Siggraph Asia 2008 | Singapore
10 - 13 December 2008

Hello everybody!

10 December
Pixar's Renderman Course

I was at the first ever Siggraph Asia Conference last week!
The whole of the first day of the conference was spent at NUS Singapore for the Pixar Renderman Course!
Before the conference, there were only 25 seats to the Pixar's Renderman Course which I was hoping to attend.
Made my way down early in the morning and managed to get the last couple of tickets to the Renderman Course by Prof Malcolm Kesson!
Marcus and I attended the course together and learnt valuable stuff! Lucky me!

The Renderman course covers the concept behind using Pixar's Renderman, such as RIB files, RIB archives and the Renderman Shading Language [RSL].
We even had the fun of writing our own custom shader! I must say Pixar's Renderman is really powerful, it has a huge library of procedural textures in SLIM.
And the best part, the SLIM parameters are all able to be brought into Maya to animate!
Understand that the current version of Renderman for Maya [RFM] still has some inadequacies, hence I'm waiting for the release of Renderman 2!

Labels: conference, masterclass, rendering, shading

[Click to enlarge]

Big thanks to Ms Grace and Mr Kyle! :)

Labels: masterclass, school

Hi!

Mr Kyle Balda, an experienced animator who has worked on animated features at Pixar and ILM was in Singapore for the past week. During this time, he conducted an acting and animation workshop at NYP-SIDM. Some of my friends and I recently attended his masterclass at Gobelins in Paris just before this Singapore session, and we flew back to Singapore for his masterclass in Singapore. Despite that, I still learnt a great deal this second session!

Today is the last day of his workshops and I took the opportunity to clarify all my doubts on animation. Just to summarize, he is very generous, pleasant and patient when sharing his tips and tricks, and the best part is, he makes his animation techniques very easy to absorb and digest. For me, it's only after his masterclass that I know what is character animation (physicality vs acting & performance).

As with everything that I learnt, I will continuously put to use his teachings into my animation so that I will keep improving and I will not forget. I have a good chance to practice my character animation now because I am working on a short film production for the school right now and it's in its animation phase! Great! I really appreciate everything he taught us.

Had a photo-taking session at the end of the masterclass and hopefully I'd be able to get my hands on the photographs and I'll post them here. :D

I will be working on character animation tomorrow!

Labels: animation, masterclass, school

GOBELINS Summer school 2008 in Paris
Character Animation
From June 30th to July 11th, 2008
Find out more

Hello guys, I believe this will be my last post in Singapore before leaving for Paris to attend the Gobelins Summer School 2008!!

I'm very excited to meet people from all over the world with the common interest of animation, be it the lecturers, guest lecturers, or the other students attending this summer school. I'm even more thrilled to meet the students of Les Gobelins and to see their amazing work and how they work to achieve the result.

Given the numerous attractions in Paris, I believe this will be a very enriching trip in terms of exploring their art, culture, architecture, history and of course animation! :D

Now, I've got to do some preparation for the trip. I'll be back in Singapore a couple of weeks later! See you!

Labels: animation, masterclass, overseas, school