Speakers - PIXELvienna13

Torsten Schrank earned a Diploma of Traditional Animation at the Film University HFF “Konrad Wolf” in Potsdam, Germany.
After his graduation, he trained himself in workshops like “Acting for Animators” with Ed Hooks and Training Programs like “Character Animation” at the former Walt Disney Feature Animation Paris, (Personal Mentor: Borja Montoro).

Since then he has been working as Character Designer for several animated feature films, TV-Series, commercials and games worldwide.

In an interview Torsten Schrank will share insights into his process of developing and creating the Character Design for the Oscar-Nominated film “Klaus”. We will discuss the challenges of creating a diverse cast of unique characters and take you throught the design process of several of the main characters. The interview will include visual material such as sketches, demos and clips.

Torstens work has been awarded with the Annie Award 2020 in the category Outstanding Achievement for Character Design in an Animated Feature Production.

• Talk - "Chasing the Spark" - Character Design for the animated feature film KLAUS

  Sat - 14:30 - room1

Toni Weiss is a live action & animation director, screenwriter and story consultant with a career of more than 30 years.
He has directed on feature films, tv- and web series, documentaries, short films, and hundreds of music videos and commercials. As a story expert, his consulting clients range from international brands to entertainment projects to games, novels and apps. He has worked for clients as diverse as the Walt Disney Company, Studio Babelsberg, Arx Anima, Vienna Tourism Board, SKY Germany and brands like Nestlé, Ferrero, Mazda, Nissan or Pampers.
As the founder of STORY INC. – a high impact story academy and consulting company – Toni is on a mission to train & teach creatives, brands and entertainment companies to tell their story with maximum emotional clarity.

In his workshop Toni will help you master the basic elements of story with complete clarity: Theme, plot and character arc.
In today’s world, those who can tell great stories unstoppable. We need storytelling skills to define our own brand, to change the world we live in, to create entertainment that matters und to get our own story straight.

As digital artists, we need to understand story profoundly to contribute our best work to the projects we choose.
This workshop is for you if you have ever struggled to understand theme, plot and character in clear, workable terms. It is especially for you if you want to write screenplays, novels or any story-driven IP and have struggled with getting your story straight.

My seminar will give you tools that you can actually use in your projects, in your work and for your own life story. Story can be learned. There are a few things professional writers do to differentiate themselves. And there are a things amateur storytellers do that cost them respect. Understand story like a pro, not an amateur.
Know how to tell a story with impact, and join professional storytellers who are changing the world.

• Talk - Understanding the Elements of Story

  Fri - 13:00 - room1

Sensitive to the creation of universes, characters and spaces, David Pagaille obtained a bachelor’s degree in Scenography at ENSAV la Cambre, and continued with the Master’s Degree in Cinema of Animation to tell stories in these worlds that he imagines .
Graduated in 2016, he started working as an animator on Joan Sfar’s feature film Petit Vampire, before continuing on various projects, short films (PurpleBoy Ghost Eye, Diver…), music videos, video games trailers or commercials.
He works at different positions, as animator, storyboarder or graphic designer, without however leaving the world of feature films where he works in parallel (Where is Anne Frank – Ari Folman, Titina – Kajsa Naess).

We will deal with the whole process i used to direct and animate the EYE FOR AND I music video. From the first ideas to the final products : what kind of choices are done, and why those choices, in animation, charadesign, aesthetics, shots and editing. How to create something which looks as one piece at the end, despite the fact it’s the balanced result between the client will, what seems to be the good choices for a project, and what you want to bring in for yourself in it !!! Plus, what are the challenges you can meet, and how to deal with it : deadlines, quality, money… ANd of course, abit more about animation itself : how to build different kind of animation : from cool and exciting to efficient and quick. tricks to give life with few efforts.

• Talk - Building an animated project - animation, dynamism, stories and aesthetic choices!

  Sat - 16:00 - room1

Hector Moran is a Mexican Freelance Character Artist based in Graz, he specializes in character art for video games, miniatures, statues and toys. He has made character art for games like League of Legends and Fortnite. He made the entire miniature line for games like Street Fighter, Ghostbusters+Men in Black, and others. His clients include THQ, Jasco Games, Schleich toys, Hasbro, Keos Masons, Kingdom Death, King Games and many others.

Taking 2d concept art and matching it up 1 to 1 in 3d is part of the skillset required to be a successful character artist. This can be a bit difficult at first, but with some practice and the right approach, it can be done. I this talk we’ll cover the making of some 2d to 3d projects where the concept art was matched up closely and we’ll talk about the steps of the process, what to do, what to avoid and why.

