Tuesday 9 August 2011

SIGGRAPH Day 2

Today is going to be a light day. Thought I should go to one of my classes and get some work done.
This morning at 10:45 was the big Pixar presentation about their new short film, "La Luna." Which I did get to see last night and again this morning. Directed and written by Enrico Casarosa. He was there today talking about the production from inception to final cut. Based on his own life of living with his father and grandfather, whom wouldn't talk to each other but would talk to him. Other sources of inspiration were early 20s cartoons in Italy. As well as brutish fisherman from that same era.

The struggles they faced in getting the right voices, or in this case the right gibberish sounds, were of particular interest. The plethora of actors and performers that they went through was just amazing.
A genuinely original short film from Pixar. Can always count on them to deliver!

I popped into class after and Russ was wondering why I was there and not at SIGGRAPH. Haha. Told him I wanted to pop in for a critique of my reel so I can move ahead. So I did and he let me head back to the events. Just in time for DreamWorks presentation on the final fight sequence in Kung Fu panda 2.

I think I'll start off with the color theory behind this sequence. The complexity and triumphs that they achieved in maintaining the duality theme of Yin and Yang in this sequence was amazing. Maintaining a balance between the two main and only colors was so fascinating. These colors being gold for the furious five and red for the peacock and his armies. How they utilized just these two colors to draw attention to the fight sequences. A sea of red wolves and where Po and the others were they used golf lighting to illuminate them, so we can identify and find them. Also how Po catches the cannon balls that burn red but then change to gold when he throws them back. All these subtle light changes help to reinforce the color theme in a simple bicolor palette.

Beyond color, they exemplified the duality theme in creating elements that were either fire based or water based. The peacocks armies were designed in such a way that they looked like a lava flow. And the end if the sequence with Po out on the water, showed a strike contrast to the fire elements of the army. Also the saturation if the colors were in stark contrast as well. The good guys were brightly saturated and the bad guys were dull opposites.

Almost all the events so far have been about creating amazing special effects. Lets face it fx are cool and hot! Oxymoron alert. Really makes me want to get into studying dynamics and Sims. Something I'll have to practice :).

After the Kung Fu Panda presentation, I grabbed some Starbucks then finally made my way down to the Exhibition booths. So many cool companies were out to show me their stuff! After making one circuit, I thought I'd take a break and head over to the 3D room before the screenings ended. I came in the middle of the Lion King. Boy did that bring me back to being 7 years old, when my Aunt and Uncle took me to see it in Edmonton. And I was glad that I was able to catch seeing La Luna in 3D, so I could see what Enrico was talking about when he said they had to blur some glow textures for the 3D version. Then the Hubble presentation in 3D was amazing, watching stars and galactic dust fly by me was awesome! After those screenings, I took another circuit around the Exhibition. Came across NIVIDA's booth where they were doing demos with their new GPU drivers. Running real-time water sims in OpenGL, with tweaking! Man the computing power gets better and better every year!

Well that about wraps up Day 2! I'm going early tomorrow for Day 3, to get in line for posters form Pixar!!!

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