Last weekend, VFS Digital Design hosted an Interaction12 IxDA Redux event at the Main Theatre. The event was based on International Interaction12 Conference featured speakers Scott Nazarian (Frog Design), Mike Kruzeniski (Microsoft), and Ryan Betts (Adobe) and attendee Haig Armen, along with videos by Adrian Westaway (Vitamins) and Angel Anderson.

VFS sent students David Calderon, Skylar Lange, and Jeff Chen, and Digital Design’s OOMPH has gathered their impressions. ”Not only did it allow me to stop thinking about my final project for a little bit,” Jeff writes, “but it also enabled me to see what we are learning in school from a broader point of view.”

Read lots more about it at OOMPH, the VFS Digital Design community.

Last month, Vancouver Film School offered aspiring animators in Mexico the opportunity to experience VFS for themselves, through an Animation Intensive at Tecnolόgico de Monterrey . This five-day workshop, led by our own faculty of industry professionals, offered a taste of VFS’s Classical Animation and Digital Character Animation programs.

The students were exposed to animation fundamentals and shown ways to apply them in traditional and digital environments while learning some incredible new tools and exercises that will help them grow their skills and expertise. We were thrilled to be able to bring this particular opportunity to Mexico for the first time and the students seemed pretty happy to have us as well – the program sold out! We also received some very positive feedback about the event from some of the students who attended.

“It was a great experience,” said Guillermo Campos, who told us that he learned a lot and was shown aspects of animation that he had never taken into account before. “This will now make it easier for me to improve my animation skills,” he said.

Joel Hernández told us that the experience was really useful – not only the technical side but the artistic aspect as well. “The professors were really prepared and have the experience necessary to provide us with helpful feedback,” he shared.

Check out the photos below to see the students in action!

Learn more about our 2012 Summer Intensives beginning in July.

Diablo III, one of the most anticipated – okay, quite possibly the most anticipated – games of the year finally landed at midnight, after over a decade of development. Early buzz is positive for Blizzard’s action RPG – with some even proposing that it’s a crucial release for the entire industry.

The Lead Sound Designer on Diablo III is none other than Sound Design for Visual Media graduate Joseph Lawrence, so when you play the game be sure to open your ears. Joseph also worked on Diablo II. How’s that for continuity?

Last week, Destructoid posted an amazingly in-depth series of interviews with the Diablo III sound team, including Joseph. And if that isn’t enough, how about this hour-long panel from BlizzCon 2011? It includes a behind-the-scenes featurette about the game’s audio as well as Joseph addressing the audience beginning around the 8:36 mark:

Joseph wasn’t the only VFS grad to contribute to the game. Digital Character Animation‘s John Miller was an Environment Artist, and here’s a blog post from way back in 2008 touching on the contributions of two 3D Animation & Visual Effects alumni!

And if you can swing it, that road is to the French Riviera.

That’s why two groups of Film Production grads are taking their films to Cannes this month, to participate in the Short Film Corner – a schmoozing free-for-all that hopefully means getting to shake the right hands at the right time. These grads forged a creative network in their year at VFS – now it’s time to go overseas.

Himmat Sarkaria, Director of Like Smoke, will be making the trip with Producer Jose Hiriart. ”It’s a great opportunity to network globally,” Himmat says. “The Short Film Corner is the best platform to meet global distributors and producers.”

“Getting a distribution deal is certainly our top priority but the experience and the opportunity to learn firsthand how the global market works is amazing itself.”

“It’s kind of like job hunting,” Film Production alum and producer Jake Warren recently told the Bellingham Herald. With three other students, including director Leigh O’Neill and two others, Jake’s bringing his film Mr. Lamaze’s Dire Love to the Short Film Corner.

But it’s more than just a networking event. The experience itself is unlike anything else.

“I’m feeling incredibly excited right now about this trip,” Jake told us last week before boarding his flight. “I’ve been stressing for the past month about getting everything in order, and it’s all pulling together really nicely, which has allowed me to finally take in the fact that we’re going to Cannes.”

