written by Johannes Wolters

Okay, there is one minor flaw in fmx. I had to go through three days of fmx09, but then I found it. Or better it found me. The house of commerce, this big old wonderful building, where fmx is placed is a truly great place for all the things going on. But the event has now conquered four floors of the place and every floor has very high walls. So if you want to run downstairs and upstairs to catch your next meeting, to get to your next discussion, whatever, you climbed in the end all together the Everest. Or at least your legs begin to revolt. So on the last day of fmx you notice more and more people (and not only the elderly ones), who take the elevators, a little bit hidden and a little bit slow. But that’s the only flaw I have found on this years edition of fmx. I have to admit this stairs-sport is also very healthy. May be not, with all the coffee you need to drain every piece of information from this awesome conference. Again the creators of the fmx, Renata and Thomas Haegele topped the event from last year and again the numbers of attendees increased. Again more and internationally renowned speakers came to Stuttgart, again for four days the sunny town became animator’s land And that in those dark and gloomy times of worldwide economic crisis. And I did not discover one unhappy face during all those days. Must be heaven!

Victor Antonov showed breathtaking artwork from the upcoming “The Prodigies”, a dark probably x-rated animated feature film produced by Fidelite Films, Onyx and Studio 37. In all modesty he described the movie as a new genre of animated movie. And the graphic approach he and his team choosed convinced the audience. The film is currently in postproduction and will be released hopefully in summer 2010.

After that, Brad Blackburn, the director of photography from Framestore’s “Tales of Desperaux” talked about his endeavor to paint with light in this delightful story about a gentleman mouse.

Danielle Feinberg told a fascinated audience almost every secrets behind the cinematography of the most beloved Pixar movie so far, this year’s academy award winner “Wall-E”. If you nee to know, if there are some films, that have a soul, go and see every film done by Pixar. Said Matte Artist/Legen Harrison Ellenshaw! And Syd Mead, by the way, claimed jokingly, that his No 5 robot from Short Circuit was the inspiration for “Wall-E.”

Waltz with Bashir shows that technology can help push storytelling as well.

And Michael Faust, one of the Bridgit Folman Gang, enchanted the audience with his personal “Waltz with Bashir.” The right wing parties in Israel hated the movie for being left wing, the left wing parties complained, that the film wasn’t left wing enough. And only a very small group of Israelis admitted that they actually liked the movie. But the movie still runs in the theaters over there since its release six months ago, so it hit definitely a nerve. Faust didn’t knew, if the film was already shown in the Lebanon, but he did know everything about working on a very, very tight budget, working in a politically hot film, working with cutouts in flash, which is sometimes like working in hell. But his explanations about the famous, perverse waltz scene, which also was the most expensive one of the movie touched the audience because of its sheer, terrible beauty.  And one funny thing: The younger self of director Ari Folman, which is shown in the movie is based on the “old” face of the artist and writer, but not on the pictures of the then young Ari, who interestingly looked nothing like the animated character in comparison. Being asked, if he finds “Waltz with Bashir” a politically movie, he answered, that he thinks not. “As long as you consider “Saving Private Ryan” a political movie too. Both deal with memories. But there was no discussion around the Spielberg film!” he stated. The Award for the shortest presentation goes to Alain Lahanne, who presented the work of BUF on “The Dark Knight”. Called “Batman’s Sonar Vision” the interesting presentation ended after about 19 minutes, a record in my opinion. Christopher Nolan’s request to the studio was: It has to look like rain on water. So the BUF artists very carefully created a lot of ideas for the pitch and convinced Nolan with truly remarkable images. What did I miss today? Kay Delventhal’s presentation of the upcoming german feature film called Jasper the Penguin, who was coproduced with almost every European country. I missed also Gray Hodgkinsons talk about the animation education at New Zealand. Or Marc Caro’s presentation of “Dante 01” But you have to make some impossible decisions.

One very good advice came from the very last panel, when Joseph Olin, the president of the Academy of interactive Arts & Sciences gathered all the panelists of the games section for a final discussion. Again the audience and the panelists interacted quite well, like yesterday at the 5D-Conference. Richard Hilleman, the chief creatice director of Electronic Arts came up with a very wonderful advice: If you want to imitate someone, who has truly inspired you, you should not simply ape him or her, but you should go to the place, where the inspiration came from, that inspired the thing, you are inspired from. And built from there! What better advice to get from one of the smartest people I met during the conference.

So please take your calendar and make a big note. Next fmx will be hosted at Stuttgart from May 4th till May 7th 2010 You know, it’s the year, we will make contact again.

This site is a member of Animation blogspot, part of the Animation World Network

written by Johannes Wolters

You know what´s interesting about the fmx?. You stay there in the foyer, in the halls, you have this big accessibility to each and everyone. So I found myself talking to one of the big visual effects designers of this planet.

Kevin Tod Haugs worked on “Quantum of Solace,” “The Kite Runner,” “Finding Neverland,” “Panic Room” and many more. An his opinion about the stereoscopic films is a technical one:  “I just find it heartbreaking, that after years and years and years of dealing with resolution, we are finally getting to the point, where its 2k or 4k, we could make choices, its all gonna be fine, we get digital cameras, we get rid of scanning, its all gonna be fine and then we have to make it twice as complicated. Just, when its gonna be easy, we have to make it hard.”

So I asked him, if it will enhance the storytelling.

“Eventually. Right now it’s a gag. Someone will find stories that need it. Mostly it will be like when color came in. Lots of people said, do we need color? Really? But can do the film industry without it now? No! So, it will be about the same, I am sure. They said it about sound, they said it about color, they say it about stereo. But do I feel, that it enhances the storytelling-process right now? I haven´t seen any example, that blew my mind, but you know…. It will have to happen.”

Kevin is by the way the author of a VFX-related blog called Manifxto, so please, if you are interested, go there.

Day three of fmx09 started with lots tech talk, regarding the future of moviemaking as well as many other parts of our daily lives. Patrick Davenport and Steve Caulkin explained their Image Metrics system,  how fast this wonderful tool works. Both showed the Performance Capturing, which works without markers, then the Performance Analysis, after that the data is combined with a rig in a retargeting process. The final output is clean, editable animation curves. The system was heavily used in “Benjamin Button” and in the upcoming animated feature “Foodfight” as well as in games like Grand Theft Auto IV and many, many other big projects. The capture of lips through Image Metrics was shown in a hilarious musicv ideo of Gnarls Barkley´s “Who gonna save my soul”, directed by Chris Milk. You have to see that one! And of course you have to learn more about “The Emily Project” (www.image-metrics.com)

Paul Debevec explains it all.

