About the lecture

Poseidon
How the commercial « Poseidon » came to be: From school project to viral video, seen over 51 million times on facebook.

About the speaker

First name / last name: Emilie Bach
Title: Art Director/student
Name of the company: The Animation Workshop
Website of the company: www.animwork.dk

Speaker biography: 3rd year CG student at The Animation Workshop. Art director of the commercial « Poseidon ». Currently art directing on a 2D bachelor film.

Company presentation: Part of via university college, TAW is a world-class animation school that offers bachelor degrees in CG, Character Animation and Graphic Storytelling, as well as various master classes for industry professionals. Connected to the school is also a drawing academy, the Open Workshop and an incubator for game startups.
Together with Arsenalet, this makes Viborg a unique pressure-cooker environment of animation and games.

About the lecture

Space… The final frontier
Since the advent of new interactive media, creators must constantly re-evaluate the space they want to offer viewers in their work. From theater to games, traditional animation, stereoscopy, VR, AR and multimedia installations, the questions remain the same; What is the experience offered by medium that one wishes to employ? What space or the role does the author wish to offer in his work to the user?  What will remain imprinted in the spectator?  As a producer for over twenty years at the NFB, these are the questions I still ask myself for each of my productions. The answers are becoming more complex.

About the speaker

First name / last name: Marc Bertrand
Title: Producer at the French Animation Studio of The National Film Board of Canada
Name of the company: The National Film Board of Canada
Website of the company: nfb.ca

Speaker biography: Marc Bertrand joined the French Animation Studio as a producer in 1998 and has since produced more than 100 films, including such notable successes as the award-winning series Science Please! (2001), and Noël Noël (2003) by Nicola Lemay, which won Gémeaux Awards for Best Animated Series or Film in 2002 and 2004 respectively.  He also co-produced with Marcel Jean the Norman McLaren Master’s Edition (2006), an award-winning DVD box set featuring digitally restored masterpieces by McLaren, a pioneer in the fusion of music and animation. Bertrand’s interest in new technology has led him to become involved in working on 3D films. In 2008, he coproduced Facing Champlain: A Work in 3 Dimensions, directed by Jean-François Pouliot, and produced Private Eyes, a new 3D film by Nicola Lemay.
Among his other productions are acclaimed films such as Imprints (2004) by Jacques Drouin and works by Theodore Ushev: Tower Bawher (2006), Drux Flux (2009) and Lipsett Diaries (2010), winner of a Genie for Best Animated Short and a Special Mention at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. Bertrand has worked on numerous productions, including the Studio GDS/NFB co-production Romance (2011) by renowned Swiss animator Georges Schwizgebel, winner of the 2012 Genie Award. In 2011, he produced Sunday (2011) by Patrick Doyon, which earned an Oscar® nomination and won the 2012 Jutra Award for Best Animated Film.
In 2013, Marc became an AMPAS (Academy of Motion Picture, Arts and Sciences) member and completed the co-production Hollow Land (Michèle and Uri Kranot) and Gloria Victoria (T. Ushev), which won the FIPRESCI award in Annecy 2013.
In 2014, it was another of Marc’s production, No fish where to go, that received the same honour. The same year, the film Jutra (Marie-Josée St-Pierre, a co-production with MJSP Film) was selected at the Fortnight of directors in Cannes and in February 2015 won a Jutra, a Gemeaux and a Canadian Screen Award for best short animated film.  In 2016, his production of Théodore Ushev’s Vaysha the Blind won both the Jury Prise and the Children Jury prize in Annecy and in 2017 the film was nominated for an Oscar® in for the Best Short Animated film category.

Company presentation: The National Film Board’s mission is to provide new perspectives on Canada and the world from Canadian points of view, perspectives that are not provided by anyone else and that serve Canadian and global audiences by an imaginative exploration of who we are and what we may be. We will do this by creating, distributing and engaging audiences with innovative and distinctive audiovisual works and immersive experiences that will find their place in classrooms, communities, and cinemas, and on all the platforms where audiences watch, exchange and network around creative content.

