Graphic design and animation morph into a single artform in the best of recent International CGI shorts – narratives, ads, music videos – as selected from a 1000 entries at the prestigious SIGGRAPH Asia Festival.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2009
SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 Highlights #1 – International Showcase
Established in the USA more than 30 years ago, SIGGRAPH (short for Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques) saw the wave of CG animation approaching long before most of us even saw a ripple. SIGGRAPH is now one of the world's largest and most important gatherings of the digerati. The annual SIGGRAPH conference brings together innovators, creative researchers, producers, proactive artists, energetic executives and adventurous engineers. SIGGRAPH's premiere event is its Computer Animation Festival (CAF), which showcases the very best CG animated works, whether they are short films, ads, music videos or experimental software demos.
In the lead-up to SIGGRAPH Asia 2008, held in Singapore, I was invited to Seoul to sit on a jury that would consider nearly 1000 entries and select the works to appear in the SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 CAF. From this privileged vantage point I've put together this comprehensive double collection of the top contenders, along with a few favourites of mine, notably the amazing Wizard of OS: The Fish Incident, which missed the jury consensus.
Wonderfully diverse, the International Showcase features some remarkable narrative films, such as Monsieur Cok, and This Way Up by the indefatigable Smith & Foulkes working out of the London studio Nexus. There is also an array of audaciously conceived and realised ads and music videos. — MT