Paul Debevec, the Whizkid from the USC, the University of Southern California´s Institute for Creative Technologies, showed the audience the future or the recent developments he and his fellows are working on.  Having driven the facial expression capture to new heights with the possibilities of USC´s Light stage no. 5, Debevec showed and explained the goal to establish a telephone conference with a real 3D image of the guy on the other end of the line. A real time 3D face scanning system interfaced to a face sized autostereoscopic3D display with some more unbelievable gadgets. In other words: it looked like the heads in “Futurama”, still in black and white, a problem they will solve in the very near future. This brilliant talk by Paul Debevec was truly inspiring and let us hope, we will live long enough to see the “holodeck” from Star Trek become real. Please check out their website its called http://gl.ict.usc.edu/ or shorter www.debevec.org

Christophe Hery from ILM explained about the latest in Skin and Reflection Research. Parag Havaldar from Sony told you a lot about the evolution of motion capture. He is currently implementing a new markerless video based motion capture system to assist full body animation for characters in Tim Burton´s “Alice in Wonderland.”
For the first time the 5D conference is now part of the fmx here at Stuttgart, Germany. Alex McDowell explained, that the conference at Long Beach will be held biannually. In the meantime, the conference will travel and go to interesting events like fmx to spread  the idea and to find new inspiration.

Peter Plantec opened up the conference with a short history about his first getting contact with 5D. He had to admit that he did not get it in the first place!

“What the heck, I can´t figure out what 5D was. 3D with two extra D´s? So Alex McDowell had to carefully explain it to me. And he had a hard time. He knew what is was. Its all about Design! Let´s say Design, Design, Design, Design, Design and its about immersive design, it is about the future of design. As we move on into new worlds, new types of entertainments, we have to evolve our ways, how to do design. And the idea that a single designer comes up with the concept, those days are over. Doomed by the incredibly complex.   And 5D looks at the whole issue and how we bring in more minds and resources to create virtual collaborative workspaces. It looks at how we bring talents of various  sorts  together in order a design synergy that can lead to really wild immersive storytelling experiences.” And this idea is already becoming reality. Or as producer Chris de Faria put: “For better or for worse this will be the future of cinema!” Very lively debates between the panellists and the audience went on through the whole afternoon. A young design student from Berlin, Daniela Kleint from HWT Berlin summarized it for me afterwards: “Great! Really great!!! The event inspired me very much. The people here choose an open platform, open discussions, very convenient for an interactive immersive design, a wonderful mixture of input and discussion. I would like to know more about it, so Iwill go to see, what they are doing next and what they have already achieved.”  And so can you!

The only bad thing about this day at fmx was that, if you choose to go to the 5D conference, you missed Jonathan Litt and Steve Preeg from Digital Domain and their panel about the truly amazing work on “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” As you can imagine the place was crowded, while Litt and Preeg revealed some of the magic behind the first convincing fully animated character in a live action film.

This site is a member of Animation blogspot, part of the Animation World Network

written by Johannes Wolters

Where to begin? Information overload. Day 2. Fmx09.

The fmx may not be as big as SIGGRAPH, but like an American professional stated, it is superbly organized, which makes it a truly wonderful event throughout the world of Visual Effects, Animation, Games and Digital Media. Steffen Wild presented the work and the developments inside the beloved World of Jim Henson Muppets today. The famous creature shop made it bold steps into the digital realm, carefully keeping the original muppet touch alive. Like Jim Henson told his staff “Have an Idea? We try it out. Never be afraid of failure”. The successful use of digital puppeteering was successful used on the TV-show “Sid the Science Kid”. 40 episodes, together 20 hours had to be put together within only one year. Key to the success: strong characters, the excellent collaboration between the puppeteers, the use of live action disciplines, the clever utilization of new technology and a perfect real-world-compatibility. Just doing digital puppets the muppet way. On the live stage up to six characters can now be handled at the same time datawise. All to create webisodes, commercials, Television shows and direct-to-dvd material at the moment. And of course at some point in the future creating a feature film with a hybrid approach.

Standing ovations for Richard Edlund, multiple Academy Award winner, who worked on the initial Star Wars-Trilogy, Raiders of the Lost Ark and many, many, many other wonderful films, who shaped our common popular culture in the last 35 years. Edlund gave a touching insight into his life and career. Being a working hippie in the early seventies, he already had worked on the initial Star Trek Television series. But then John Dykstra called him, asking, if he wanted to join George Lucas and ILM for Star Wars. He immediately took the job, just hesitating a few seconds. At that time ILM was nothing more than a room with a big table and phone on it. Later during the production, during a coffebreak he already had the foresight to tell his fellow workers to keep this moment in mind and remember this very time as “the good old times”. Edlund fells himself lucky to live through two revolutions. One to have made Star Wars and to get control over all the 24 frames per seconds running through the projector, using optical printers and motion control cameras, inventing a whole industry through the process. The public reactions were absolutely wonderful. “There were times, when people actually apologized for not having seen the movie! People felt bad having seen it only five times, when somebody told them, he had seen it up to ten times.”  The second revolution came with the digital world. Now Edlund not only had control over 24 frames per second, now he had control over al the millions of tiny pixels on every and each frame. “That makes you feel like god!”

Edlund was part of the Star Wars revolution.