About the speaker

First name / last name: Jean-Michel Blottière
Title: President
Name of the company: Games for Change Europe
Website of the company: www.g4ceurope.eu

Speaker biography: Jean-Michel Blottière is a pioneer in the field of new technologies. After preparing ENS Ulm – a French grande école (higher education establishment outside the framework of the public university system), he created TILT, the very first magazine dedicated to Videogames in Europe (1982), and PixiFoly, the first TV Show to plunge audiences into virtual worlds (1983). Since then, he has been Editor in chief of magazines such as Consoles + or PC Review. He has produced and hosted TV Shows (Pixifoly, Microkids, the Night of Videogames…). As Editorial Consultant for all of Canal+’s « new programs”, he was involved in the creation of such groundbreaking programs as Cyberflash, Cyberculture and Le Deuxième Monde (8 years before Second Life!). He has been leading prestigious Festivals and Conferences in Europe (Imagina, FMX, Videogame Economics Forum…). He is the President of Games for Change Europe, and CEO of NX Publishing – The NeXt Media Specialists – a communication company specialized in the field of VFX, Animation, Videogames, VR-MR-AR, and Transmedia.

Company presentation: Founded in 2004, Games for Change empowers game creators and social innovators to drive real-world change using games that help people to learn, improve their communities, and contribute to make the world a better place. Founded in 2013, Games for Change Europe helps support and increase the growing interest in social impact games throughout Europe. Therefore we frequently showcase best practices to the European public and discuss the potential of the medium with companies, organisations and governments. With our partners from games academia and industry, we have access to leading expertise and technology to help leverage entertaining games with non-entertainment goals and transform them into a compelling and convincing communication tool. Furthermore, we help find business opportunities for direct investment into new projects and incubate games to strengthen the role of European Game Developers in the emerging international markets.

About the lecture

The writing of Bury me my Love
Abstract of the presentation: Bury me, my Love is a reality-inspired interactive fiction telling a young Syrian woman’s story as she flees Syria and tries to reach Europe. Pierre Corbinais comes back to the writing process of the game and explains how to turn reality into fiction, and how to make that fiction sounds real.

About the speaker

First name / last name: Pierre Corbinais
Title: Co-auteur / Writer
Name of the company:The Pixel Hunt
Website of the company: www.thepixelhunt.com/

Speaker biography: For seven years, Pierre Corbinais (Pierrec) has been covering small experimental/innovative/alternative/weird video games on his blog oujevipo.fr. He also documents alternative controllers and playful performances on ShakeThatButton.com and (co)created several reaity-inspired video games such as One of Them or Bury Me My Love.

Company presentation: The Pixel Hunt focuses on developing and producing reality-inspired games, mixing altogether journalism, documentary and video games.

About the lecture

Gamify Africa – how games can function in a social transformation process
In 2016 something happend in Addis Abeba: Together with the German gaming and gamification expert Christoph Deeg a group of young people from Addis Abeba (Ethiopia) who had never designed a game before developed the first local-based game “The Battle of the Times” as part of the “Gamify the City Future” project. Developed by the German Goethe–Institut, the project uses gaming and gamification as a tool for participation and engagement during the process of defining a future for the city of Addis Abeba. This project was also the beginning of the network « Chewata Awaqi ». In 2018, this project will expand to 15 African countries. In his presentation,
Christoph Deeg will talk about the goals and the ideas behind the game and it’s possible impact on city-planning in the future.

About the speaker

First name / last name: Christoph Deeg
Title: Consultant and Speaker for digital-analouge strategies and Gamification
Name of the company: Christoph Deeg
Website of the company: www.christoph-deeg.com

Speaker biography: Christoph Deeg is a consultant, speaker, and author in the field of gamification, playfull experiences and digital-analog strategies. He is consulting national and international institutions, organizations, and companies on the development and implementation of comprehensive and sustainable digital strategies and is developing and realizing gamification and playfull experience projects in countries such as Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Chile, Mexico a.s.o.. He lectures widely on this topic at national and international conferences and is the author of “Gaming und Bibliotheken” (Gaming and Libraries) and founder of the interdisciplinary network “games4culture.” He is also a co-founder of the ethiopian gaming-network « chewata awaqi ».
For more information, visit www.christoph-deeg.com or contact him at christoph@christoph-deeg.com

About the lecture

Gaming in Urban Planning
City planning and global urbanisation face gigantic challenges in the near future – in terms of economy, sustainability and social aspects. But how can video games play a part in order to succeed when it comes to interaction with the residents – especially young people around the world? Can games help to empower more than 1/3 of humanity that will live in informal cities, slum in the year 2050?  Can games change how we plan our future cities?

