Industry: Minister for Education and Skills Jan O’Sullivan to attend Irish Visual Effects & Animation Summit today

Minister for Education and Skills Jan O’Sullivan will today (November 20th) visit the third Irish Visual Effects and Animation Summit at Google HQ in Dublin’s Barrow Street. Minister O’Sullivan will meet and greet some of the international and Irish industry professionals attending the three day event.  She will attend the event at The Foundry between 12.15pm – 1.15pm.  The event has a strong education element.

The packed full schedule for the third annual Irish Visual Effects (VFX) & Animation Summit was recently announced, offering a wealth of fascinating talks and presentations by international leaders in the sector over the three day event.  The summit takes place in partnership with Animation Skillnet, Screen Training Ireland and is supported by Grant Thornton and the U.S. Embassy Dublin and over 400 delegates will attend discussions and demonstrations from some of the most skilled professionals in the global visual effects and animation industry.  The Summit will celebrate the world of Visual Effects and animation, with the first screening in Ireland of the new Disney / Pixar film The Good Dinosaur.

Highlights include Gusztav Velicsek of 3D4Medical who will be speaking after 3D4Medical’s keynote talk at the Apple Conference in September.  Liam Neville and Emma Rooney will be speaking about Irish studio Egg VFX’s work as the primary VFX house on Ghosthunters, while Kevin Baillie of Atomic Fiction will speak about his success with The Walk.  There will be additional demonstrations and discussions surrounding virtual reality (VR) and the future of storytelling. The VR speakers from London taking part are Jonathan Starck, Head of The Foundry’s Research Team, Aidan Gibbons, CG Lead/Director, The Mill and Solomon Rogers from Rewind VR.  In a major coup for the Summit, President of Pixar Animation Studios Jim Morris will attend and give a presentation at the event.

Various masterclasses and workshops will be offered on Friday 20th November as part of the Summit and will cover 3D Animation, anatomy for animators, Houdini for FX artists, VFX Supervision, On-Set Data Acquisition and Production.  There will also be sessions covering Pre-Production, Storyboarding and Physical Production which will appeal to the wider film-making community.

A focus of the event is on training and encouraging students to pursue a career in the VFX and Animation industry.  In this regard the Summit will welcome the Global Head of Training and Development of Moving Picture Company Andrew Schlussel and former Head of Training and Development at Framestore, Paul Timpson, as well as the Head of Animation at Escape Studios, Alex Williams.  The Summit is being held in The Foundry at Google’s European Headquarters and other companies who will showcase at the Summit will be Science and Engineering Academy Award winner Anil Kokaram and multi-award winning Irish start up, Artomatix.

The full schedule can be seen on the VFX Summit website.

[quote titke=”Eoghan Cunneen – VFX Summit, Co-founder”]We’re really excited to host Mark Ardington who will discuss his work on Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, which was recently nominated for an Outstanding Achievement in Craft award at the 2015 British Independent Film Awards.  The nomination is wonderful justification of the standard of visual effects and the technical intricacies that brought Alicia Vikander’s android, Ava, to life.  The term ‘craft’ is all too seldom used to describe the type of work that VFX and animation artists consistently create.  We’re thrilled to also welcome Atomic Fiction founder and CEO Kevin Baillie and to hear about the process Atomic Fiction went through to create Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk.  The film is a stunning tribute to Phillipe Petit’s tightrope walk across New York’s Twin Towers in 1974 and can confidently sit next to Gravity and Avatar as a benchmark for 3D cinema.

The Section 481 tax credit is now in play as Ireland pushes to attract more film and television production. There has been a huge amount of excitement surrounding the Christmas release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens since Disney announced the new slate in 2012, parts of which has been shot of the coast of Kerry on Sceilig Mhichíl. Meanwhile, Showtime’s ‘Penny Dreadful’ Series 3 is well into production at Ardmore Studios.  The Irish VFX & Animation Summit wants to build on this domestic activity and help develop a world class VFX and animation talent base in Ireland.[/quote]

The Irish VFX & Animation Summit’s mission is to celebrate the Visual Effects (VFX) and animation industries within Ireland and beyond. To create a stronger dialogue between existing and aspiring VFX and animation professionals and to offer training and support to those who wish to join the industry.  Ireland has a strong history of producing world-class talent in the arts and film in particular, with the production of indigenous films increasing at pace in recent years.  Tickets are limited, free of charge, and can be accessed online.