Having worked with directors like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Harold Ramis, Wolfgang Petersen or John McTiernan, Richard Edlund is now a vital keyplayer of the ASC-ADG-VES Previs 2020 Workgroup, where creative people can exchange ideas about better collaboration, communication and efficiency in modern and future filmmaking. You could catch a glimpse of this wonderful future later on, when you joined Edlund, Alex McDowell, John Scheele and Kevin Tod Haug for an absolute mindboggling talk about the future of digital visualization in film production. Richard Edlund told about his visit to James Cameron just a week ago, where Cameron showed him “Avatar” and the technique behind it, McDowell told the audience about his visit to Steven Spielberg’s “Tintin”-set. It seems that our traditional understanding of filmmaking will be a thing of the past in only a few years from now. Again information overload. By then the fmx audience had already learned about the brilliant art direction and the lighting of Disney´s academy-award nominated  “Bolt” Paul Felix and Adolph Lusinsky told about the problems and tasks of the 3D-journey of the studio and his remarkable dog. And afterwards director Chris Williams talked about the difficulties and the joys he and his bold team experienced while creating the story of “Bolt”. Meanwhile Brian Van´T Hul from Laika did the same a few metres away at the Metropol cinema, talking about Henry Selick´s “Coraline” and the stereoscopic process. If you were ready to miss the panels about the creation of the absolute stunning “River God” from “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” by famous german studio Scanline VFX, if you dared to avoid Pixar´s presentation of the career gears at this studio presented by Robin McDonald, then you could go to meet Syd Mead and be blown away by his boundless imagination and his ability to put it down in beautiful artwork. His concepts, ideas and designs inspired cineastic milestones like Ridley Scotts “Blade Runner”, Steven Lisbergers “Tron”, Kathryn Bigelow´s “Strange Days” or James Cameron´s “Aliens”. Syd Mead freely explained his working methods, spoke about his approach how to carefully construct his wonderful paintings and the brief moments, when he can be available for himself.

After that you only had one choice, you had to see Harrison Ellenshaw´s talk about Visual Storytelling in Computer Graphics. Did I mention “information overload”?

Wonderful Shelley Page concluded the day´s event with her own unique presentation of “Shelley´s Eye Candy”.  Her actual favorites from festivals and graduation shows around the world included “Ex-Et” from Esma and “Dix” from BIF. Who could possibly ask for anything more.

This site is a member of Animation blogspot, part of the Animation World Network

written by Johannes Wolters

Cloudy, sometimes rainy. Stuttgart, the capital of the German federal state of Baden Wüerrttemberg is once again for the next four days the global center of animation. The 14. International Conference on Animation, Effects, Games and Digital Media opened its gates to the huge crowds of professionals, students, journalists and all enthusiasts, who are interested in the latest technologies, brilliant developments and in meeting and talking to the leading women and men behind the magic of animation. “The fmx09 has become Europe´s most significant animation get together” stated the Minister for Media, Professor Dr. Wolfgang Reinhart. And the Conference is still growing strongly. At the opening press conference, Prof. Thomas Haegele thanked all the partners of the event, especially the Visual Effects Society (VES) and the Academy of Arts & Sciences (AIAS) The new kid on the block is the 5D Conference, becoming a cooperation partner of the fmx for the first time this year. Main partners again are Autodesk, Deutsche Telekom, Pixar Animation Studios and Sony Pictures Imageworks. And every year, more and more floors of the gigantic old Palais, now called Haus der Wirtschaft/House of Commerce become occupied with all the highly interesting events of the fmx. That means, if you choose one event, you miss 10 other.  So either you have to be Doctor Manhattan and split up, or you have to suffer through those difficult decisions, where to go, what to attend. Thinking all the time, what you are missing.

Robert Neumann talked about the 3-D pipeline created for Disney´s “Bolt” while Lionel Fages talked about the 15 years of 3-D movie production at Cube Creative, while DreamWorks´s David Burgess explained the 3D-approach of “Monsters vs. Aliens.” French producer and director Pascal Herold presented his in-house build Fantasmagorix software suite. His very interesting goal is to produce a 3D-feature film at minimal costs and in a very short time frame. Fantasmagorix allows a very fast previs of all the aspects of a shot and is heavily used to create “Cinderella”, the very first 3-D CGI feature film of Herold and his studio Delacave.

VFX Supervisor John Scheele, VFX Producer Georgia Scheele and Previs Supervisor Ron Frankel, President and Founder of Proof, Inc.  presented an interesting insight into the Previs of Oliver Stone´s “World Trade Center”, the historical Epos “Alexander” and Steven Spielbers “The Terminal”. Reconstructing recent history with great detail, extreme care and sensitivity was the goal for the story of two surviving policemen in the catastrophe of the collapsing twin towers. Los Angeles´s Lebanon Street was chosen to stand in for parts of New York. For “The Terminal” the artists combined parts of the Airport of Montreal with the Airports of New York to create an unreal real place to work in.

Stone´s obsession for historical detail can be observed in the fact that he demanded to create an exact replication of the moon and its positions during the nights of 9/11 and after.

As the competition of VFX/Animation Studios grows, the production has to be streamlined. The short deadlines demand more efficiency. And the increased complexity of work needed new talent and innovation.  Xavier Nicolas, escorted by imperial Stormtroopers, explained the genesis of Lucas Animation Singapore, its past, present and future. The studio works closely together with ILM, Lucas Arts and of course Lucas Animation San Francisco. As Nicolas stated, George Lucas wanted to access the Asian talent. Being a lifelong fan of Japanese Manga and Chinese culture, Lucas tried to capture the creativity born from the diversity of Asian artists. Singapore is English speaking, has a reliable infrastructure and protects intellectual properties. Also labor is more cost effective than in the States. And of course the US visa limitations do not allow to invite the Asian talent in a big way to San Francisco. The studio was set up in 2005, they started work for the TV-show “The Clone Wars” in 2006 and produced VFX for films like “Transformers”, “Iron Man”, G-Force” since then. A year later the artists began to collaborate with Lucas Arts on games like “Star Wars – The force unleashed” and developed their own game: “The Clone Wars – Jedi Alliance”. Due to an extensive training program, called “The Jedi Master Program” 330 highly trained artists are now working in a great multicultural environment and they are preparing now for their first own feature film endeavour.

Cloudy with the Chance of Meatballs shows more 3-D potential.

Bob Osher, President of Sony Digital Productions, presented an inside look at Sony Pictures Digital Production Companies Sony Pictures Animation and Sony Pictures Imageworks. “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” will come to us in mouthwatering 3D Osher explained the new philosophy of the studios, who will produce four types of animation: The all audience features, hybrid Live Action films, Direct to DVD Movies like the highly successful “Open Season 2” and audience specific features. Animation is handled like a technique here and not as a genre. Mentioning films like “Tripplets of Belleville”, “Waltz with Bashir” or “Persepolis” Sony aims now also to other audience groups than the common family entertainment films. A yet untitled Avi Arad-Project, written by Mark Frost will be the first film in this direction.

