Siggraph 2007 - Wednesday

Your friendly Houdini Character Team: Yours Truly, Ed Lam - Programmer Extraordinaire and Calin Casian - My Rigger and Resident Punching Bag ready to demo with a pounding headache from last night.

Jeff Wagner was demo-ing with me today. He showed me the FX tool shelf they built. I hadn't even had a chance to see it! OMG! Amazing! I made smoke and contrails and bubbles, with a click of a button! ME! I recommend every ready go to the LA office and see it for yourself - seriously!

Kim Davidson (CEO of Side Effects Software) came by to see me and inquire bout how it was going. If you don't know who this guy is - you should.

Read up on Kim Davidson

It was great to see my friends from Motion Theory to my right, every once and a while I walked over for a visit and they had a simple and effective booth. They had a mail box for Demo Reel drop and I watched a girl almost throw here "hopefully empty" soda in there thinking it was a trashcan!


Lunch time now, and my tummy is not ready for food. I decide to walk the floor a little bit. I see my man Jason Anastas at the Disney booth demo-ing their proprietary tools for Meet The Robinson's.

Jason! WTF did you do to his head?
I thought the FX peeps at the Houdini booth were bad!

Here is video of Jason demo-ing,
but you cannot hear a thing really because the floor is so loud...
so at least Disney knows he was working hard.
The Disney Char GUI

I stopped by the Massive booth, They were showing off how they worked out all the crowd stuff for Evan Almighty and the Noah's ark scenes. He has a microphone, so you can actually hear him, though not nearly as animated as Jason at Disney. He actually is talking about a point we touched upon in our Expert Panel regarding multiple studios working on separate elements for one shot and how you manage assets and keep all of the files straight.

Ran into Bill Ball at the R & H booth
BY FAR THE BEST SMILE IN CG!

Took this pic with my iphone cuz battery was really low in my camera... unfortunately if you move even a little bit the camera can't handle but you can still see that dazzling smile!

Sony Pictures has Karl Gnass do his drawing class every year and it never falls short. I remember taking his classes when I was at Sony for SL2, and he really knows his stuff. I plan on taking some of his courses in the Fall at the Animation Institute in Hollywood.

Blue Sky was representing with their Horton Hears a Who. I know the trailer is online for download, but I couldn't resist recording some of it because its just so damn pretty! I also love it when you are filming and people walk right in front of the screen.

Autodesk in da house! Even though their party
was a hot mess, the demos were on!
I tried to record video, but the screen just came out white.

Softimage represents their layering ability in animation. I also tried to record, but my video was just white...maybe next year. The Softimage party is tonight, but for some reason they decided to have you register AND try and get tickets. They handed out too many and even ran out...I have a feeling we won't make it to the party. I also have a feeling we will do just fine on our own.

Pixar's booth was drop dead gorgeous,
but I didn't stay too long for I might be blinded in awe.

I don't know what the heck this is, but it was kewl.

The Gnomon booth was hard to miss with that green glow surrounding it. I had the opportunity to meet with their last Senior class thanks to Pamela Kliebrink Thomson and I must say I was impressed with several of the students reels...especially modeling and animation!

I had to return from lunch to report for duty at the booth again and Cristin came by to visit.

And BTW, this is the "sexiest man in software development." Cristin Barghiel, Director of Product Development at SESI. I was so worried when I walked into that Toronto Office and he said to me "Angie, I thought you and I would sit down first to go over H9" I heard music in my head "Duhh, Doooo, Duuuuaaahhhh!" But, this is has got to be the nicest programmer I have ever met. He made my job so easy. And, notice the Jonesie Cake flower on his lanyard? I love this man!

"Baby Bird" joined me for drinks after a long day on the floor. He and I soon scooted to the Buster Beach House for the Animation Mentor/Reel FX party there, but we were so hungry we just sat downstairs and had drinks and h'orderves with Jason.

When we left the Beach House, I took a few pix of this boat Jamie was eyeing from our room window and some planes were doing aeronautical moves. The pic below is the best I got, I wasn't fast enough to really catch the planes in formation.


We headed back to the hotel and changed to meet Jason and his buddies at some pub called The Fields before attempting to enter the Softimage party. Even though we were registered, they ran out of tix. Here is Jason and Samir harassing a layout artist.

WE had a few drinks and Jason illustrated that his wife Joan dresses him. He has the most beautiful shirt on and the inside of the cuff has this gorgeous silk embroidered fabric. He informed us that...

This is straight...

and this is gay...

We soon decided to walk up to House of Blues. Samir saw a cute girl driving a rickshaw and decided to ride in it. We all walked. Once we got close to HOB, we saw the line and decided against it. Waiting for Samir in the rickshw...yes, we beat them up the street. We ducked into possibly the loudest sushi bar I have ever been to. It was so ridiculously loud...I truly cannot express that to you. I have video of Jason explaining just how loud it was, but of course cannot show you. Read on and you will understand.

There are only a few pix from this evening I can share and absolutley no video. I had to censor the few I can show because...well, Jason decided to gesture for most all of them. Black box is accordingly placed. View at your own risk.


Samir progressivley got excited and knocked a full beer on the floor. The OCD bouncer freaked and Samir cleaned up his mess.

"Baby Bird" is done cleaning.

As you can see, we had plenty of fun without attending the Softimage party. Michael Kaschalk and others joined in the fun with myself, Samir, Calin and Jeff Wagner.

Whew! One more day to go, but all of this should keep you guys busy!