The 2008 Blender Conference Animation Festival and Suzanne Awards outcome.

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This year’s Animation Festival rocked! Organiser Dolf (Macouno) reports.

Congratulations to this year’s very deserving winners!

 

  • Best designed short film: Gamelad by Yohann Mepa
  • Best character animation: Interviews from the future by Spark Digital Entertainment
  • Best short film: Hangar no 5 by Nathan Matsuda

 

About the festival

This year we’ve had an amazing nr of submissions to the Animation Festival. Around 70 videos were sent in through the blender.org movie gallery submission form. That is pretty much double the amount of last year. And as every year the quality has once again risen with leaps and bounds. Not only is the Blender community growing, it is also advancing at a stunning rate!

The winners of last year (Eoin, Juan-Pablo & Peter’s team) were kind enough to review the videos, and help us pick the nominations. Quite an effort since there was so much. In Eoin’s case he was on vacation, and had to go the extra mile to just get to an internet connection! Thank you to them, they did a great job and made it easy for me to sort through everything.

Since the conference was sold out, and the ever cosy Waag has a small theatre, we decided to do two viewing sessions. Good idea by Ton, because the room was full both times. As far as I could tell, all those attending had a great time, and really enjoyed the evening. Also an extra thank you must go to Matt Ebb (broken) of Promotion studios who gave me a copy of lighthouse, and a few commercials they made. We showed them after the main part of the festival was over. 

After the festival, all those attending had a chance to vote. It was close… really… very close. I should give special mention to “A sad sad song” by Beorn Leonard, because even though it did not win… it was pretty much a split pot in the Best character animation category, between him, and the winner.

Since the nominees were sent in from all over the world, the winners themselves were not present to receive their awards (Enrico and Bassam who helped create “interviews from the future” were there). Ton had some help presenting the awards show from Marco, Pablo, and Kaveh who’ve been doing great work in the background and got a little of the spotlight that they so deserve!

I am already looking forward to next time, and all the great animations that I’m sure will be made throughout the year. Thank you to everyone for all the work, support, and just being as fun a crowd as one could wish for.

See you all in 2009!

Dolf (macouno)

 

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    • http://www.planetblender.org Nathan Letwory

      Yay. Congrats to all winners and other participants.

    • zapman

      oh boy, I still have some “watching BC08 entries” to do before I can realy have a look at the results… what a nice plan for the evening *g*

      congrats to all whomever have won!

    • http://d-log.nebulagame.com David Janssens

      It was really fun to watch the many different submissions, as the quality of the nominees was consistently very high, and the inventiveness and creativity was on a level to be envious about.

      As every year, it was a fun conference, and the Suzanna awards were the topping on an already very tasty cake. And now on to next year’s conference :-)

    • freen

      Congratulations to the winners!
      Stiff competition this year, and really diverse.
      It further adds to the showcase of what Blender can do.

      Thanks to all involved!

    • http://ilikelemon.com/ Yoyo

      dam I had to much work,
      I missed my chance to meet the blender team

      maybe one day
      thanks for all

    • dyf

      thanks everyone for putting us right into the event.. it was interesting to see the future of blender from the video recordings.. congrats to the winners and happy new year for blender :)

    • http://www.ronbravo.com ronbravo

      Are they going to put these videos on youtube or something? I’d like to watch them but I don’t want to have to download all of them just to view em. I have a very slow internet connection.

    • http://www.watchmike.ca Mike

      Yeah I’m with ronbravo. To anyone that’s downloaded the stuff – throw it on vimeo or something. I think
      blender.org’s server is feeling the pressure.

    • http://www.macouno.com macouno

      Most of these can already be found on vimeo or via the websites of the creators. Do a little searching, and you’re there. Putting official blender videos on a service like vimeo is an option, but I don’t think the right service has been found yet.

    • http://melting.pagesperso-orange.fr/meltinggraftutos.htm meltingman

      Ronbravo For “kala and the mystery of the banana”:
      http://www.vimeo.com/1948944 english version :-)

      Congratulations to the winners!
      I’m Verry Happy to arrives here is for me the realy good think of the year 2008 :-).
      But it’s not finish for me, I continue my short film, with the part II (and we wil se wy the name of the short is ” kala and the mystery of banana “).

      Bravo para los primeros !
      soy my alegre de haber yegado hasta aqui, para mi fue la mejor novela del ano 2008 :-)
      pero no es terminado para mi, porque tengo que terminar mi corte metrage la parte II.
      Donde veremos porque se lama “Kala y el mysterio de la banana magica” .

      Chao chao ++

    • http://www.mountuponwingsofeagles.blogspot.com Matt

      Congratulations to the winners!

    • Thornae

      Yup, those were my picks, although the “Best Designed” category was a bit of a toss-up – they were all good.

      As far as character animation goes, “Interviews from the Future” is a well animated head and shoulders above the others. “Sad, sad song” is good, with excellent guitar playing and movement, but the sheer depth of character conveyed from the animation in “IFTF”, the lip syncing, the comedic timing… this is character animation that wouldn’t look out of place at Pixar.

      And “Hangar #5″ obviously had to win, but I’m pleased that “Pitch” seems to be ranked second – it was a captivating piece of work, demonstrating that animation should be an aid to storytelling, rather the main objective.

      Congrats to all winners and nominees!

    • FishB8

      I really thought “Gamelad” was an interesting music video. It was just plain fun to watch.

      “Glimpse of light” was great eye-candy.

      And I thought “Pitch” was an interesting story. The title doesn’t really make sense till the very very end, and it made me laugh, despite the fact that it was a rather dark and depressing story line.

    • Jona

      Can anyone make a torrent of them ?

      I’m thrilled to see the work !

    • http://www.alienhelpdesk.com macouno

      Thornae, they’re not sorted in the order they ended up… I just moved the winners to the top last saturday. I have no idea who came 2nd/3rd and such.

      Jona, I’m not entirely sure about legalities, the Blender Foundation can distribute this stuff, but whether you can… Dont’ want to make this a huge discussion here. Maybe you ought to start a discussion thread at the blenderartists forums asking people to links to the websites of the competitors, then compile that list yourself to share with everyone else.

    • http://www.montagestudio.org Jean-Sébastien Guillemette

      Congrats to the winners :)

      It was amazing being there! Can’t wait to see next year video lineup!

    • http://inkweaver-review.blogspot.com NathanKP

      Its nice to hear about the highlights. Great work all you winners!

      NathanKP – Inkweaver Review

    • http://www.fahassani.blogspot.com Fahassani

      Congratulations to the winners! :-)
      the Animations really rocked!

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