Alex McDowell

The biggest room of the Haus der Wirtschaft was still too small for the audience, who wanted to know all about the unbelievable amount of work, achieved in a very small amount of time for Zach Snyder´s “Watchmen”. Alex McDowell, John DJ Desjardin and Pete Travers explained in three hours the making of Doctor Manhattan, explained the production design and the VFX of the ambitious and groundbreaking adaptation of Alan Moore´s famous graphic novel. Funny enough to create Doc Manhattan, Pete Travers had the opportunity to “hire” the “Beowulf”-character as an early stand-in.

Meanwhile Kevin Geiger opened the section focus on China with his talk on the cultural revolution coming now to the western animated world as China opens up. Wen Feng and Lijun Sun from Magic Dumpling (www.magicdumpling.com) presented China´s first environmentally-themed animated feature film, called “Road to Home”, while Lifeng Wang, president of Xing Xing Digital Corporation (www.xing-xing.com) showed examples of the studio´s vfx created for films like “Fantastic Four”, “Tropic Thunder” or “The Forbidden kingdom”. Vance Huang and Stella Huang completed the section with a brief overview about the work and achievements of SOFA studios, based in Taipeh, Taiwan. (www.sofastudios.com). The studio generates high quality computer animation from concept design to rendering.

And in case you were not tired enough, panel after panel, talk after talk, meeting after meeting – at the end of the day Animation World Network publisher Ron Diamond presented the Screening of “The Animation Show of Shows”. Nine exquisite short films delighted the audience in High Definition, from the academy award winning “La Maison en petit cubes” to Chris Williams stunning “Glago´s Guest”.

This site is a member of Animation blogspot, part of the Animation World Network

MIPTV is always a draw, but how has the economy affected this marketplace?

written by Heather Kenyon

Wow, was it easier to get from meeting to meeting this past MIPTV.  Considerably smaller in scale both booth wise and in attendance, it was a noticeably quieter MIPTV. “Yeah, well, this is what it looks like when several trillion dollars disappears overnight…” a seasoned market-goer told me.  While there is no denying that the world is in the midst of a major fiscal re-order, a lot of the people at MIP weren’t necessarily crying the panicked, frantic song they were at last fall’s MIPCOM.  The sky is no longer falling, business is just slow…really slow.  “I am only here for a few days and only meeting with the people that I might actually do business with,” I heard over and over.  I also heard, across the board, in every meeting, the words, “new media” and “diversify.”  New media is the given, with not only producers unveiling elaborate cross-platform ideas with every pitch, but also a number of new players coming to the event and starting some interesting, brain-bending conversations.  And “diversify” came into play as players scramble to have as many arrows in their quivers as possible to stay afloat.  An animation producer with a new board game?  An animation company plunging into live-action?  A television producer suddenly pitching a feature?  An animation production house moving into online world creation?  ‘Why not!’ is the attitude right now.  When times are slow, you have to start thinking of other places to sell.

New Media Opportunities
What a wide-ranging term.  If it isn’t “just” on television then I think we are calling it new media these days.  There were several interesting new players at the market that were discussing new avenues of distribution.  One was KIT Digital.  This fascinating company takes high-end brands’ product and spreads it across multiple platforms in creative and brand unique ways.  Being platform agnostic, they help companies, whether they are consumer brands, telecommunications providers, content producers, or broadcasters, successfully monetize the consumption of their online and mobile video assets.  “The iPhone has changed the way we think about technology,” explains Senior Vice President of Business Development Barak Bar-Cohen.  “And all-you-can-eat data plans, cool apps, have only increased the appetite for watching content on smaller screens.”  Their most successful project in the animated space to date is the site they created for Seth MacFarlane.  Seth wanted to connect with his fans more directly and so with help from KIT and a sponsorships from Burger King, together with a partnership between Google, Youtube and Media Rights Capital, a special web environment and Youtube channel was launched.   With high-resolution video and other content the site achieved over 100,000 hits in the first 24 hours!

Yahoo! was also in the Palais talking about their latest “application” – ConnectedTV.  “’How do we bring Yahoo content to TV?’ is basically the question we asked ourselves,” explains Lucas Mast, Yahoo’s Connected TV evangelist.  “The answer is a widget!  Just like an app for the iPhone, but this is like a bookmark that will appear on your TV, only when you want it too.  You control the interactivity.”  The Yahoo widget engine is pre-loaded onto certain television models like new Samsung, Sony, LG and Visio brands.  One can then watch television and, like a sidebar, bring up favorite websites and content.  While keeping an eye on your golf game, NBA play-off, or favorite soap opera for that matter, you can also peek at your stocks, latest eBay showdown or any other website/content you like.  For instance perhaps you would download the Macy’s widget and then be able to check in for special offers and coupons.  “We are trying to marry the computer to the television,” Mast explains. “And what is great is – it is a platform.  So everyone is welcome to write a widget!”  There are no fees associated with writing a widget, it is just another way of making your content available.

9 Story's Fugget

Diversify Young Man!
9 Story is a company whose quality I have long admired.  I sat down with Vince Commisso, their president and CEO, and we had a good chat.  Having just sold “Survive This” to Cartoon Network’s widely anticipated upcoming reality block, 9 Story is a prime example of an animation boutique that is now developing a wide range of high quality content to suit the ever-changing market’s needs.  “It all comes down to story and quality,” says Vince.  “Who am I serving?  If that audience changes, then you have to change how you think about content.  Today’s kids are moving at the speed of light!  Unless you move with them, they just won’t pay attention.”  While staying true to their pre-school roots, 9 Story is also moving into the prime time space with a hilarious looking project called “Fugget About It.”

Another animation company that was conceived with product diversity in mind is Ireland’s Jam Media.  John Rice started as an animator working at 20th Century Fox Animation in Phoenix on “Anastasia” and “Titan AE,” before moving to New York and working as a character designer at MTV on such series as “Downtown.”  However, even way back then, he saw that the days of hand-flipping animation on paper was going to become just one of the many ways to animate.  “Technology was only going to advance,” he says.  Therefore, he returned to his native Ireland and studied multi-media, only to emerge and create Jam Media with two other partners, Alan Shannon and Mark Cumberton.   From the beginning the point of Jam Media was to create great animation and develop methods of delivering the content over traditional and emerging platforms.  My favorite application of theirs is called “Head-hunter.”  It is a riot!  This technology allows users to take their content and personalize it by adding their face in different poses, thereby creating a personalized animation.  What’s more is it includes a render engine that allows the finished animation to be spit out in the format of the creator’s choice.  Video sharing sites, blogs, mobile phones, you name it!  You can share your silly creation however you please.  “From the start of the company, there was an awareness of technology.  It is never an add on, but rather an intricate part,” John explains.  Jam is working from a model where, while they develop the content, they are then happy to oversee and share production, while focusing more on the R&D of new technology.  At MIPTV, Jam launched their new live-action, animated comedy “Roy.” Commissioned by CBBC and premiering in the fall, the series tells the story of Roy, the only cartoon boy living in the real world.   Anne Gilchrist of CBBC exclaims, “It’s funny, poignant and totally mesmerizing.”  All of the live-action footage is being shot in Dublin and Jam is working with Studio B on producing the animation for the 26 x 22-minute order.

