Hey folks... Word has it that the word on FRANKENSTEIN being dead was premature and out right wrong. I apoligize. Apparently a couple of employees at ILM that were let go of in the post-PHANTOM MENACE fray mis-interpretated their reason for leaving. In addition to Rothwang's note about FRANKENSTEIN, I received other (off the record) confirmations that the project is getting ready to enter the 'animating' stage. I apoligize for getting all high and mighty about it, but this is a project that I care about seeing done well, because it represents another step in the 'growing up' of the type of stories Animated films can tell. I'm sick of Animation being considered as a genre for children, when it is merely a tool for storytelling. Well... before I set off again, let me turn you over to our resident evil genius in Germany... Rothwang (ps. Rothwang... send me over a Maria or two)

Oh yeah... And to all of those attending SIGGRAPH this year. I'd love to hear what's going on. That's the coolest conference every year I feel.

Hi Harry, this is a spy from Germany calling in. You can call me ROTHWANG.

I'm reporting from the 2nd "Film & Media eXchange" (FMX) in Stuttgart, an important gathering for all people working in the visual effects business. It's not a commercial trade show à la Siggraph, but a much smaller, more relaxed meeting with a lot of panels, workshops and lectures, stretching over five days. You know -- more of a "spiritual" thing. There are hosts and visitors from all over the world, and all the big companies are there: Digital Domain, ILM, Quantel, Avid, Discreet, SGI, Alias, you name them (the 3 latter ones are sponsoring this event, by the way). The show is organized by the Film Academy of Baden-Württemberg, one of Europe's leading film schools, which runs a truly great training facility for CGI artists in Ludwigsburg, near Stuttgart. (Hey suits, check it out, lot of ambitious talent there!)

There's a lot of stuff going on. Yesterday, for example, there have been (free!!) workshops focusing on the Maya 3D animation software, on Discreet high end compositing systems and Quantel's famous "Edit Box". Among others, Chris Wedge of Blue Sky Studios presented his making of the award-winning CGI short "Bunny", Henry LaBounta of Pacific Data Images told the audience how the VFX in "Forces of Nature" worked (... did they?), and Ed Hooks did an amusing "Acting for Animators" course.

Today (sunday 6th) I was lucky to visit a number of highly interesting panels:

First were Tom Bertino and Chris Kubsch from ILM: "All Digital Motion Pictures"

This conference promised to be one of the highlights of the event, and the promises have been kept. It was rumoured that ILM would show (and explain) a lot of effects for Episode 1 and The Mummy. The rumours were wrong. Bertino and Kubsch mainly focused on the ground-breaking character animation for "Mighty Joe Young" instead, and showed the evolution of the famous ape's first wireframe models to the final effects in the film. Another topic of the conference was full-length CG features and their future in the market. With "Toy Story" and "A Bug's Life", Pixar proved that there is an audience for this kind of film. And now, ILM, together with Universal Pictures, are about to release a competitor in fall 2000 - a project most of you have already heard of or read on AICN. I'm talking about the "CGI FRANKENSTEIN" project. Bertino (who is co-director) and Kubsch (who produces the feature) _exclusively_ showed large parts of the artwork, test animations, and animatics never seen before, and the small amount of hi-res test footage that has already been floating around in Hollywood and that sold the project to Universal. Despite all the negative rumours, the project is still alive and kicking and looks great. Pre-production has been finished after a lot of changes on the script and in the storyboard had been made in the past 12 months, and the animation itself is about to start in the next weeks (I hope they can match their schedule!). The animatics were of special interest. They were 2D cartoon sequences, made from the storyboard sketches. What the guys at ILM do is to scan in the drawings and then animate them with the well-known "AfterEffects" software. This kind of pre-production-work, named "Story Reel", gives a very good impression on how the final film will look, and on the pacing and impact of the scenes. A kind of animated storyboard. The few hi-res sequences that have already been rendered looked spectacular. With these, ILM will prove that CGI is not just suitable for cute children's films, but also for horror movies. The characters and artwork looked stunning and reminded more of the work that DreamWorks did on "Prince of Egypt" than traditional Disney characters. The "ILM FRANKENSTEIN", which is in fact still officially untitled despite the well-known content, promises to be a very interesting project, and I'm proud to have wittnessed the most extensive showing of footage for that film that has yet commenced. Originally, it was planned to include the famous werewolf (another Universal creature) in the film and have the Frankenstein monster and the werewolf fighting each other. Well, I'd really liked to have seen this more than any crappy Jason vs. Freddy battles because, you know, Frankenstein and the Wolfman are the REAL THING, but unfortunately, these plans have been skipped and the Wolfman most likely won't be in the movie. There are 17 artists working on the project right now within ILM, and the number will surely go up as soon as the main production will start.

Next up was Jay K. Redd, Sony Pictures Imageworks: "Breathing real life into a digital character"

--- Jay K. Redd, who worked at Sony Pictures Imageworks on projects like Starship Troopers and Contact, introduced a cool project to the audience that is named "Stuart Little". It's a lovely film based on a famous children's book and it features a digital mouse as a main character. The Columbia Pictures film, which starrs Geena Davis and the voice talents of Michael J. Fox for the main character and Gene Wilder for Stuart's nemesis, an evil cat, is scheduled for a summer 2000 release. Redd did an in-depth lecture on the animation of the main character, focusing on the fur, and, especially, the clothing. Cloth is very hard to do with 3D animation programs - packages like Maya do deliver tools for this, but the pre-programmed algorithms never quite do it, so Sony developed a bunch of hand-tailored tools for the animation of different cloth materials. The results came across perfectly: Stuart the mouse looks very cute in it's pyjamas and various other outfits. Stuart is animated very, very well (no motion capture -- all key frames) and blends smoothly with the real-world scenes. You can really see that Sony employs a lot of highly talented animators who love what they do, and it's very uplifting to see this. Kids will love this character, and even all "Jar Jar haters" of the older semesters will be very pleased with this character because it is in now way annoying, but very likable. The acting of the "human" players looked good as well. I predict this movie is going to be a _huge_ hit and one of the surprise successes in 2000, maybe the FX will even be oscar-worthy. The presentation Jay K. did was very entertaining and in-depth. Sony is halfway through with the animation, and I keep my fingers crossed for the 25 animators who are working on this right now.

The FMX in Stuttgart was a great event for all people in the film biz, local and world-wide, and especially for everyone involved with digital post. The event is annual, so I'm sure I'll be there again next year.