• Talk - High Fidelity - Translating 2d art into 3d characters

  Sat - 09:30 - room2

Gregor and Andreas founded Polarfux back in 2013. After quiting their jobs as Art Directors in small agencies they decided to merge their animation and design powers into their own studio. In 2017 Lisa joined the team with her incredible illustration skills and love for cats. This opened up more possibilities to create animations that are more illustration focused. Over time it somehow naturally evolved that their work can be found a lot in the areas of social issues and sustainability. Probably karma. However, alongside such serious concerns, humor also plays a huge role in their work.

New things can be scary – and overcoming this intimidation can be exhausting and frustrating. But once you did, it will put you in a new creative and mental state. The gain is big. Andreas talks about how Polarfux tried scary new things on different projects and always grow on them. How it opened up new opportunities and helped to define themselves as Polarfux. He also introduces the studio environment and the tools and workflows Polarfux uses to create their illustrations and animations.

• Talk - For the very first time

  Sat - 11:00 - room2

Since 2001, Heri Irawan began his career in the field of advertising in Austria. Eventually he also developed his skill and has been working in the field of movies and games as a concept artist and Matte Painting.

Heri Irawan received numerous awards from various austrian and international competitions.

https://www.artstation.com/irawan

• Talk - Playful Character Concepts // Portfolio Reviews

  Fri - 11:30 - room1

Peter Mindek is a co-founder and CTO of Nanographics. After receiving his doctoral degree from TU Wien in 2015, he continued as a post-doctoral researcher. His research interests include scientific visualization, storytelling, visual abstraction, molecular graphics, and software architecture. During this period, together with his colleagues, he co-founded Nanographics, a startup developing software technology for scientific and technical visualization.

This talk introduces the challenges of visualization of state-of-the-art biological data. After brief introduction of the field, we take a look at current challenges, namely the visualization of the structure of SARS-CoV-2. Knowing the exact molecular composition of a virus particle is important for development of treatments, which act on the molecular level to disable or destroy the virus. As the structure of the virus cannot be directly observed in a microscope, the only way to visualize it is to use computer graphics. This requires tools for integration of all the available knowledge about the virus structure, obtained through various experimental methods, into a molecular 3D model. In this talk, we introduce the tools and the workflow we use to visualize the nanoworld of viruses as precisely as possible according to the current scientific knowledge.

• Talk - How to illustrate a virus

  Sat - 14:00 - room2

After years as a freelance illustrator & animator, Brian started picking up work in Vienna’s burgeoning independent game industry as a game artist & visual developer. A doomsday prepper – but for art supplies, he uses Causa Creations studio space to store his mounting collection of paints, brushes, & tools.
https://causacreations.net

• Talk - Professional Profiles - in conversation with Brian Main

  Fri - 17:30 - room1

• Talk - Playful Character Concepts // Portfolio Reviews

  Fri - 11:30 - room1

Eveline Wandl-Vogt is experimentalist, foundress and senior director of Ars Electronica Research Institute knowledge for humanity (k4h+) as well as foundress and coordinator of the transdisciplinary movement exploration space at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The initiatives are meta- and anti-disciplinary approaches to apply humanity centered design and open innovation (OI) to invent the future. They are best practice examples for OI of the Austrian government (k4h+, exploration space), vivid collaboration frameworks between artists, business companies, citizens, practitioners, politicians and scientists.
Based on the mission of knowledge4development and against the background of a RRI mission statement, Eveline applies OI contributing to the agenda2030 and the achievement of the sustainable development goals and good life goals.
Her current projects deal with COVID19, knowledge science, transformation of genres, digital humanism and future inclusive living; she is experimenting with arts, exponential strategies, OI and data company mindset.
Eveline is affiliated to metaLAB (at) Harvard; she acts as research manager and initiator on various international boards, serving as expert in various global initiatives, mainly in the area of technical and social infrastructures as well as citizen science and standardization.
Eveline is a network facilitator, passionate to create cross-sectoral, cross-organizational value driven innovation networks of purpose.

This transatlantic project by Dario Rodighiero, Eveline Wandl-Vogt, Elian and Gabriel Carsenat offers artistic visualizations using the open-source database COVID‑19 Open Research Dataset (CORD‑19; July 1, 2020; Allen Institute for AI); scientific articles are grouped by authors and analyzed with methods of Natural Language Processing.

The “Cartography of COVID-19” is a Network visualization as instrument for distant reading, a visual approach to explore large phenomena. It has no pretense to explain the phenomena but rather to make visible the effort of more than 80,000 scientists through their scientific production, totaling 170,000 articles, offering insights into a network of people and terms in a beautiful, interactive, freely accessible board.
“Chinese sea” is a colorful view of the cartography of COVID-19, from the angle of nationality / country of origin or ethnicity of scientists across 30 different subject clusters, showing the pre-eminence of Chinese names across all subject clusters. Their overall share in production of science is the large blue ‘sea’ making about ⅓ of the canvas. Apart from China, most countries have worked in silos and focused their effort on one single subject. So their combined production of science looks like a mountainous shore.
‘Chinese sea’ comes originally as an analogue board, increased with an Artivive Storytelling App. Download and try yourself!