About the speaker

First name / last name: Anders Eklund
Title: Director / Producer
Name of the company: Luckyday
Website of the company: www.luckyday.se

Speaker biography: Anders Eklund is a director and producer of television series and documentary films.His career in the TV business started 1998 at the Swedish production company Strix Television, editing TV shows like Survive, the Bar, Come Dine With Me and other prime time TV shows at the time. 2006 he started the production company Luckyday and since then he has been producing and directing non stop for clients like Discovery, BBC, SVT, Warner Brothers and Ericsson, creating  international shows like Nordic Cookery, Ibrahimovic – The Documentary, the feature documentary Gaming the Real World and  documentary series Spotlight of Sports. Anders lives in Malmö, Sweden with his family.

Company presentation: Luckyday is an independent film company based in Sweden and the UK. Luckyday produce high quality content across the genres of documentary, lifestyle and scripted. The clients are broadcasters and brands and the business idea is to work with content that has an global market appeal and strong concepts that can be turned into IPs and be re-sold and re-used in different outputs.Janson is a Brussels-based business law firm with more than 90 specialized lawyers. Janson is part o a worldwide network of law firms.The firm assists companies as well as public authorities, funds and (international) non-profit associations, with a special focus on IP/IT.

About the lecture

Poseidon
How the commercial « Poseidon » came to be: From school project to viral video, seen over 51 million times on facebook.

About the speaker

First name / last name: Lisbeth Engbo
Name of the company: Plastic Change
Website of the company: plasticchange.org

Speaker biography: Since May 2016, Lisbeth Engbo has been Head of Communication in Plastic Change, an NGO working against plastic pollution in the oceans. As a crewmember on Expedition Plastic 2015-16, she has experienced the severe problem of plastics in both the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean.
From 1994-2015 she worked as Communication Officer and Head of Media in the Danish development organization DanChurcAid. She has a bachelor in Journalism from the Danish School of Media and Journalism, and an AP graduate in NGO management.

Company presentation: Plastic Change (PC) is a nonprofit organization based in Denmark, working globally. The organization focuses on the consequences of the increasing quantities of plastic in the oceans and the effects on the environment. PC collaborates with environmental organizations, universities, industry, politicians and individuals on documentation, sharing of knowledge and specific projects designed to reduce the quantity of plastic in the marine environment.
As part of this work, Plastic Change has launched Expedition Plastic 2014-19, sailing from Denmark to the largest plastic soups of the world in the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans further on to Asia.

About the lecture

Are games with purpose sustainable?
After the release of Valiant Hearts in 2014, Yoan Fanise decided to co-found DigixArt, a studio dedicated to « meaningful games ». This talk, given with producer Anne-Laure Fanise, tries to analyze the reasons of this successful entrepreneurial adventure. 3 years of winnings and failures with precious learnings for the team. How the meaningful dimension triggered everything, from players to developers and publishers. They will also share how AAA and other industries practices can help to build sustainability in a young structure.

About the speaker

First name / last name: Anne-Laure Fanise
Title: Producer
Name of the company: DigixArt
Website of the company: www.digixart.com

Speaker biography: Co-founder of DigixArt, Anne-Laure Fanise is in charge of the financial and production aspects in the studio. She used to work at IBM, in relation with public authorities for environmental, legal and logistic aspects. She also worked for 5 years in a non-lucrative organisation which allows disabled people to have a life as normal as possible.

Company presentation: DigixArt is a game development studio founded in 2015 in Montpellier, sunny South of France. It’s located in the very famous incubator MIBI. Its ambition is to offer meaningful and innovative gaming experiences to a wide audience. After the success of the first game Lost in Harmony, the team is growing to bring its experience and artistic sensitivity to a second game on console platforms. This ambitious project is supported by a major publisher and will be revealed in 2018.

About the lecture

Are games with purpose sustainable?
After the release of Valiant Hearts in 2014, Yoan Fanise decided to co-found DigixArt, a studio dedicated to « meaningful games ». This talk, given with producer Anne-Laure Fanise, tries to analyze the reasons of this successful entrepreneurial adventure. 3 years of winnings and failures with precious learnings for the team. How the meaningful dimension triggered everything, from players to developers and publishers. They will also share how AAA and other industries practices can help to build sustainability in a young structure.