They say, ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’…and this MIPTV I felt as though there was a lot of thinking going on.  A lot of meetings where people were asking, “What if…”  Our industry was already in the midst of an upheaval before the economic crisis hit.  These trying times will force us to rethink, regroup and continue to look for new avenues of business.  There is another saying, which is, ‘Where there is a will, there is a way.’  And so, I am interested and closely watching, as everyone is, what new models, inventions and developments will occur as people forge ahead, making business happen in a strange time.  Some really exciting innovations may be right around the corner.

This site is a member of Animation blogspot, part of the Animation World Network

Origins returns BioWare to its roots.

written by Evan Goncalo

There’s no better way to start a day off, then with a panel of well-known press members presenting with attitude!  My first stop was “Burned by Friendly Fire: Game Critics Rant.”  The ideas represented by the press members in attendance were both refreshing and thoughtful.  N’Gai Croal, formerly of Newsweek, opened up with a presentation on the term “Hardcore Gamer” and noted that we had to stop using it and other words like “Casual” to describe styles of play.  The reason being, the game industry’s audience adapts to changes in the industry rapidly, and we as developers, journalists, and consultants need to do the same.

Stephen Totillo of MTV News encouraged gaming press to write better articles, and went over the four words that must be banned from game journalism – compelling, visceral, very, and “adverbs.”  Leigh Alexander of Gamasutra followed suit with a plea for better communication between the gaming trinity – press, developers, and fans.  Two guest speakers followed, writer from Wall Street Journal Jamin Brophy-Warren and head of IGDA, Jason Della Rocca. Brophy-Warren asked for developers to create more racially diverse characters for their titles and Della Rocca asked IGDA members to get more involved in the organization.

Polymedia journalist, Heather Chaplain, offered a heartfelt rant about the influence of men on the gaming industry where she discussed the male power fantasy, and the term “neoteny.”  She ended the speech with question, “So guys, are you a Chihuahua or a Wolf?”  Last up was guest speaker Chris Hecker and G4TV’s Adam Sessler.  Hecker begged game journalists to be wary of what they wrote, warning that “reporting impacts people, personally and professionally.”  Final speaker, Adam Sessler, tore apart Metacritic’s scoring mechanic, and how numerical rating systems are killing game reviews.

After such an action packed morning, I grabbed a quick bite to eat, and took a taxi over to the Le Meridien Hotel where I met with BioWare to discuss their in-development title, “Dragon Age: Origins.”  “Origins” is a return to BioWare’s roots, and they are labeling it the spiritual successor of famed “Baldur’s Gate.”  The premise of the new title is that when you select your initial origin, the game will play out differently depending on the character you’ve chosen.  People will react differently to your background and race, and new dialog options will be enabled.

Compared to its predecessors, Dragon Age is more gritty and mature.  BioWare leaves the player with many challenging decisions to make, and allows them to develop deep relationships with the cast of supporting characters.  The choices you make will also affect said relationships, and during my demo I saw a clear contrast between the mindset of hulking warrior, Sten, and female rogue, Lelianna.  The game, which should take an average player about 80 hours per play-through, is releasing in Fall 2009 on PC, XBOX 360, and PS3.

Afterwards, I headed back to the Moscone Center and stopped in on the “Technical Art Techniques” panel, where artists from studios like Bungie, Volition, Microsoft, and BioWare discussed topics like naming conventions and the most popular software solutions.  They also advised developers that “in the next couple of years companies will move to deferred renderers and DCC software makers will be forced to adapt.”

From there, I walked across the hall to a presentation by famous designer, Peter Molyneux.  The session titled “Lionhead Experiments Revealed” did exactly that.  Lionhead allows staff to propose ideas they would like to work on, and if approved, are allowed time to experiment with to create their idea.  These ideas are typically worked on by teams of up to 5 developers, and take from 1 to 12 weeks to complete.

Lionhead has created a structured tool called “Concrete” that allows any developer to quickly flush out their ideas.  You can use assets from any of the studios previous games and drag them into Concrete.  After the “experiment” is created, it’s reviewed by creative staff to ask questions like, “What will it add”, “How much will it cost”, and “How do you teach players about it?”  Important experiments for Lionhead included the Dog and Breadcrumb Trail in “Fable 2,” as well as some of the systems in “Black and White 2.”

Pacific looks impressive.

That was the end of my Friday, but as promised, I’d like to discuss “Battlestations: Pacific.”  I had an opportunity to preview the game on Tuesday, and was impressed with what I saw.  “Pacific” allows you to take control of a myriad of vehicles and play your way through several historic scenarios.  Two campaigns are selectable – United States or Japan.  The US campaign is authentic, and plays out how events actually once took place.  The Japanese campaign, on the other hand, has fictional elements in place so the player isn’t forced to lose.  The team looked over original Japanese war plans to make this as believable as possible.

As for game art, the team tried to keep things as authentic as possible.  Artists studied WW2 artwork, military documentation, and actual blueprints so they could recreate each vehicle as accurately as they could.  For the style itself, they went after the 1950’s post card look, a mix of realism and beauty without the typical grays and browns.  This time around, the team added new water visuals, physics, vegetation, and storm effects to their proprietary engine.  I came away “wowed” and wanting more.  Get your fix on May 12, 2009 on either PC or XBOX 360.

This past week has been action packed to say the least.  As always, new technologies and titles have been announced, but clearly the industry focus has changed, and for the better.  Developers are becoming more and more conscious of what’s taking place in our economy and adapting.  Expect to see lower price points, more independent titles, and artistic innovation in the year to come.  All I can say is that I can’t wait to see what happens next.  Thanks for reading!