“The whole concept is definitely overwhelming, and I don’t think it will actually sink in until we are standing in the Palais.”

Himmat agrees. “It’s Cannes. The whole experience of attending a festival of this magnitude will be a lifetime experience. We’re somewhat nervous but we also are very excited and very grateful for this opportunity.”

“Our class became so close over the year,” Jake says. “It’s one thing to be going to Cannes, but getting to go with a group of your friends, who happen to be incredibly talented artists, just makes it an experience of a lifetime. It’s my first trip to Europe, and I’m overjoyed to be spending it with this group of friends!”

We’ll be checking in throughout the festival to see what these two groups of grads are doing to make the most of their time in France. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for regular updates!

Like Smoke Official Site
Mr. Lamaze’s Dire Love Official Site

Dark Shadows

Several 3D Animation & Visual Effects alumni were involved in realizing Burton’s vision for Dark Shadows, working as far afield as MPC in London and Method Studios here in Vancouver. They include:

CG Supervisor Dan Mayer
Senior Compositor Christine Peterson
Compositor Farhad Mohasseb
Visual Effects Artist Klaus Skovbo.

Well done, guys!

Guest Post By Lynn Sternberger

This past Monday, Emmy nominee and Writer’s Guild of America award winner, Larry Kaplow welcomed an audience of VFS students from the Writing for Film & Television program. For two hours, he entertained and enlightened us, charting his hard-won ascent from poetry student to production assistant on the TV series Clueless to a much sought-after break into the writers’ room with Family Law, doing research for Oscar-winning writer/producer Paul Haggis. To land his position on the long-running TV series House, Mr. Kaplow spent a month researching obscure medical cases before meeting with showrunner David Shore, a friend and mentor.

From there, Mr. Kaplow segued into a candid (and often darkly comic) exploration of how he incorporates his deeply personal life experiences into his writing. He calls his work “revelation,” mining the darker sides of his self, and illustrated the emotional heart of his storylines with clips from several episodes of House. Always emphasizing that the success of dramatic writing hinges on its life or death emotional stakes, Larry shared several of his tools for “breaking” a story from conception to writing pages, and tying each episode’s storylines to an overarching theme.

Now writing for the new TV series Body of Proof, Mr. Kaplow encouraged all in attendance to revel in the work they have chosen, despite its difficulties. He shared that TV is written by a “community of people who truly, truly care about what they do.” After answering audience questions about his own writing process (it involves wearing construction boots!) and what it’s like inside a writers’ room, it was clear Mr. Kaplow had made a strong impression.

Speaking with my fellow writers after the event, we appreciated Larry’s multi-pronged presentation – part personal journey, part business advice, and part inspiration to continue doing what we love (and to do it better and better). While we each have our own version of wearing construction boots to get down to the mental labour of writing, we can all use the insight that Mr. Kaplow offered. Plus, he’s a pretty funny guy.

Thanks, Lynn and thanks to Larry Kaplow for offering his time and inspiring our students!

On Saturday, May 12, VFS Digital Design will host IxDA Vancouver’s Interaction12 Redux, a half-day mini-conference with speakers and discussions about interaction design, industry trends, inspiration, and ideas.

As Presenting Partner for the event, VFS welcomes local designers to the VFS Main Theatre for a lineup that includes Scott Nazarian (Frog Design), Mike Kruzeniski (Microsoft), and Ryan Betts (Adobe). The event follows the full Interaction12 conference in Dublin, so if you missed it in February, IxDA’s got your back!

We’re working with IxDA as part of our ongoing commitment to support the design community in Vancouver and beyond. For a small group of outstanding Digital Design students, it also means the chance to attend Interaction12 Redux. We’ll have a report from one of them next week, so stay tuned.

Want to know more about Interaction12 Redux? Get all the details right here. If you’ve already got tickets, we’ll see you at VFS on Saturday!

