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MillimeterAnimation Evolution
Jul 1, 2008 10:00 AM, By Kristinha M. Anding
Students change the course of the Siggraph Computer Animation Festival.
Siggraph 2008's Computer Animation Festival is undergoing an expansion this year, and crucial to this evolution is the new blood brought by student animators. Indeed, says Entertainment Director Jill Smolin, 10 of the 15 shorts selected for the festival's awards ceremony represent student work, and the festival's two jury panels chose numerous other student pieces for screening in the general Competition Screenings as well.
“Student work is incredibly inspiring,” Smolin says. “We received pieces from all over the planet this year, and the diversity of the work is truly remarkable. Students push all kinds of envelopes, playing with dimension and color, with tone and story.”
I recently spoke with three of the U.S.-based student animators who passed muster with the 2008 Competition Screening's highly selective juries — which included professional artists, animators, scientists, and technologists. The student work ranges from the innocent to the darkly humorous, but each piece affords a glimpse into animation's next generation.
Carolyn Anderson-Vale strove to capture childhood innocence in BoxRacer, for which she used Autodesk Maya and Pixar RenderMan.
Carolyn Vale
BoxRacer
Carolyn Vale is aware that her future is wide open — and she is open to it.
“I can't wait to just sop up information, to learn more about subtle animation, acting, and getting the performance down,” says the newly minted junior animator at Sony Pictures Imageworks.
Landing this prized job and seeing her thesis project, BoxRacer, get accepted into Siggraph's Competition Screenings has been the reward at the end of a tough year for the recent graduate of Sarasota, Fla.-based Ringling College of Art and Design, who dealt with both a car accident and the death of her grandmother during the last 12 months. She dedicated the short to her grandmother.
But BoxRacer reflects none of the hardship she recently endured. The piece — portraying a brother and sister's fast-paced race in cardboard boxes down a seemingly endless stairwell — is instead filled with the sweetness and universal childhood innocence that Vale says she consistently aspires to in her animation.
“I like to do stories that are close to childhood, things that a lot of people can relate to,” she says, noting that her own brother and sister used to race downstairs on pillowcases in their three-story Virginia townhouse. She explains that she opted for boxes over pillowcases in her short because animating cloth would have been “just too much for senior year.”
She tackled the challenge of facial animation head-on, however, creating characters who maintain subtle expressions that clearly illustrate their emotions throughout the short's speedy pursuit. “Subtle animation has always been a challenge for me,” Vale says. “It was definitely a challenge to get the facial expression right. I think I did the scene with the dialogue three times, and getting the emotions to come across was hard.”
Another difficulty was communicating the proper perspective to the audience as the characters hurtle around bends and down many flights of stairs. “There are supposed to be seven floors, so [I had to make it so] you wouldn't get lost, giving you a feel for what floor they were on and whether they were going down the building rather than left, right, or up,” she says.
Vale used Autodesk Maya and Pixar RenderMan on HP workstations when creating the short.
“It's been an incredible, hectic year, but at the end, everything's just wonderful,” says the grateful grad, who also just married her college sweetheart. “I worked hard for three years and finished my thesis, and then I got this job. It just feels really great.”
