Archive notice: This article was originally published on December 11, 2017. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Introductory words came from Prof. Michael Coldewey, holder of the VFX chair at the HFF, and Gert Zimmermann, Managing Director of filmtoolsConsults. High-calibre guests such as Prof. Dr Gordon Cheng (Chair of Cognitive Systems, Technical University of Munich), Dominik Zimmerle (Trixter) and Jan Fiedler (Pixomondo) were on site.
Here are the Robots
Prof. Dr Gordon Cheng is convinced that robots will be used in everyday life in the near future. In his talk, he explained to the highly interested audience how he and his team teach robots motor skills. They are also developing natural communication mechanisms for greater user-friendliness.
Making of “Spider-Man: Homecoming”
It continued with classic VFX work: Dominik Zimmerle, VFX Supervisor at Trixter, presented the work on the Marvel blockbuster “Spider-Man: Homecoming”. The two Trixter studios in Berlin and Munich contributed a total of 300 shots to the film and now have another Marvel star in their repertoire alongside Ant-Man, Iron-Man, Captain America and Guardians of the Galaxy.
Creature Pin-up
Even a Goblin King wants to be sexy! That is why Kiril Mirkov and Christian Leitner had well-known creatures pose in a pin-up calendar for their graduation project at the Film Academy Baden-Württemberg and presented their work at the Animation Meeting. Here you can see the Goblin King in action!
VFX from “Fast and Furious 8” & Screening VES Awards
Jan Fiedler is an Emmy Award winner and Senior VFX Producer at Pixomondo in Stuttgart. At the start, he showed Pixomondo’s making-of for the eighth instalment of the Fast and Furious series. He then picked out individual scenes and explained to the audience how they realised the shots. Afterwards, he presented a commission from National Geographics: For a live media production about the Pacific and its inhabitants at New York’s Times Square, Pixomondo created a photorealistic 3D underwater world.
At the end of his talk, a Visual Effects Society (VES) Best of Award screening took place for the first time as part of an Animation Meeting, as Jan Fiedler is a member of VES Germany. These included making-ofs of award-winning VFX and animation projects, including “The Jungle Book”, which received the VFX Oscar this year.
Panel Sessions
The panel sessions discussed, on the one hand, the situation of women in the animation sector and, on the other, how Germany established itself in VFX Hollywood productions. The guests in the first panel session were Katrin Baumer (Communications Specialist at Mediennetzwerk Bayern), Katja Wacker (Producer, Sunday Digital GmbH), Nina Göldner (VFX Producer, Pixomondo) and Sarah Neuner (Managing Director, LIGA_01). Everyone agreed that there are few women in senior positions in post-production. However, in recent years the number of enrolled female students in the field of animation and VFX has risen, which is also due to the many new educational offerings.
In the second panel, Prof. Michael Coldewey (CEO Trixter), Thomas Zauner (CEO Scanline), Domink Trimborn (Managing Director Rise South Visual Effects Studio) and Emmy Award winner Jan Fiedler (Pixomondo) talked about how they were able to gain a foothold in Hollywood. According to the panel guests, Germany has established itself well within the VFX industry, as the arrival of Rodeo FX in Munich also shows.
The Organisers
The Animation Meeting is organised by Filmtools Consult under the direction of Gert Zimmermann and in cooperation with the VFX chair at the HFF. Filmtools Consult has been bringing together the digital media production industry at events like this one since 2001. The HFF has been training future filmmakers since 1966. Since 2015, there has been the newly created professorship for VFX, headed by Prof. Michael Coldewey.
