, we says.
Check out the minute-long trailer below – hopefully a full release will arrive in the near future:
—
Valve Corporation
Finally, we just had to include this. Released earlier this year, it’s nice to see a game trailer with a sense of humour.
This got some big laughs in the Theater and was a nice break between the VFX breakdowns. It’s presented in an infomercial style, complete with cheesy voiceover.
So what makes these Turrets so special? As the video explains: “They fire the whole bullet: that’s 65% more bullet, per bullet”.
Take a look below:
—
Read our full report on the Computer Animation Festival
Posted on Thursday, August 18th, 2011 at 3:35 pm under Events, Features, Opinion, Shorts, Showcase. You can subscribe to comments. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
Tags: Animation, computer animation festival, DreamGiver, Electronic Theater, Fallen Art, Games, Paths of Hate, portal 2, Siggraph 2011, Tomek Baginski, turrets
The world's leading magazine for CG artists Subscribe Now
