FMX again exceeded expectations in delivering this year. Held in Stuttgart Germany at the excellent Haus der Wirtschaft conference facility, FMX is Europe’s biggest and most remarkable conference covering all categories of digital entertainment. More than 7,000 people signed up this year, from over 40 different countries. I enjoyed meeting a few of you there. I hope to meet more of you next year.

The place was crawling with the who’s who of CG and animation from every corner of the globe. I’ve discovered that I have a lot in common with film makers from everywhere. English has become the universal language of digital entertainment production, so communication has become very comfortable for me. My German is really bad, but I do try sometimes.
Since I’ve been attending FMX, (this was my fifth year,) I’ve developed an awareness of the just how big and competent and amazing the world of entertainment is…outside of Hollywood. For example, many of the world’s best animation schools are not in the United States. For example, Supinfocom which originated in Valenciennes France, but now has several branches, including an important one in Pune India. Until FMX, I’d never heard of them. Now I know many of its people and former students and I’m very familiar with their outstanding work. Many feel they are the best in the world.
Many of the best film clips I saw came from far of corners, where talent and skill are more important than technology and money. Watching film clips and short productions from Western Europe to China opened my eyes to what is possible outside of Hollywood and it is impressive. We should not be so smug about Hollywood and New York being the centers of the world’s entertainment. It’s simply not true.
Bollywood alone puts out twice as many movies than the US combined output, and their massive audience of 3 billion is both larger than Hollywood’s worldwide audience (about 2.6 billion) and more fiercely loyal. Bollywood was founded at the end of the 1800’s and has been around 11 years longer than Hollywood! The Bollywood people I know are generally wonderful and kind people…can’t say the same for some of my Hollywood acquaintances. Perhaps we take ourselves too seriously. It seems that way on the world stage.
China, long a part of the traditional world of animation, is upgrading rapidly. With vast amounts of liquid capitol, it is modernizing its infrastructure and setting high standards for animation competence. I met with Robin King, formerly of the Sheridan College animation program in Canada. He’s working in Beijing with the Digital Design Foundation to set national competency standards for China, to assure that its animators and their reels are authentic and verified.
That said, I was also impressed by the immense support FMX has from Hollywood. Eric Roth, head of the Visual Effects Society in LA was there giving his personal support as a host and leader. He’s also on the FMX International Advisory Board; just an indication of how important FMX has become.

I was also impressed by the sheer volume of entertainment industry decision makers on hand. I ran into them at breakfast, I attended their talks and I had wine with them both formally and informally. I found myself really likening them. When I lived in LA and was working the studios, I never really saw them as regular people…they were the challenge. It’s different at FMX. Even people, who normally don’t get along that well, seem to mellow out here and let their hair down.

I particularly enjoyed meeting Debbie Denise and Jenny Fulle from Sony Imageworks. Debbie is the executive vice president of production infrastructure and executive producer, and Jenny is executive vice president and executive producer there as well. I got to chat with them both at breakfast and over cocktails. I also attended one of their presentations. I was upset to hear that since Sony is distributing Aardman features now, Imageworks is opening an office in Bristol, UK (home of Aardman Animation). A fiercely loyal Aardman fan, I cornered Jenny in the breakfast room and told her I’d hate to see Sony messing with Aardman’s work and style. Thankfully she was reassuring that Sony has no intention of screwing with Aardman. It isn’t all business talk either. We talked about family and fun and our personal lives. Later I ran into the CEO of Aardman, David Sproxton, and we had a chat about the very same subject. I feel pretty confident now that Sony and Aardman will be a good marriage. That’s the way FMX is, you really get to know these people and you can’t help but like most of them.

In fact, I encountered hundreds of old friends and new at FMX, some were presenters, others were working behind the scenes and many where attending sessions. I generally asked people why they came to FMX and the number one reason was to see old friends and network. The second reason was to attend presentations. This further convinced me that FMX is really more about people than anything else. I know it’s hard to believe, but if you show up knowing no one, and you put yourself out there just a little bit, you will leave knowing and liking many dozens of people. I’m looking at my almost 2″ stack of business cards I collected. I’ve already hooked up with more than 30 on Face Book and another 12 on Linked in. I’ve been contacted in the last week about sitting on 2 advisory boards, speaking in Asia and consulting in Mumbai. Now THAT is networking for you.

