Issue: Day 3 - SIGGRAPH 2007

VICON TALKS UP MO-CAP FILM FESTIVAL

SAN DIEGO - LA-based motion capture systems developer Vicon is launched the Vicon Film Festival: "A Celebration of All Things Motion Capture and Animation" at the show. The Vicon Film Festival is an international competition to find the most creative and entertaining use of a series of captured movements in a short animated movie. The grand prize is $10,000, and the competition will be open to original short films (between two and five minutes) using motion capture data provided via the Vicon Film Festival Website (www.vicon.com/filmfestival). 

Selected films will be posted on YouTube for public voting, and the top 10 entries will be submitted to an independent judging panel made up of industry experts, including ILM's Mike Sanders, USC School of Cinematic Arts' Eric Furie, Links Digiworks' Takashi Fukamoto, House of Moves' Gary Roberts, director/writer of Smile Chris Mais, and BBC Technology's Darren Waters. The winner will be announced in June of next year. Media sponsors for the competition include Post's sister publication Computer Graphics World. 

"With this contest we're making motion capture accessible to many artists who may have never had the opportunity to work with capture data before - and we look forward to exposing the next generation of film and games creatives to the flexibility of animating with motion capture," says Robin Pengelly, VP, entertainment division, Vicon.