Evan Goncalo is currently a game development teacher at Bristol Community College.  Evan started in the game industry when he was 18 has worked in QA, Marketing, and Design in AAA studios that include Turbine Inc, Blue Fang Games, and Hasbro Inc.  In his spare time he creates 3D art and textures for game modification and as a hobby.  Find out more at his personal website, www.evangoncalo.com

This site is a member of Animation blogspot, part of the Animation World Network

David Crane (l) and Steve Cartwright.

Written by Evan Goncalo

I was off to an early start this morning – the good news being the hearty breakfast I wolfed down when I learned more about Adobe’s new Director 11.5 release.  Dr. Allen Patridge of Adobe ran the presentation, and he went over some of the things users can expect from the new Director software.  He approached this from three angles: Dominate, Accelerate, and Impress.”

The first item refers to Adobe’s high user and penetration numbers; Shockwave’s penetration is currently around 60% of all web users.  Accelerate is related to the “drag and drop ease” of the engine, and unified authoring across multiple platforms.  Lastly, the way Director impresses is with a rich feature list, including true 5.1 surround sound, flash media streaming video, Google SketchUp import/translation, and PhysX support.

After my breakfast with Adobe I got a chance to sit and speak with two game developer legends, David Crane and Steve Cartwright.  I asked some things to benefit the new aspiring artists out there, as well as some “just for fun” questions.

AWN: What should aspiring artists learn, and how should they approach getting hired?

DC: As an artist, find out what 3d rendering program is used at the studio.  Spend time with it.  Spend hours every night hacking on the software to be able to tell the employer you are comfortable using it.  Learn any middleware involved as well. Artists should be conscious of what’s moving in the world.  Knowledge of how video games are assembled out of multiple pieces of art.  It’s not about how pretty your art is, it’s the understanding of what goes into it.

SC: Ability to adapt to different styles is important.  Having a diverse range of skills.

Pitfall is a classic!

When I asked them what their favorite titles were they had worked on, Dave said that he liked something about each game he worked on, but “Pitfall” was clearly the most successful.  Steve said it was fun working on the “Tiger Woods” series because he got invited to so many golf tournaments, but really enjoyed receiving an award for “Hacker 2.”  He received the “programmer of the year” award, which he thought was funny because he was “widely known as the worst programmer.”  It all came down to coming up with a simple method to render on-screen snow and other basic effects that he wowed people with.

Afterwards, I took a look around the expo floor for a while and stopped by Image Metric’s booth.  For those that aren’t familiar IM is a marker/makeup free facial capture solution that is priced well below other competitors.  Customers can send in their own reels of film and IM can quickly turn over results.

They run a campaign called “End Helmet Tyranny” which encourages developers to come to them, rather than resorting to placing helmets and masks on their characters in order to make deadlines at the end of projects.  You may say it’s too pricey, or overkill for what you need, but they have three different levels of service – Value, Pro, and Premium.  I saw clips of each, and they all looked great.  When hand animation can run up to $5,000 a minute in the most expensive of cases, they do it for half the price.

Image Metrics also recently announced that they have begun to a rigging service as well.  This should be highly beneficial for developers who are crunching in the final stretch, and need good results, fast.  With experience working on games like “GTA IV” and movies like “Benjamin Button,” the folks at IM are some of the best in their industry.

I made it over to the Nvidia booth as well and had a chance to learn about PhysX’s brand new module, APEX.  APEX was created to reduce the need for programmers while dealing with physic objects, and it provides a high-level interface for artists that enables easy production of great results quickly.

APEX Vegetation.

First things to launch will be APEX Destruction and Vegetation, but we should also see APEX Clothing soon, and APEX Turbulence later in the year.  The names are all pretty self-explanatory and each solution provides quality scalable dynamic content.  “Destruction” taking care of elements like automatic fracturing, and “Clothing” things like animation blending as well as full clothing simulation.

APEX is available on all systems, and is already integrated into some of the most popular game engines like UE3, GameBryo, and Hero Engine.  On top of that it is integrated into middleware like SpeedTree and Morpheme.  My favorite aspect of it all is that APEX is completely free for PhysX developers.  You can’t beat free technology, especially when it’s as polished as APEX!

With another day behind me I’m headed back to my hotel to prepare myself for the craziness that should ensue tomorrow, the last day of the 2009 Game Developer Conference.  Come back tomorrow to find out what happened during day 5 of the conference, and for an inside look at “Battlestations: Pacific.”

Evan Goncalo is currently a game development teacher at Bristol Community College.  Evan started in the game industry when he was 18 has worked in QA, Marketing, and Design in AAA studios that include Turbine Inc, Blue Fang Games, and Hasbro Inc.  In his spare time he creates 3D art and textures for game modification and as a hobby.

This site is a member of Animation blogspot, part of the Animation World Network

Diner Dash's Flo is on the go to consoles.

written by Evan Goncalo

The first thing on today’s agenda was to head over to the W Hotel to meet with Hudson Entertainment.  I got hands on with “Military Madness”, “Diner Dash”, “Water Warfare”, “Help Wanted”, and some other new titles in their portable library.  All titles besides “Military Madness” are meant for anyone to play, both hardcore gamers, and families alike.

“Military Madness” is a full 3D remake of its TurboGrafx-16 predecessor but also adds new features like multiplayer (up to 4 players local and online) as well as a new upgradeable unit called the “commander.”  They are also bringing PC favorite, “Diner Dash,” to the console trio, also now fully in 3D.  The new “Diner Dash” played as easily as the original, and with the addition of multiplayer, now allows for endless fun with friends.

“Water Warfare” manages to bring the fun of a traditional FPS into the family living room arena without violence.  You play as a fully customizable playground kid, armed to the teeth with water gun weapons in the mold of machine guns and sniper rifles.  I learned along the way to be wary of committing “soakicide” while using the water launcher.  Water Warfare is also playable online with up to 8 players, and can make for some competitive game-play.

Last but not least of the console-based titles is “Help Wanted” – a light-hearted, comical, and simple game built around mini-games in the form of wacky jobs.  The game’s art style looks is very “anime” but also have a hint of “Mii” styling.

Later in the day, Hugh Malan of Realtime Worlds ran session, “Next-Gen Tech, but Last-Gen Looks?  Tips to Make your Game Look Better – That Don’t Include Bloom and Motion Blur.”  Advice was given on using Ambient Occlusion effectively, and how to correctly use Contact Shadows.  Malan discussed things like Contact Shadow’s four options of implementation – Forward Rendering, Alpha Blended Quads, Deferred, and Post Process.

