Supernatural presents… Digital Dreams Part Two March 26, 2008

Continuing on from Supernatural’s previous lectures exploring the development of visual effects and computer animation, this next installment introduces lecturers from a broader spectrum of disciplines within digital creativity to include not only visual effects in film, television and advertising but also the computer games industry and product design.

The speakers for this session are Scott Farrar, Richard Seymour, Frank Kitson, Duncan McWilliam, Henrik Wann Jensen and Mark Petit.

Scott Farrar joined Industrial Light & Magic in 1981 as a camera operator on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. In 1985, Farrar received an Academy Award® for Best Visual Effects for his work on Cocoon, and two years later he was promoted to Visual Effects Supervisor for Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Farrar’s ability to carry out the vision of filmmakers has earned him several additional honors including Oscar® nominations for Backdraft in 1991 and A.I. Artificial Intelligence in 2001. On A.I. Artificial Intelligence, ILM created the first real-time interactive on-set visualization process allowing filmmakers to place actors in virtual sets providing complete freedom with camera moves, earning Farrar a British Academy Award nomination for best achievement in visual effects. As a member of the DGA, Farrar’s futuristic environments in Minority Report earned him another British Academy Award nomination. He has been nominated for Best Visual Effects for his work on The Chronicles of Narnia.

Prior to coming to ILM, Farrar worked as a freelance cameraman in the LA area. In 1975, he was invited to visit the set of the then unknown “Star Wars” and saw the first motion control system in action. Inspired by what he saw, he began work for Robert Abel and Associates, and eventually for Doug Trumble working on Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

His staggering film credits also include Supervising roles in Star Wars- Episode 1: the Phantom Menace, The Mummy, Deep Impact, Men in Black, Die Hard 2, Back to the Future - Parts II and III, Tears of the Sun, The Haunting, Peter Pan, and most recently on Michael Bay's Transformers.

Richard Seymour is one of Europe's best-known product designers, Richard trained initially as a graphic designer and illustrator, his career taking him from book and record-sleeve design , through advertising and film production design to a comanding position on the international stage with Seymourpowell (a company he founded with Dick Powell in 1984), now regarded as one of the world's leading Product Design consultancies.

Their clients include the Ford Motor company, Nokia, Guinness, Tefal, Casio, Tumi and Unilever. Richard is a trustee of the Design Museum in London, a Past-President of D&AD and Consultant Design Director to Lever Faberge in London and New York.

Frank Kitson was born in Toronto, Canada, and had an interest in art and computers from an early age. In the early ninetes he branched out by creating his own company to do computer design.

He then built up an impressive resume by working for companies such as Alias Wavefront, Cinesite and the Moving Picture Company.

From 2001 he has been a CG Supervisor at Electronic Arts (EA) taking on several roles including spearheading the development of an animation system based on naturalistic human movement.

In December 2007 he joined Sony Computer Entertainment Europe as an Art Director focusing on the style and ‘look’ development for a Playstation3 next gen title Eight Days

Duncan McWilliam has worked in 3D effects and animation for seven years at various facilities around Soho and is presently a VFX supervisor at MPC, voted this year's top facility. Having recently spent time working on Brett Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand, at MPC, Duncan has taken top end film production techniques and squeezed them into a commercials pipeline, most notably MPC's Sony Paint, making use of Scanline AG's flowline for simulation of fluid fireworks.

Duncan has recently worked closely with Johnathon Glazer, Richard Loncraine and Frederick Bond in order to help advise and direct the CG within their adverts. With experience across both film and comercials he advises clients on the fastest, most cost effective and best technical route to achieve a Director’s vision. He also acts as an interface between Client, Agency, Production and the 3D team; in this position Duncan is familiar with the benefit of implementing new technoligies offset against the practicalities of delivering work within very tight deadlines.

Henrik Wann Jensen is an Associate Professor at UCSD following three years as a Research Associate at Stanford University. Before Stanford, he was a post-doctoral researcher in the graphics group at MIT, and between 1996-98, a research scientist in the industry working on visual effects software. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Technical University of Denmark in 1996.

He has lectured on the subject to computer graphics to artists at major digital-effects companies including Sony Imageworks, Disney, Pixar, and Industrial Light & Magic. His work has been widely profiled in international media.

In 2004, Professor Jensen received an Academy Award (Technical Achievement Award) from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for pioneering research in rendering translucent materials. He also became a Sloan Fellow and was selected as one of the top 10 scientists in 2004 by Popular Science magazine.

Marc Petit has 20 years experience in management and technology and leads Autodesk Media & Entertainment as Senior Vice President. In his current role, Petit manages the Media & Entertainment division and guides the development and marketing of Autodesk’s leading 2D systems and 3D animation software solutions, including Autodesk Inferno, Flame, Smoke, Lustre,Toxik, 3ds Max, Maya, MotionBuilder, Mudbox and FBX.

He launched his career with French 3D software pioneer Thomson Digital Image (TDI) in 1987.

From TDI, Marc joined Softimage in 1991, and helped the then-fledgling company reach critical mass in Europe. In 1996, he moved to Montreal to serve as Softimage’s Vice President of 3D Products before joining Autodesk in 2002.
In collaboration with Supernatural
Sponsored by Autodesk nVIDIA,EOS and Escape Studios

Tate Modern Starr Auditorium
£8 (£6 concessions), booking recommended

Official Website: http://www.supernaturalstudios.com/education.html