Although I could see a number of trends and themes emerging as I attended sessions, perhaps the clearest trend is the organized convergence of artistry and technology in the production of narrative media. A related trend is the use of new tools for creating Immersive collaborative workspaces. Within that trend was an exciting newish trend of art taking the lead in designing new production technology.

For much of the past the engineers have come up with great tools for animators and digital artists…they build them using their view of the world and then make them available. Unfortunately for many of us artists the engineer’s idea of an “intuitive” interface would not have been ours. We’ve been faced with steep learning curves and non-intuitive ways of working for a long time. With technology taking over the business, the artists are coming forth with considerable energy, saying “We need to define the tools of art and how they are to work.”

Leading this trend is a group out of LA that is rapidly expanding to the international scene. Headed by forward looking Hollywood Production Designer, Alex McDowell, and including Lucas Art’s Alex Laurant, Young Colombian film maker Juan Diaz, and UK art director and British designer, Malcolm Garrett, the team presented their case to an enthusiastic audience. Even some technical types seemed in favor of the 5D concept as they interacted in the lively panel discussion that followed the 5D presentation. It’s all very exciting and is leading up to the big 5D conference to be held in Long Beach California October 4-5 this year. After a TV interview in Stuttgart, I asked McDowell what he meant by “narrative media?” He explained: “the balance and strength of the 5D concept comes from the inclusion of all forms of narrative media. This includes the live media-rich experience that architecture can provide, and the strong narrative design tradition of film and animation, for example. So I would not stress the creation of virtual worlds as a central purpose – this is a part of the focus, but certainly not all that our audience is interested in.”

Another trend is the growing importance of virtual humans in film and games. As the world gets tired of ballistic blood guts games and as new potential markets are explored, it is becoming obvious that a revolution in game design is in the works. A lot of the “new IP” at the game companies involves “Emotional Context” whatever that means. They’re all top secret, but with so many prominent game developers at FMX I was able to get the feel. Although on-line games give the player an interesting expanded world of play, it has many problems as all the players have similar, predictable motivations. The development of intelligent virtual human players with game relevant motivation and the ability to interact with the player in unexpected social and emotional ways is the Holy Grail.

At the FMX Virtual Humans Forum and the lively 2 hour Q&H session following; presenters from a wide range of genre’s talked about the use of virtual humans in different forms of entertainment. Perhaps most unusual and interesting, David Hanson, head of Hanson Robotics, presented the case for an evolving new genre of robots as narrative entertainment. He introduced the audience to his amazing “Zeno,” a small but engaging cartoon like robot character. Zeno’s brain is powered by Massive Software, the same brain that controlled the crowds in LOR and the Narnia movies. Zeno can walk up to a person…look at them and recognize who they are, then initiate a relevant, often humorous conversation. He has personality and since he’s a cartoon character there’s none of that uncanny/creepy feeling when you talk with him. Zeno is also a character in an illustrated novel.
Other presenters described the state of the art in skin rendering; procedural character animation and we got a wonderful retrospective of virtual human design from the very first Synthespian, by pioneer, Jeff Kleiser.

Of interest to many studiodaily.com readers is the continuing trend towards using technology to reduce the cost and manpower, while improving the tools for music video, commercial and small film production. There were many free master classes for using these tools and some prototype tools were on display. Clearly the quality of independent, low budget film is being improved significantly by new technology being introduced almost daily.

There was plenty of time to socialize at FMX and that is by far the most powerful draw for me. The networking is awesome, but can meet new friends too. My wife and I sat next to a couple from LA whom we hit it off with. We felt we would be friends before we even explored what we all did. I discovered he builds his own guitars, I collect guitars, our wives discovered that we both collect little plastic parts and bottles and military kits to make miniature things like space ships and futuristic buildings etc… geek guys. The couple turned out to be Dan Curry and his wife Hua. Dan is the VFX Supervisor on the new show “Moonlight” which we like a lot. I believe it was just cancelled…crap. Later I discovered that Dan was the VFX supervisor on the Star Trek TV series and Films. I’m not exactly a Trekie, but I thought that was really cool. It turns out our wives both like to cook Thai food…Hua is a native expert. It was pure fun. Meeting amazing people like Dan Curry and Hua is a lot of why I love going to FMX every year.

There were all night parties, dances, after hours drinks at the various hotel bars where you could pretty much feel welcome no matter what group you joined (as long as you weren’t too annoying that is). I found myself coming to bed after 2:00am most nights and 3:30 once…that with a 10:00 am podium call the next day. I don’t normally drink much, but that German beer is awesome.