SIGGRAPH 2009 Announces Computer Animation Festival Award Nominees

CHICAGO--(Business Wire)--
SIGGRAPH announces the selection of award nominees for the SIGGRAPH 2009
Computer Animation Festival to be held in New Orleans this August. Nominees were
chosen from 770 submissions from around the globe, presented by both
professional studios and students alike. In all, more than 140 films will be
shown during the Computer Animation Festival. The award winners will be
announced during the conference.

"We were thrilled with level of quality and technical expertise that was
prevalent throughout the hundreds of submissions," stated Carlye Archibeque,
Computer Animation Festival Executive Producer from LightStage, LLC. "The
Computer Animation Festival continues to show the power that the latest advances
in computer graphics technologies have to amuse and entertain. As always the
jury looked not only for amazing graphic content, but also good story telling,
whether it was a film about a boy and his spaceship, or a film about new studies
in Alzheimer`s research."

Since 1999, the SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival has been an official
qualifying festival for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences "Best
Animated Short Film" Academy Award. The film "Oktapodi" became an Academy
nominee in the Best Animated Short category after winning Best in Show at last
year`s Festival. For the second consecutive year, the Festival`s screenings,
panels and production sessions will be open to the public, allowing general
audiences to get a glimpse behind the making of computer generated effects,
visualizations and animations that is rarely available.

The nominees for this year's Computer Animation Festival Awards are as follows:

Best in Show Nominees

Engel zu Fust (Angel Afoot)
Studio Soi GmbH & Co
Germany
Narrative Animation - Waltraud, an angel, has fallen from the sky. Her wings have
shrunk and she can no longer fly. She takes up with a troop of circus performers
who help remind her how an angel gets her wings back.

French Roast
The Pumpkin Factory
France
Narrative Animation - In a fancy Parisian café of the sixties, an uptight
businessman is about to pay the check when he finds out that he's lost his wallet.
To save time he decides to order more coffee. With no dialogue, the story is told
through character animation, music and sound. Staging is made of a single frontal
master shot with a big mirror in the background to create the equivalent of a
reverse shot.

Silhouettes of Jazz
Dominik Käser, Martin-Sebastian Senn, Mario Deuss , Mark Pauly, Niloy J. Mitra
Switzerland
Experimental Animation - This animated short outlines the history of traditional
jazz music in a virtual walkthrough of a shadow art museum. Improvisation, a key
ingredient of jazz music, is mirrored in the ambiguity of a shadow sculpture (many
different 3D shapes can cast the same 2D shadow). The movie highlights five
different milestones in the evolution of jazz: the early songs of field workers,
ragtime, New Orleans jazz, swing, and bebop. Each era is represented by a single
3D sculpture that casts multiple shadow images simultaneously.

Jury Award Nominees

Dix
The Mill
United States
Live Action with CG Effects - A dark, harrowing short film showing the
complexities of psychological and obsessive behavior. An intricate part of the
film was how the creators chopped up their main actor. They had to find solutions
for every shot in order to achieve the best results. Some of the shots are 2D
visual effects while others needed a 3D model animated on top of the actor and
then cut revealing the actor`s flesh and blood.

Love Child
Digital Media Design Education Center
Taiwan
Animation Visualization - A visual capture of character creation software making
digital construction of a new born infant "character" that is both visually and
politically stunning.

Anima
Supinfocom Valenciennes
France
Animation Visualization - This animation, which verges on experimental, uses
animals and their forms as its center piece. An elephant is seen escaping the
city, but it seems the city itself is made of animals or the shapes of animals.
The graphics and lighting in this film make it immensely compelling.

Student Prize Nominees

Dim Sum
Ringling College of Art and Design
United States
Narrative Animation - This amusing animation takes place in San Francisco, home of
the largest and most prominent Chinatown outside of Asia. The setting is a
bustling Chinese restaurant named Dim Sum where Ping, a waiter, accidentally drops
a tea cup which shatters on the floor. Pong, the infamous owner of Dim Sum, finds
out and he is one second away from firing Ping. How far will Ping go to keep his
job?

Incident at Tower 37
Hampshire College
United States
Narrative Animation - A man guards a water tower and comes across some little
creatures who are trying to break into it. The short piece explores issues
surrounding ownership, use, and exhaustion of natural resources. The film is a
result of an undergraduate animation curriculum built upon newly-developed open
-source production management and support tools.

Project: Alpha
The Animation Workshop
Denmark
Narrative Animation - The race to space is on. As nations compete, we follow the
progress of a single chimpanzee that's been recruited into the Space Program. His
results might prove influential for the better of all mankind.

WTF (Well Told Fable) Award

friends?
Sveinbjörn J. Tryggvason
Iceland
Narrative Animation - A very short film that highlights that "shorts" can be
short, but still contain a whole lot of story. To better convey the concept of
simplicity, simple primitive shapes are used as the base for the design of nearly
everything in the film.

Unbelievable Four
Sukwon Shin
United States
Music Visualization - In this satirical take on a music video, a desperate search
for salvation takes place as hundreds of evil spaceships are approaching earth.
Finally the "Unbelievable 4" get the call. A superhero team (composed of George W.
Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld) receives the urgent
message that the earth is under attack and they have five minutes to launch a
rocket for a preemptive strike. Over the course of the story, the caricaturized
leaders' over-heroic personalities slowly merge with the personalities of rock
stars.

Fernet 1,882 "Mini Cab Company"
Pickle Visual Effects & Animation
Argentina
Visual Effects Driven Commercial - The space-aged TV commercial stars the owners
and staff of a real mini-cab company, Renta Car, located in Cordoba, Argentina -
the city that leads the country in alcohol consumption. The ultimate goal of the
ad: attract 1,882 more customers. Agency Madre tapped the employees and owner of a
real mini cab company to star in this visual effects spot, all in the name of
helping them get 1,882 customers. The Renta Car staff also display some fine
acting chops, giving the spot a touch of heart.

About SIGGRAPH

SIGGRAPH 2009 will bring an anticipated 20,000 computer graphics and interactive
technology professionals from six continents to New Orleans, Louisiana, USA for
the industry's most respected technical and creative programs focusing on
research, science, art, animation, music, gaming, interactivity, education, and
the web from Monday, 3 August through Friday, 7 August 2009 at the Ernest N.
Morial Convention Center. SIGGRAPH 2009 includes a three-day exhibition of
products and services from the computer graphics and interactive marketplace
from 4-6 August 2009. More than 200 international exhibiting companies are
expected. More details are available at www.siggraph.org/s2009.

About ACM

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery www.acm.org, is the world's largest
educational and scientific computing society, uniting educators, researchers and
professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field's
challenges. ACM strengthens the computing profession's collective voice through
strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of
technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by
providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and
professional networking.

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SIGGRAPH
Brian Ban
+1.773.454.7423 cell
media@siggraph.org

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