About the speaker

First name / last name: Yoan Fanise
Title: Creative Director
Name of the company: DigixArt
Website of the company: www.digixart.com

Speaker biography: Yoan Fanise spent 14 years at Ubisoft in France and Singapore. He worked on Beyond Good & Evil, Peter Jackson’s King Kong and co-invented the famous Raving Rabbids. He then joined Singapore for the Naval Battles for Assassin’s Creed Brand. After those AAA projects, he was able to give birth to a very unique title from a major publisher: Valiant Hearts: The Great War.
After this critical success, he left Ubisoft to co-found DigixArt, a studio dedicated to meaningful games.

Company presentation: DigixArt is a game development studio founded in 2015 in Montpellier, sunny South of France. It’s located in the very famous incubator MIBI. Its ambition is to offer meaningful and innovative gaming experiences to a wide audience. After the success of the first game Lost in Harmony, the team is growing to bring its experience and artistic sensitivity to a second game on console platforms. This ambitious project is supported by a major publisher and will be revealed in 2018.

About the presentation

VR Tools for Immersive Storytelling

About the speaker

First name / last name: Milan Grajetzki
Title: CEO
Name of the company: NVRMIND
Website of the company: nvrmind.io/

Speaker biography: Milan has a background in music composition, media arts, game design & VR development. When he’s not inventing VR tools with Dario, he works with animation filmmakers & game developers, as a consultant, designer, and developer, helping them to bring their creative visions into VR.

Company presentation: NVRMIND is a VR research lab founded by Milan Grajetzki & Dario Seyb. We craft, and develop artistic tools for VR creators: By working hands-on with animators and directors, we build technology to design more meaningful experiences directly from within VR.

About the lecture

Up Close and Far Away
A review of clips from various animated projects, from personal non-fiction films to social issue documentaries and PSAs. How do we respond to the world around us? How can animation engage us as individuals? As educators/activists?

About the speaker

First name / last name: Emily Hubley
Title: Filmmaker
Name of the company: Hubbub Inc.
Website of the company: www.emilyhubley.com/

Speaker biography: Emily Hubley has been making short animated films for over thirty years. Her feature, « The Toe Tactic » premiered theatrically at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC in 2009. Hubley has contributed animation to documentary and narrative films and is the daughter of John and Faith Hubley. who’s work she will share at the conference.

About the lecture

Crafting the future of technology with deep thought and care
As creators and technologists, we often talk about how we want our work to have the greatest impact on the world. But what does that really mean? What is the real impact of our creations and how can we craft the future with thought and care?

About the speaker

First name / last name: Amy Kalson
Title: Senior Designer and Producer
Name of the company: SYBO Games
Website of the company:  www.sybogames.com

Speaker biography: Amy Kalson has been making games professionally since 2002. She got her undergraduate degree from Sarah Lawrence College where she focused on theatre and creative writing, and has a masters degree from Carnegie Mellon University in Entertainment Technology. She has worked on over 33 games for companies like PopCap, Maxis, Electronic Arts, and Disney, where she got 7 patents covering inventions ranging from new ways for players to connect with each other to how reflective screens might be leveraged for interactive experiences. She is currently working on new titles at SYBO Games in Copenhagen, Denmark.

About the presentation

Art direction in The Breadwinner
The processe of the creation and the visual ideas behind the animation movie »The Breadwinner ». All begins with just a book, then a script then character deisgn and so on, till the final image that you see in the cinema.   The visual choices in the character deisgn in a relation to the subject matter.  The importance of the technic and the materials using in the film considering the time,budjet and the crew.

About the speaker

First name / last name: Reza Riahi
Title: Painter and Art Director
Website of the company:  www.rezariahi.com

Speaker biography: Reza grew up in Tehran, Iran. He has worked as a Character Designer and the Art Director on various animation projects and television series in Iran and France and Ireland. After finishing his Bachelor in painting, he moved to France to continue his study and research in comic strip and animation directing. He received his degree from the school of animation directing “La Poudrière” in France. After directing some short animated films, Reza moved to Ireland to work as an art director at Cartoon Saloon for the movie  »The Breawinner ». Reza is currently  Living in Lyon working on his new short films and graphic novels.

