Category Archives: events

animation, events, graphics, interactive, machine learning, video

“Believable Acting” video now online

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ACM SIGGRAPH has posted the video of my April 12 talk about our team’s work on believable acting for autonomous animated characters. This was a really fun one to do. Most conferences limit you to 25 minutes for technical talks, but we’ve always had a lot more material than that! The San Francisco SIGGRAPH chapter’s talk format is comfortably open-ended, so I was able to spend a full hour and go a lot deeper without rushing through it, and still leave plenty of time for Q&A.

Huge thanks to Henry LaBounta and the SF SIGGRAPH organizers for inviting me, and to the audience for showing up and asking such thoughtful and interesting questions!

animation, events, games, graphics, interactive, machine learning

Believable Acting, April 12 at SF-SIGGRAPH

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Hey animation heads, AI enthusiasts, game developers, and curious people of all kinds! Have you ever wondered why video game characters often seem so robotic, compared to animated characters in movies? Have you ever wished for some way to bridge that gap? This is what my team, Synthetic Characters, has been working on at Google Research. I’ll be giving a talk about our paper, Toward Believable Acting for Autonomous Animated Characters, for the San Francisco SIGGRAPH chapter, next Wednesday, April 12, at 6pm Pacific time.

The event is online, free, and open to the public– but if you want to see it, you have to sign up in advance. Here’s the link to reserve your spot!

Our autonomous character, Axo, acting on its own motivations.
animation, events, VR

Animation Day at Infinity Festival

"Infinity Festival Hollywood" logo

I’m heading to LA this coming weekend to do a retrospective talk about Spotlight Stories. It’s part of an ASIFA-organized “Animation Day” event at Infinity Festival Hollywood. starting Saturday, November 9th at 10am. (Our friends from Baobab will also be doing a talk about some of their latest work, so it should be a really interesting morning!) Angelenos, swing by and say hello!

events, graphics, npar, travel, VR

FMX and Expressive 2019

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Next week I’m heading to Europe for a couple of conferences: FMX (Stuttgart) where Jan Pinkava will be giving two talks about our work at Spotlight Stories, and Expressive (Genoa) where I’m presenting a paper about our look development work for Age of Sail: Non-Photorealistic Animation for Immersive Storytelling. I’m beyond excited to meet up with old colleagues and new ones, learn about the latest graphics techniques, mangle two foreign languages, and explore some cities I’ve never been to before. If you’ll be at either of these events, let me know!

animation, events, npar, self-reference, VR

“Age of Sail” at the Annies and the VES Awards

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It’s not every week you have to fly down to LA twice, but what a great reason to do it. “Age of Sail” was nominated in a bunch of categories, and won Outstanding Production Design at the Annie Awards, and Outstanding Visual Effects in a Real-Time Project at the VES Awards.  I’m so grateful to have worked with this amazing team of artists, and and so proud of what we’ve accomplished together!

Jasmin Lai, Céline Desrumaux, Sikand Srinivas and Neth Nom at the Annie Awards.
John Kahrs, Kevin Dart, yours truly and Theresa Latzko at the VES Awards.
(Apparently I still don’t know how to keep a bow tie straight.)

animation, events, npar, self-reference, VR

more “Age of Sail” news

Wow, it’s been a busy few weeks since we launched “Age of Sail“!  Hard to keep track of all the news, but here are a few highlights…

It’s been nominated for four Annie Awards…

For the first time, the Annie Awards will honor animated VR productions. Vying for the prize are “Age of Sail” by Google Spotlight Stories and Broadreach Pictures; AtlasV’s “BattleScar”; “Crow: The Legend” by Baobab Studios; “MindPalace” by Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg GmbH; and Polyarc’s “Moss.”

In addition to the VR bid, Google Spotlight Stories’ “Age of Sail” came away with three other nominations, including character animation in an animated TV/broadcast production (Sikand Srinivas); character design in an animated TV/broadcast production (Bruno Mangyoku); and production design in an animated TV/broadcast production (Celine Desrumaux and Jasmin Lai).

Gnomon released the video of the making-of talk that John Kahrs and I did. (John’s part is not to be missed: a life lesson in thoughtful, personal filmmaking.)

Watch The Making of Google Spotlight Stories: ‘Age of Sail’ from Gnomon_School on www.twitch.tv

And AWN just ran a nice interview with me and my partner-in-crime, Chromosphere’s Theresa Latzko, about the art and tech challenges of the ocean, the look, and more.

Still reading?  Really?  Well, here’s some other nice press, about both VR and cinematic cuts:

 

animation, events, graphics, interactive, npar, VR

Age of Sail launches today!

The show we’ve been working on for more than a year is finally out in the world, in all its forms!  You can see it:
 

“Age of Sail” was directed by John Kahrs, and produced at Chromosphere, Evil Eye Pictures, and Google Spotlight Stories.  Working on this story, with this crew, has been an unforgettable experience. I’ll have lots more to say about it in future posts, but for now: enjoy the show!

animation, events, npar, VR

Coming to VIFF this weekend!

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This just in: I’m coming up to Vancouver this weekend for the Vancouver International Film Festival’s “VIFF Immersed” event. We’re showing Age of Sail (a Canadian premiere!) and Back to the Moon in VR.  I’ll also be doing a talk about both projects in the “New Realities in Storytelling” conference, Saturday September 29th from 3:30-4:15 in the Reliance Theatre at Emily Carr University.  Looks like there’ll be lots of other interesting VR-related talks happening all weekend!  Here’s the full conference program.  The VR exhibition will be running from Sunday to Tuesday in the “Hangar” building at the Centre for Digital Media. Tickets are available here.

animation, events, npar, self-reference, VR

Age of Sail premiering at the Venice Film Festival!

John Kahrs VR Short ‘Age of Sail’ Premiering at Venice Film Fest

But who’s that guy with the beard, and why does he keep blocking the screen?