I also got to catch “Accelerating Creativity: Building Environmentally Aware Characters with Havok Behavior & More,” a talk given by Jeff Yales, Havok’s VP of Product Management.  Yales went over some Havok Behavior 6.5’s features, the one that interested me most was it’s ability to build out a custom UI by exploring all the SDK tools underneath (animation, physics, etc.) whether in-house or licensed.  Topics not directly related to the Havok toolset, like “creative challenges for characters,” were also covered.

League of Legends is the debut title from Riot Games.

A hop, skip, and jump down the road took me to the St. Regis Hotel where I spoke with Riot Games about their debut title, “League of Legends”.  “LoL” has been in development since September of 2006 by an all-star staff of 40 employees.  Previous titles the staff has worked on include, “The Godfather”, “Dungeon Seige”, “Warcraft 3”, “World of Warcraft”, and “Sly Cooper.  The game is being built in the spirit of it’s popular predecessor (10 million players), “DoTA: All Stars,” but with a focus on adding functionality that was never before possible as a “Warcraft 3″ modification.

Although the game may look similar on the surface, with stylized art that may remind one of “Warcraft 3,” or “World of Warcraft,” there is a lot more underneath the shell.  For one, the Riot Games team did a lot to make the game more accessible for player’s that may have struggled with DoTA like myself, and after a brief chat with community director Steve Mescon, I got to hop into a 3v3 game with some developers and fellow members of the press.

Before the game begins, you are able to select from a diverse cast of “champions.”  These champions are not your typical trolls and dwarves either – they include everything from a boy riding atop the back of a yeti, to a frolicking “dark child!”  Needless to say the developers have crafted some creative characters.  As “summoner”, you control one champion and are able to upgrade him/her with new abilities and items as you progress through the match.  Although your champion won’t keep their upgrades once you leave a match, your summoner will accrue skills and abilities, as well as achievements that allow you to customize the look of your digital persona.

The team at Riot Games made it clear to me they valued the feedback of their community, and plan to utilize it in creating “League of Legends.”  They’ve gone as far as creating a trademarked piece of technology called the “Suggestion Engine” that will allow players to suggest and vote on new content.  With a team this focused on catering to its player base, and a game as fun and creative, I look forward to seeing more in the coming months.

Blueberry Garden wins big prize at Indie Games Fest.

The last events of the day, which I’ll only scratch the surface of here, was the Independent Games Festival Awards and Game Developer Choice Awards.  The IGF awards came first, with plenty of indie commentary on the industry.  “Blueberry Garden” took the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, presented by last year’s winner Petri Purho of “Crayon Physics Deluxe.”  As for the Game Developer’s Choice Awards, Bethesda Softworks picked up Game of the Year for their title, “Fallout 3.”  To find out more about the awards check out: Game Choice Awards site or Independent Games Festival site.

Today was a truly exciting day, with newly unveiled games, the opening of the conference floor, and the two flashy awards shows.  But, the fun isn’t over yet!  Check back Thursday and Friday for more on the happenings of game development Mecca, GDC.

Evan Goncalo is currently a game development teacher at Bristol Community College.  Evan started in the game industry when he was 18 has worked in QA, Marketing, and Design in AAA studios that include Turbine Inc, Blue Fang Games, and Hasbro Inc.  In his spare time he creates 3D art and textures for game modification and as a hobby.

This site is a member of Animation blogspot, part of the Animation World Network

GDC gets serious about Serious Games.

written by Chris Harz, Ed.D.

The Game Developers Conference 2009 featured several specialty categories of videogames with strong potential for new types of creative expression and careers (read: “jobs for animators”). The GDC’s Serious Games Summit was an object lesson on how many areas of the world can be affected by games—and how effective Serious Games can be in teaching, affecting opinion, motivating exercise, and medical healing, to name but a few. A Serious Game is one where entertainment is not the primary objective—though the game still needs to be entertaining, as many developers pointed out, else no one will use it.

The Serious Game segment continues to grow; it was estimated at about $2 billion in 2008. It is still a very new industry, based mostly in the US, which is not surprising, since the US government was and continues to be a major sponsor. The number of government agencies using games has grown since last year—if you want to work for the CIA, DIA, FBI, DHS or other “alphabet soup” agencies, this is a great way to do it (in fact, the CIA has supported many game companies through its investment arm, In-Q-Tel). The demand for medical games is expanding, and the business training market is becoming solid. Surprisingly, the one market segment where teaching games would seem to make the most sense—schools—has still not taken off yet; there are a few successful games for schools, but they are mostly bought by parents for use after school, not by the schools themselves. Teachers are still puzzling over how to use gaming technology in the classroom, and many of them seem afraid to use anything that their students would probably understand much better than they do, so the poor kids are still stuck with dry and hard to understand textbooks.

Some other trends are emerging. Whereas early Serious Games were often extensive 3D projects, more of them are now simple games, so they overlap two other categories—Casual Games (games that are simple to learn) and Mobile Games (for handhelds). This makes it easier for new companies to enter this area—instead of having to pitch an expensive 3D game to a client, creative developers can offer content that could be delivered via iPhones, where the content might be simple, but the total effect could be dramatic because of its outreach to an entire work force, and the ability to add and update content continually.

Political games hit as fast as Internet parodies.

For instance, a Serious Games panel on Political Games listed many games that were developed this past year, most of them short Flash-based products. The list included The Bailout Game, Oiligarchy, Shoe Toss (modeled on the infamous Iraqi journalist), Bush’s Billions, Harpooned (a “save the whales” game), Rock the Quote, Gaza Conflict (there are games on both political sides of this issue), Democracy 2, Cooking Mama (a pro-vegetarian game by PITA), The Political Machine, and Polar Palin (a game on Palin versus the Polar bears).

Oiligarchy is just one game trying to convey a political message.

A typical game, Oiligarchy, by Addicting Games, describes gameplay as: Play the OILigarchy Game and do what the rich big oil companies do: lie, steal, cheat, bribe politicians, bribe scientists to give false reports, ignore Greenpeace environmental campaigns, and pollute the air at will. Many such games need to be short and inexpensive because they are topical, that is, they need to come out within days or weeks after a political event happens.

