BFX Festival Thoughts and Update

Man, I feel like crap at the moment. Seem to have the flu and it's not helping with the deadline which I have left for my animation assignment. So, if my grammar and style of writing is really poor on this blog post, it's due to the fact I can hardly keep my head together.

Anyway, on Saturday morning I had returned back from the BFX festival, something which was the most terrifying experience of my life. For several reasons, one was the fact that most of the people that had went their were students or just graduates, from what I could see and the few people that I had  talked to. You'd think that this would be alright, as I can connect with them as I was a university student, but it was alright until they started talking about the technical side of the work. It scary and sad to see how much they knew about other stuff that I did.

Arrived on the first day of BFX Festival

Now as much as I'm focused as becoming an Animator, this festival really opened my mind to how, I may need to learn other skills of the pipeline of the VFX production. I may not need it, but I feel that it may help in the long run. This also helped me realise to where I am at the moment. Showing my work to other people really showed how far behind I am. This does make me feel annoyed to the choices I have made in the past but at the same time, fuels my passion even more to break into the industry.

ILM Willis, talks about the retrospective of how ILM began and evolved the industry

The BFX festival was a small field, before heading up to the next festival which I have booked for, London VFX festival, which is due to come this November. Now the only problem which I have at the moment, is networking, as I sometime feel quite intimidated to talking to new people that are more knowledgeable than me. I just hope that from now, that I could get my showreel up to scratch, but from the back of my mind, I know that I need more content to show.

Double Negative talks about The World's end VFX and Special Effects

The talks in the BFX festival was very interesting, even though most of them were skills that I wasn't using I.e using Crowd simulation, Digimattes, lighting, rendering and so on, much of which an Animator, doesn't really need to know. But it was useful, to how these would then connect to an animator later on in the production line.

MPC talks about Crowd simulation used in Lone Ranger and World War Z

The talk which I have found most fascinating and sad to have missed a masterclass was, Professor Stuart Sumida. He talked about anatomy as a Paleontologists and how by using these skills, pre-determined the way an animal would run, walk and so on. Not only did he help animators but also he helped; directors, designers and so on.

Professor Stuart talking about the creatures in Avatar compared to How to train a Dragon

I was really sad and annoyed to have missed his masterclass, due to the fact that it was not highlighted on the festival page, until I got there on the first day. He was so passionate on his work, and you could get the feeling that he felt so humble to have had the opportunity to work on many films titles, from different film studios throughout his career.  I really hope to meet him again. 

Anyway, I must get back to animating, and hopefully I'll be a lot better to talk a bit more about what happened during the BFX festival.