About the presentation

VR Tools for Immersive Storytelling

About the speaker

First name / last name: Dario Seyb
Title: CTO
Name of the company: NVRMIND
Website of the company: nvrmind.io/

Speaker biography: Dario Seyb is a software engineer interested in computer graphics, physically based rendering and real time graphics. Currently he is studying computer science at RWTH Aachen and the co-founder of NVRMIND where he is building AnimVR, a tool to create hand drawn animations in VR.

Company presentation: NVRMIND is a VR research lab founded by Milan Grajetzki & Dario Seyb. We craft, and develop artistic tools for VR creators: By working hands-on with animators and directors, we build technology to design more meaningful experiences directly from within VR.

About the speaker

First name / last name: Morten Thorning
Title: Genral Director
Name of the company: The Animation Workshop
Website of the company: www.animwork.dk

Speaker biography: Morten Thorning is the general director of The Animation Workshop/VIA University College and has been a leading force behind the dynamic institution since the very beginning in 1988. His dedication to the development of Danish and European animation has among many other things led to the creation of the international artist residency Open Workshop, the establishment of the creative stronghold Arsenalet and furthermore the success of Viborg Animation Festival, an internationally renowned festival that celebrates all that is animation. When it comes to running the institution and all its activities, Morten’s philosophy is to combine high-level creativity with intense discipline, thus paving the way for personal and professional growth.

Company presentation: Part of via university college, TAW is a world-class animation school that offers bachelor degrees in CG,  Character Animation and Graphic Storytelling, as well as various master classes for industry professionals. Connected to the school is also a drawing academy, the Open Workshop and an incubator for game startups. Together with Arsenalet, this makes Viborg a unique pressure-cooker environment of animation and games.

About the lecture

The missing frame – animation manifesto
How the animation art can change the society, perceptions. The goal, role and perspectives for the contemporary animation artists.

About the speaker

First name / last name: Theodore Ushev
Title: Artist/director
Name of the company: NFB/Moments foundation
Website of the company: www.nfb.ca/

Speaker biography: Theodore Ushev was born in Kyustendil, Bulgaria, in 1968 and graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia. He first made a name for himself as a poster artist in his native country before settling in Montreal in 1999.
Ushev found fertile ground for developing his own original artistic style at the National Film Board of Canada. With more than 15 films to date, that has been shown at all over the world and more than 150 prizes, he continues to work in the field of cinema, multimultimedia, instalation art.  In Blood Manifesto(2014), a poetic and ferocious short which Ushev animated with his own blood, he ponders whether ideals are worth spilling blood for. His latest project, in 2017 his film Blind Vaysha (2015), a philosophical tale about the importance of living in the moment, has been nominated for Academy Award Oscar for Best Animated Short. The film won more than 40 prizes and awards to date.

About the lecture

The role of reality in Augmented Reality
What makes an experience ‘augmented reality’ beyond just the technology? Augmented reality is still in its infancy as a mass-market medium and for most people it’s just a gimmick. What can we do as content creators to make compelling experiences in AR?  This talk is about crafting illusions, making the unreal real and including reality itself in storytelling. It covers A/R, computer vision, AI but no prior technical knowledge is required.

About the speaker

First name / last name: Liam Walsh
Title: Director of Creative Technology
Name of the company: Nexus Productions
Website of the company: nexusstudios.com

Speaker biography: Liam Walsh is the Creative Technology Director of Interactive Arts, a specialist interactive storytelling division of Nexus Studios, that researches and adopts emerging technologies to craft engaging story experiences.
Previously Liam was head of Creative Technology at Wonderbly, a google ventures backed children’s entertainment startup.
Before that he was head of the prototyping department at w12 studios, a product and service design consultancy.
Liam has been coding interactive experiences for brands and products for over 10 years and his work has spanned, motion graphics, videogames, toys, books, and even household appliances.

Company presentation: Based in London and LA, Nexus Studios makes talked about work in film and interactive media.  They create both handcrafted and high-tech  stories and experiences that transform brands and engage audiences through the power of entertainment and culture.
Their work includes Academy Award nominated animation; Grammy nominated music videos, D&AD Black pencil and triple Cannes Grand Prix winning commercials and D&AD white pencil, Lovie and Webby winning digital and immersive experiences.