Via oomph, the VFS Digital Design community

By Alessio Mellina 

Students from the Sound Design for Visual Media program had the incredible opportunity to hear an exclusive lecture from Rob Blake about the sound of the best-selling title, Mass Effect 3. With 9 years of experience in the field and previous employment within the film industry, Rob has been Audio Lead at BioWare since the second installment of the franchise, Mass Effect 2. He was able to share with us a very insightful speech on each and every sound aspect of the game.

Behind the Scenes 

We were first presented with the massive amount of work that a major game like Mass Effect requires. The 15 people on the audio team were in charge of managing a total of 12,500 sound effects, 40,000 lines of speech and 3 hours of new music. In order to deal with a workload of such magnitude, Rob explained how each team member was assigned one or more audio components, which in the case of this game was ambiance, level events, cut-scenes, in-game and conversation speech, combat sounds, foley, interactive objects, creature sounds and music.

During the lecture, Rob went into detail about each of the audio components, covering all of the various considerations and problematics involved in each scenario. It was not just a frontal lecture though, as he also shared with us with some of the design challenges he and his team faced during production and asked us how we would approach them. Since Rob was Audio Lead on different iterations of the game, he stressed the importance of future-proof design choices, meaning that each solution needs to be evaluated in all of its consequences, as it may cause unexpected problems further down the line.

In the later part of the lecture, we were able to take a look at how sounds are directly hooked into the game and how events and parameters can be manipulated in real time while a development version of the game is running. In order to do this, Rob showed us Audiokinetic Wwise, a powerful authoring tool used for sound implementation in Mass Effect 3. Wwise is a reference software in the game industry and Sound Design students are quite familiar with it as it is widely used throughout the Game Audio course.

Industry Hints and Tips 

To conclude his day-long lecture, Rob was kind enough to share with us some valuable tips regarding how to break into the game industry. He explained to us the the do’s and don’ts regarding resumes and cover letters and stated the importance of using demo reels to showcase both skills and versatility, a talent much appreciated in the industry.

Alessio Mellina is currently enrolled in Vancouver Film School’s Sound Design for Visual Media program. 

The Avengers assemble today in North America after a strong international release, weeks of great reviews, and months of fan buzz.

For us? Apart from being big Marvel and Joss Whedon fans here at the VFS Blog, we’re also looking forward to seeing the work of Makeup Design for Film & Television grad Jackie Adamson on the big screen. She worked as a makeup artist on Avengers and had the opportunity to do it alongside veteran department head John Blake.

Since graduating in December 2010, Jackie’s done all kinds of stuff: on top of Avengers, she worked on Cleveland, I Love You and Fun Size, and is a full member of the Ohio IATSE Union – a big deal for a working makeup artist. Her IMDB profile will be worth keeping an eye on.

As for other programs’ grads on Avengers, they’re well into the double digits, including industry vets like 3D Animation & Visual Effects alumni Aaron Gilman (Animation Supervisor), Stephen King (Lead Animator), and Nicholas Markel (Previsualization Supervisor), working out of companies like Weta Digital, ILM, Digital Domain, and Third Floor. Here’s more:

Louis Cox, Camera Technical Director
Andrew Park, Animator
Roland Vallet, Animator
Daphne De Jesus, Senior Digital Paint Artist
Chrystia Siolkowsky, Roto Artist
Henri Tan, Creature Technical Director
Santhoshi Balasubramanian, Digital Artist
Mary Margaret Conley (Hill), Data I/O Administrator
Cedric Lo, Lead Animator
Scott Jones, Creature Technical Director
Juani Guiraldes, Animator
Josh Lange, Previsualization Artist
SriKalyan Tallapragada, Technical Director

This just in from OOMPH, the Digital Design community and showcase:

Amrit Pal Singh, Digital Design grad and director of Mr Bumbel’s Museum of Toys, was featured in The Dieline‘s Student Spotlight section for his design project entitled Spooky Chocolates.

Visit OOMPH for more about Amrit’s project alongside a fantastic commercial he created for Spooky Chocolates.