Besides being used to attack opposing viewpoints, Political Games are also used to support candidates, explaining their histories or training volunteers to run campaigns and get out the vote. Some political games have become very popular—the United Nations-sponsored game, Food Force, which is about fighting starvation in the world, has been downloaded by over 4 million players. Ben Sawyer, a Serious Games guru, predicted that the role of political games would grow in future campaigns. “A lot of States in the 2008 race were very close,” he noted, “and could have been swung with issue-related games that provided ‘eye openers.’ Games will supplant direct mail in the future. They will probably be bought by big media firms that are starting to specialize in ‘social media’ such as texting, Twitter and Facebook.” There was also a discussion of using such games for newspapers. Chris Swain of USC said, “Newspapers are dying. Smart partnering of game companies with newspapers could really pay off.” Some types of Political Games (aka “Games for Social Change”) are produced as families—the UK government, for instance, sponsors a gamesite called DirectgovKids where kids from 5 to 11 can learn about government and public services.

Making History.

Business games are finally emerging as a strong category. One example is ReFresh: An Introduction to marketing, which places students in the role of marketer at a beverage company, with the job of test marketing a new juice product. Players have to research the market, formulate product, set price, promote and advertise, and then react to how customers buy their product (or not). The game is produced by Muzzy Lane Software, which also produces Making History, a history game for high schools and colleges, Cell Saver, a biology learning game for Middle Schools, and American Dynasties, a 3D game for teaching social history.

Ed Heinbockel, founder and President of Purple Vision, a Serious Game company with great success in training games for the IC (the Intelligence Community, all those companies with 3 letters in the name), demonstrated Winning in Wireless, a business-oriented game to train middle managers, which he is marketing with BTS of Sweden. “Videogames are proving their effectiveness for organizations, and are replacing the old CBT (Computer Based Training) programs, which are dying a slow death,” he said. He also recommended that Serious Games be called “sims” for certain customers (who don’t like the term “games”), and that they be produced by a company’s design team and training experts, not just by the coders. “Our programmers build tools, not customized software,” he noted. “We’re good at building such tools so that real people can rapidly build and modify sims for our customers.” In a world where Serious Games are moving into the next phase—being created as products for large markets instead of as one-off applications for specific clients—that seems like very good advice, indeed.

This site is a member of Animation blogspot, part of the Animation World Network

written by Evan Goncalo

Today was off to a good start with Khronos’ three press releases this morning during their “Developer University.”  They talked briefly about the all-new OpenGL 3.1 with a new streamlined API, and also covered their new OpenSL ES 1.0 API, which is coming close to completely converging with OpenGL – something that would enable a subset that could run anywhere, either on desktop or mobile.  They also unveiled their initiative to bring accelerated 3D content to the web.  Mozilla spearheads this effort with the support of Google.  The goal of the movement is to not only enhance current web applications, but to enable new innovations in web 3d created by any developer.  A call-to-arms was made for industry personnel to support and work towards this goal.

Daniel James.

I headed back over to the Independent Games Summit, and sat in on a session called “The Indie Businessman,” a panel made up of Jamie Cheng (Klei Entertainment), Daniel James (Three Rings), and Hampus Soderstrom (Nabi Studios.)  Each provided insights on their studio’s business model, the focus mostly on micro-transactions and stackable subscriptions.  Soderstrom’s studio is behind a game called “TORIBASH” which allows users to craft their own fighting moves.  Their answer to finances is allowing users to purchase the ability to upload their own textures and customize up to forty elements of their character.  When asked the going-rate on a character with forty slots worth of rare items, he replied that hardcore players were paying $1,000 or more.  Both Cheng and Jame’s studios follow similar business models by allowing users to purchase in-game money to put towards “pimping” their character.

Next up was “The Indie Game Maker Rant,” a session made up of 11 independent developers, each allotted with about five minutes to “rant” on a topic of their choice.  The scope of the rants was broad, everything from Auteur theory to what “indies” are actually independent of.   President of “thatgamecompany”, Kellie Santiago, suggested that the game industry is currently on the precipice of birthing a new medium, and that even competitors in the industry should work together to bring upon this radical change – one that would allow the world to view games as art, and to realize their immense impact on us.  Raigan Burns, co-founder of “Metanet Software,” implored developers to find new ways of producing game art.  In doing so he asked studios to look outside the box - to build things by using only primitives and exploring new means of non-photo-realistic rendering besides cell shading.  After showing screenshots of “ASCII Quake” he also encouraged developers to invent new types of post-processing rather than relying on the standard bloom and tone mapping.

Getting food is a game in and of itself.

After a quick bite to eat, I headed to “How Do You Manage Small Indie Teams” headed up by the earlier mentioned Santiago.  After listening, I’m sure the tips could apply to the management of any type or size of team.  She offered several “tools” to managers, such as having a mission statement, plan, and defining roles.  She also discussed RACI charts (Responsible for, Accountable for, Consulted on, Informed.)  RACI Charts open up clear channels for both communication and conflict resolution.

A screenshot from Love.

The last talk of the day I attended was suitably called “Making LOVE In Your Bedroom.”  The solo developer of a game called “LOVE,” Eskil Steenberg, ran the session.  The absolute focus of his talk was pushing developers, indie and commercial alike, to build their own tools rather than licensing existing ones.  The argument for this being that application developers “don’t want you to get done on time, they want you to spend more time, and to hire more people.”  You might argue that it’s a bold statement to make without something to back it up.  He then, under thirty minutes, showed off a whole suite of his authoring tools that he used to create his MMORPG, LOVE.  The tools can only be described as innovative and beautiful – they were highly simplistic yet incredibly functional.  Readers interested in finding more about his open-source 3D engine called “Quel Solaar”.

During the after hours, I attended the “OnLive” media announcement.  “OnLive” is a new console that may be the end of console gaming, as we know it.  They promise to bridge the gap in between platforms and to allow play of “any game, any time, anywhere.”

You can find out more about the announcement and the OnLive’s new services on AWN.

With another exciting day behind me, I look forward to what’s ahead during the next three days of GDC, and plan to deliver the goods.  Battlestations: Pacific didn’t go forgotten either, more details on Friday!

Evan Goncalo is currently a game development teacher at Bristol Community College.  Evan started in the game industry when he was 18 has worked in QA, Marketing, and Design in AAA studios that include Turbine Inc, Blue Fang Games, and Hasbro Inc.  In his spare time he creates 3D art and textures for game modification and as a hobby.

This site is a member of Animation blogspot, part of the Animation World Network