I just wanted to say a huge thank you to Patrice and Ben for organizing and inviting me as a speaker to the IAMAG 2017 Master Classes, I had a great time. Also a huge thanks to everyone who watched and gave me feedback on my talk: "The Story Of Inc: Developing Your IP with an Illustrated Novel", all the students who came by to get a critique, and all the other speakers, who not only gave excellent talks, but were also extra cool at the dinners and hang out events afterwards. Here's a few highlights from the show...
Talks:
- Goro's VR talk: First off Goro is just the most enthusiastic guy ever, seeing him work in Quill in VR was just a pleasure, how fast and natural he was, he gives a really great sense of where the tech is going in the future. If you haven't painted or sculpted in VR yet, find a way to do it, it's fantastic.
- Dan Roarty's talk: Trying to pull off texturing a realistic human head in 60 min is no small feat. And don't worry Dan, mudbox is awesome, you don't have to apologize for not being a zbrush user.
- Nikolai Lockertsen's talk: I learned a whole ton of tips on using Procreate for my sketching. Love the perspective assist. And he's a super nice guy too.
- Sandra Pilny-Lockertsen: Many talented artists who didn't give a talk also attended, and had many great discussions with them about life and art. It was really interesting hearing about the similarities and differences making films in a small market like Norway vs the large US market. And just learning in general more about the story boarding process.
- Mike Blum's talk: With all the focus on big prominent blockbuster animation, it's easy to forget sometimes that there's a huge amount of smaller animation going on for Comedy Central, Adult Swim etc. There's a lot of talented people in this space showing off alternative styles and ideas that really should get more attention.
- Andrew Schmidt's talk on directing, I knew Andrew from Pixar but it was great hearing about what he's been up to since he left for a career in directing animated TV for dreamworks. A lot of great advice on what directing is really about.
- Ryan Church's talk: The sheer volume of quality work Ryan showed at the talk was incredible, honestly, only a hand full of images end up in the art of book, wish they were all there.
- Nathan Fowkes: The thing I've loved about Nathan's work for so many years is how rough and brushy it feels, he captures light with just a few strokes of his traditional or digital brush. And I found out he's also a big hard scifi fan :) Nathan does a lot of teaching, if you ever get the chance to take one of his courses, I can pretty much guarantee you will learn tons.
- Sadly, due to scheduling, I was unable to see all of the talks. I was able to see about 15 min each of Ash Thorp's talk and Jason Scheier's talk, Ash's talk about his current projects and inspiration started off really strong (and he's an Eastman & Laird TMNT fan!), and my wife who got to watch all of Jason's talk and she said it was excellent. The part I saw was great, I love analyzing film. I got to hear some of Allan McKay's talk from back stage, and he got into a lot of nitty gritty about the business of VFX, a topic that doesn't get discussed enough, it's so important. And I was really bummed to miss Marc Simonetti and Raphael Lacoste's talks because I was manning the portfolio review area, both are spectacular artists who I've followed for a long time, and I got a chance to hang out with Marc a bunch in the evenings and he's a super nice guy. Thank goodness we can watch the talks on video afterwards. Not as great as seeing them live, but will work in a pinch, I look forward to watching them all.
Q&A:
- Ian McQue's Q&A: It was awesome hearing this guy's professional story, a story of too many sequels that finally persuaded him to find creative freedom in his own artistic projects, and those projects ended up being wildly successful, which sent him down the path of fulltime freelance. A good lesson for us all.
Student Portfolio Review:
- I got the chance to review and critique dozens of student portfolios, and I found it really interesting. There's certain strong points that I saw in most of the portfolios, but also the same things that need work kept appearing again and again (cinematic lighting, variation in line weight, portfolio organization, etc). I have a much better understanding now of where the schools are excelling and where the schools may be lacking, and hopefully that knowledge will help me focus some of my educational materials a bit more to help out in those areas.
Also met so many other amazing professionals at the parties, students, people's significant others, people's kids. Thanks to everyone for coming. There was some discussion about whether the conference should expand (it was 21 presenters and about 300 people), but I felt that the size was kind of perfect, it allowed everyone to make real bonds with each other, get a chance to talk to each other frequently more than once, compare notes, it just felt more personal than say a 70,000 person siggraph.
If you didn't attend, you can buy access to the recordings of the talks here: https://www.iamag.co/features/masterclasses17tickets/ Learn all about how the team made the Inc Book Project, and 20 other great talks by professional artists!
I can only imagine next year will be even more kickass.
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