Fred Patten reviews the latest anime releases including: Harlock Saga, Angel Links, Assemble Insert, Hermes: Winds of Love and Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water.
The enormous Orlando convention center. Photo by and © Linda Ewing.
The computer graphics industry's annual get-together is over. The nerds hit Florida, talked about their thing, and left.
Well, not exactly...
SIGGRAPH may well be the industry's annual get-together, but simple, predictable, and forgettable, it is not. It's big, very big. SIGGRAPH hits its attendees with a creative and commercial force beyond anything a first-timer would expect. It's a show of talent, skill, technology, art and above all, imagination. It's the most magical event in computer graphics.
Destination: Florida
The sunshine state of Florida played host to this year's SIGGRAPH. The Orange County Convention Center in Orlando--the largest convention center in America--was perfectly suited to host SIGGRAPH's 32,000 attendees.
The Exhibition
SIGGRAPH's exhibition is huge. Over 300 software companies, schools and colleges, visual effects houses and many other companies, such as book publishers, filled two halls with colorful and artistic booths. The atmosphere in the exhibition halls was intangible; the sense of community was staggering.
The SGI and Alias booths proved to be most popular, with Softimage, Newtek and Kinetix close behind. Hundreds flocked to demonstrations of their flagship and new products. Silicon Graphics had artists from Industrial Light + Magic and Digital Domain at their booth talking about work they produced for recent feature films. Two such talks that I attended and enjoyed were on Small Soldiers and Titanic.
Side Effects Software had the same idea. Effects artists were giving presentations on how Houdini helped them in productions like Armageddon, Godzilla and Dr. Dolittle. Side Effects hosted speakers from companies like Vision Art, Blue Sky|VIFX, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and Centropolis Effects who spoke about the incredible particle system Houdini boasts and how invaluable it was in their productions.
Photo courtesy of SIGGRAPH. © 1998 Oscar & Associates.
To the disappointment of most SIGGRAPH-goers, companies seemed extremely stingy with giving away freebies this year! Instead of filling attendee's bags with T-shirts, they seemed much more pressed on giving away literature. Literature is fantastic, but so are free T-shirts. Caligari, the producers of TrueSpace, seemed to be very popular with the crowds. Does this surprise you when you hear they were giving away T-shirts?!?
On a slightly more serious note, Blue Sky|VIFX had a winner with their mini-golf course. For those convention-goers who got too stressed from the pressures of falling victim to some of the computer graphics industries' most intense marketing forces, Blue Sky|VIFX were offering the chance to unwind with a game of mini-golf with the stars. The good old Alien was there from Alien: Resurrection, along with a few other "stars" that the company has helped bring to the screen.
When it really got to be too much, massage therapists were right outside the exhibition hall to help relieve attendees' stress and tension. They just thought of everything, didn't they?!
Photo courtesy of SIGGRAPH. © 1998 Oscar & Associates.
The Electronic Theater
This was one of the best events at SIGGRAPH. Kicking off with several interactive games, the Electronic Theater showcased some of the most awe inspiring computer graphics ever produced.
The entire audience was first to participate in a number of interactive games using a small bat-like rod with green and red foil on either side. By showing the red side, one action would happen, by showing the green, another would happen. Only by working together could the audience produce the desired action. In one game, a maze was projected onto the screen, and the object was to get the SIGGRAPH guy, the small character on the SIGGRAPH logo, from one end to the other. One half of the audience controlled the up/down movements of the character (i.e. green for up, red for down) and the other half controlled the right/left movements. It was amazing to see so many people work together so well to obtain a common goal.
After several games, some of which were quite hilarious (the cat and dog game springs to mind - if you were there you'll know what I mean, if not, maybe they'll show it again next year!), the Theater began. The Electronic Theater presents a number of clips from the year's best movies, TV shows, commercials and amateur films.
One of the most magical offerings was Digital Domain's Titanic. It began with a scene (the opening shot on Southampton dock - just after the transition) gradually building up, layer by layer: the model ship, the digital water, the characters, etc. Then the whole thing came to life. The audience cheered well into the next clip. This was, without a doubt, the highlight of the show for me.
Antz. © DreamWorks LLC.
DreamWorks' and PDI's soon to be released Antz was previewed in the Theater as well. If the clip was anything to go by, then we are in for a treat when the movie is released. Other films that proved to be big hits were Bingo (Chris Landreth's superb flick created with Maya), Geri's Game (Pixar's Oscar winning flick - need I say any more?), and Small Soldiers (as if you haven't already heard of that movie!). However, one or two not-so-famous flicks caught my eye as well. The Smell of Horror is a very impressive dark, film noir-like flick and involves a strange man, Flip, and his dog, in search of dangerous fumes. This film was the rage of the Theater.
Too Big For One Pair Of Eyes
I can't possibly convey to you the sheer size of SIGGRAPH in this article. I haven't touched on the art galleries, courses and seminars, papers and panels, or the interactive dance club and other social events that went on during the week. The only way to really get an idea of what SIGGRAPH is like, is to go and experience it yourself.
Next year I'll see you all in California for SIGGRAPH `99 (or Si99raph if you want to go by the logo), where Los Angeles is the destination and boy, am I glad. I don't think I could take more of the Florida humidity! I hope that this article has given an idea of what SIGGRAPH `98 was like, and that some of those who read it, will be present at SIGGRAPH `99. I can guarantee, you won't regret going.
Paul Younghusband is editor-in-chief of Visual Magic Magazine, a monthly publication focusing on the 3-D graphics and digital effects industries. You can reach Paul by e-mail at paul@visualmagic.awn.com.
