Animation Smash at L.A. Film School

The Animation Smash was a tremendous success, filled with speakers from the animation industry, explosive contests, and an excellent opportunity to learn about the newest advances in computer animation technology. Among the guest speakers at the event were the following.

CONCEPT ARTIST FOR IRON MAN 3: JUSTIN GOBY FIELDS

Kicking off Animation Smash was a presentation in our Main Theatre by leading concept artist, Justin Goby Fields, who has worked on such projects as Iron Man 3, Jupiter Ascending, and more. Justin imparted his knowledge about getting involved in the animation industry and expressed that his rise in the business is due to his artistic ambition and motivation to succeed. Showcasing examples of his work on our 4K screen, attendees were greeted by high-res work that Justin has created for various feature films. After the presentation, Justin fielded questions from the audience and provided insights that helped him gain traction professionally and personally through the years.

CHAOS GROUP VRAY WEBINAR
During our Chaos Group VRAY Webinar, held in our Private Screening Room, guests were greeted by a virtual presentation of VRay, an immensely powerful rendering and shading software system. The Webinar covered details including lighting, shading, and using the right technique and workflow for each project.

TOON BOOM BOOTCAMP – with DISNEY STORYBOARD ARTIST: KATENEH VAHDANI

Kataneh, a storyboard artist with Disney, stopped by for a presentation of Toon Boom, a popular computer animation software package available to Animation & VFX students. During the event, she provided our attendees with insights on how to maximize time and perfect production schedules, ensuring the best quality product using Toon Boom’s variety of tools!

MIKE RILEY FROM ADOBE

Mike Riley presented a variety of new features included in Adobe’s latest release of their Creative Cloud software suite. Showcased in our Animation Lab, he covered tools used in Photoshop CC, After Effects CC, and more that make creating and editing quality animation and visual effects a streamlined process.

“SPEED SCULPTING” BY DAMIAN SZEIBERT

Damian Szeibert, one of our luminous instructors, and a member of the Pixelogic dev team, showcased the power and speed of the ZBrush animation software. Coupled with Wacom Cintiq displays, event attendees sculpted their own digital creations while watching Damian generate a creature in mere minutes. Simultaneously, a speed-sculpting contest took place, and students were instructed to create a monster of their choice in either a week-long sculpt, or a two-hour-long speed sculpting competition. The time constraints were the perfect demonstration of the time crunch in working animation houses.

TOON BOOM HARMONY DEMONSTRATION DISNEY ARTIST: JASON BIERUT
Jason Bierut, technical director at Disney Animation Studios, gave students and attendees an in-depth demonstration of the powerful tools available to Toon Boom Harmony users. He took considerable time to answer questions from the audience, and walked users scene-by-scene through graphics-intensive animated moments.

RYAN KINGSLIEN: UARTSY/ZBRUSH WORKSHOP
Ryan, an accomplished ZBrush modeler whose work is well regarded and published worldwide, took attendees on a tour through the digital reconstruction of physical anatomy, demonstrating the key to modeling realistic faces and bodies using ZBrush software.

ZBRUSH LIVE JUDGING DAMIAN SZEIBERT
During this event, attendees were greeted by Damian Szeibert and two of his colleagues from the ZBrush development team. Together, they went through each contest submission during the sculpting challenge from the previous day, and provided invaluable feedback to the artists, presenting solutions and workflow possibilities to each individual for the betterment of their expertise.

“UNREAL” ROB SILVA
Rob, one of our Animation & VFX instructors, walked attendees through his latest project, a computer game created in the latest Unreal Engine, a game engine made by Epic Games. Speaking with a captivated audience in our Animation Lab, Rob discussed the stages of development for gaming, from concepting to design, animation and lighting to level and mission design. His insights into indie development shed light on how to get involved in the independent game business.

EVAN WAILOO FROM THE FOUNDRY (NUKE SOFTWARE)
During this event, Evan Wailoo wowed attendees in our Animation Lab with ways to create stunning compositing masterpieces quickly using the powerful tools available in the latest version of Nuke. While working at The Foundry, Evan Wailoo has picked up tips and tricks for getting the best results using these software suites, and he was more than happy to distribute these ideas to our attendees.

“GREEN SCREEN” ROBERT ROWLES
Robert Rowles, one of our faculty and an accomplished VFX artist who has worked on titles including The Hunger Games and The Hobbit, went over the production process of using a green screen. Utilizing a hands-on approach, Robert used volunteers to demonstrate different green screen techniques and had a Canon C100 camera set up to showcase the flexibility of different green screen solutions to productions.

AWARDS CEREMONY
Our awards ceremony celebrated the accomplishments of our contestants, and the generosity of our guest speakers for imparting their knowledge with us. Contest winners went home with a variety of prizes, including access to the CTN Expo, a huge annual animation event in California.

3D PRE-VIS LAYOUT HOCK WONG – DREAMWORKS/SONY
To cap off the event, Hock Wong, whose illustrious career contains such milestones as working for SNK, Sony, and Dreamworks, discussed the latest trend in digital cinema: Pre-Visualization. By playing back scenes of films he has worked on previously including The Croods, Wong illustrated the process of pre-vis as a way to pre-determine the overal layout, camera, and events of each digital sequence. He went into great depth, discussing how live-action films are now commonly pre-visualized by companies including The Third Floor and others, and that it is a trend worth watching as our Animation & VFX students enter the workplace.

Special thanks to everyone who attended this year’s Animation Smash!