On Monday morning I sat down with Paul Debevec, this year’s Computer Animation Festival Chair, to find out what it takes to put together such a spectacular show. Paul works at the USC institute for Creative Technologies and is well known for his research on High Dynamic Range Imaging. I asked him why he decided to take on the huge responsibility of chairing the Computer Animation Festival. He said, “I had my first piece in the Computer Animation Festival in 1997 and have enjoyed attending the Computer Animation Festival for many years, so I wanted to give back to the community and make a great show for this year.”

I asked Paul how long he’s been attending SIGGRAPH and why he comes. His first SIGGRAPH was in 1994 and he comes for many of the same reasons other people attend: to witness the blend of science and art and to share in the sense of community that develops between the many disciplines involved in the computer graphics field. He said SIGGRAPH is like a “family photo” of what’s going on in the computer graphics community.

Paul began preparing for this year’s Computer Animation Festival in 2005. He put together a core team, including Sebastian Sylwan (Technology Director), Tomas Pereira (Animation Theater Producer), Carlye Archibeque (Assistant Producer), Samuel Lord Black (Minister of Information) and Maya Martinez (Outreach and Event Producer).

Preparations for this show began with an extensive outreach effort. Maya Martinez sent out thousands of emails to animators, artists, scientists and companies to submit their newest and best work to the show. This outreach resulted in a record 905 submissions, a 20% increase from last year.

In choosing the jury, Paul looked for people who would recognize innovative and excellent work in the areas of animated shorts, art, broadcast, cinematic, real time, research, visual effects and visualization. He wanted people who were involved in the creative process and were experts in at least two of the submission categories. To ensure international representation, he also wanted one juror from Europe and one from Asia.

Once the jury was selected and all the submissions received, the committee met at USC Institute for Creative Technologies for three and a half days. They used a Linux based jury system, developed by Samuel Lord Black (2005 Animation Festival Chair), for the selection process. The process included a touch pad voting system which made voting private so there would be eight independent minds involved in the jury process.

I asked Paul what the jury was looking for and he said, “We were looking for work that pushes the boundaries of computer graphics and has excellent production qualities. We also wanted a representation from all areas of computer graphics.”

I’ve always wondered whether the jury knows when a project is student work, and whether it makes any difference in how it’s viewed.  According to Paul,” The jury was aware when a piece was student work, but were given no instructions on whether this should make a difference.”

After three and a half days of viewing 905 works, the jury chose approximately 125 pieces to be included in the SIGGRAPH 2007 Computer Animation Festival, and what an amazing selection it is. The production quality and creativity of this year’s selection is mind boggling.

The Electronic Theater was shown at the San Diego Civic Theatre on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings from 7 -9 p.m. and on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon from 2 – 4 p.m. The Animation Theater was shown continuously in two rooms at the Convention Center from Sunday at 1p.m. until Thursday at 6 p.m.

The Electronic Theatre featured a lot of work from larger studios as well as a couple of student projects and some scientific visualization. The show was projected through two 18K Christie projectors which created an amazingly clear and vibrant image. The overall quality of the work in the Electronic Theater was pretty amazing, but a few pieces stood out and made a lasting impression on me.

For the past few years Blur Studio has had an animated short in the Electronic Theater or Animation Theater.  This year their short “A Gentlemen’s Duel” was one of my favorites. It had the perfect combination of humor, style and production quality. Another short that caught my attention was “En Tus Brazos”, by Francois-Xavier Goby, Edouard Jouret and Matthieu Landour. This was also the “Award of Excellence” winner. There were several examples of film visual effects work from the large studios as well as several humorous and well produced commercials. The visual effects breakdown of the birth scene in Children of Men, by Framestore CFC, was an amazing example of just how far computer graphics has come in the past few years. The folks at Framestore CFC were kind enough to breakdown the shot to show where reality ended and CG took over.

This year Sony was kind enough to provide their 4K projectors in both rooms for Animation Theater. The show was broken down into 30 - 60 minute segments which included 4K, Creativity, Storytelling, Games & FX, Madness, Science and Music. I managed to make time on Tuesday and Wednesday to take in the entire show and was glad I did. The quality of the work in this year’s Animation Theater shows that artists are taking advantage of the improvements in technology to create meaningful work in many genres.

SIGGRAPH’s Computer Animation festival is always the place to see great work that’s pushing the technical and creative boundaries of computer graphics. This year’s show was no exception. If you didn’t get a chance to see this year’s Electronic Theatre and Animation Theater while at the conference, I strongly recommend buying the 2007 SIGGRAPH Video Review, available at siggraph.org.