• Talk - COVID19 Insights : Digging into a sea of knowledge

  Sat - 15:30 - room2

Born and raised in Moscow/Russia Maria Kondratieva moved to Vienna/Austria at the age of 9. She started her career as a graphic designer. After more than seven years working at international advertising agencies, she co-founded the 3D animation studio Pipe, where she worked for 5 years as an art director and project manager.

In summer 2019 she decided to follow her own passion and focused on her illustration and design career. Under the name YAY.MK she is now working together with advertising agencies, animation studios and movie production companies to create vibrant graphics, characters and scenes.

As well as drawing body positive women Maria loves to get inspired while walking with her doggo and learn new stuff – right now the ukulele.

In her presentation Maria will talk about one big obstacle she faced as a professional illustrator: The balancing act between commercial pressure and the importance of not sacrificing the personal passion.
She will also share some personal tips on how to keep private projects alive between commercial jobs.

Afterwards together with Barbara Mitterer from studio citron she will talk about the animation industry in Vienna, how to survive as a self employed illustrator and animator and why it is so important to connect with other artists.

• Talk - Insights into the inner workings of Motion Design and Illustration

  Fri - 10:00 - room1

Elian Carsenat is founder and visionary entrepreneur; he serves as international consultant and is an experienced data scientist. He is passionate about the World’s cultures and languages and how what’s left of them impacts business, economy and development.
Elian founded NamSor, a piece of software to classify personal names by gender, country of origin or ethnicity. The big data tool can infer valuable data about 7 billion people, processing over one million names daily. With it, Elian and his team has helped countries reconnect with diaspora, attract FDIs, talents and jobs.
He co-founded GenderGapGrader, promoting gender diversity through data and APIs.
Elian invented the onomastic mille-feuille, a colorful representation of bio-cultural diversity among social groups.
Elias interests include IT and big data mining; text mining & corpus linguistics as well as banking, trading, compliance & risk management; Russia & high growth countries.

This transatlantic project by Dario Rodighiero, Eveline Wandl-Vogt, Elian and Gabriel Carsenat offers artistic visualizations using the open-source database COVID‑19 Open Research Dataset (CORD‑19; July 1, 2020; Allen Institute for AI); scientific articles are grouped by authors and analyzed with methods of Natural Language Processing.

The “Cartography of COVID-19” is a Network visualization as instrument for distant reading, a visual approach to explore large phenomena. It has no pretense to explain the phenomena but rather to make visible the effort of more than 80,000 scientists through their scientific production, totaling 170,000 articles, offering insights into a network of people and terms in a beautiful, interactive, freely accessible board.
“Chinese sea” is a colorful view of the cartography of COVID-19, from the angle of nationality / country of origin or ethnicity of scientists across 30 different subject clusters, showing the pre-eminence of Chinese names across all subject clusters. Their overall share in production of science is the large blue ‘sea’ making about ⅓ of the canvas. Apart from China, most countries have worked in silos and focused their effort on one single subject. So their combined production of science looks like a mountainous shore.
‘Chinese sea’ comes originally as an analogue board, increased with an Artivive Storytelling App. Download and try yourself!

• Talk - COVID19 Insights : Digging into a sea of knowledge

  Sat - 15:30 - room2

Barbara Mitterer is an Austrian animation director and illustrator. She has been working for over ten years in the fields of motion design and animation. Starting in Hamburg at a VFX and animation studio, she worked for several years as a freelance artist in Paris and is now based in Vienna where she founded Studio Citron. Vivid characters and smart storytelling play a vital role in her animations.

Barbara will talk about the importance of characters in her work. Showing some examples from her projects she will share her personal approach to storyboard development and visual narrative.

Afterwards together with Maria Kondratieva from YAY.MK she will talk about the animation industry in Vienna, how to survive as a self employed illustrator and animator and why it is so important to connect with other artists.

• Talk - Insights into the inner workings of Motion Design and Illustration

  Fri - 10:00 - room1

Dario is a scholar at the Harvard Metalab, a research unit hosted at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and dedicated to innovation in the arts and humanities. The Swiss National Science Foundation funds his position with two consecutive fellowships. His research examines the social dynamics of scientific communities for which he designed organizational charts and conference maps. His current projects focus on international collaborations and academic mobility. He holds a doctorate in science from EPFL and was a member of MIT, Sciences Po, and the European Commission, which recently appointed him as an external expert.

Network visualizations are instruments for distant reading, a visual approach to explore large phenomena. The Cartography of COVID-19 is about the scientific literature that has been produced in the last months to understand how the coronavirus affects society. The work has no pretense to explain the phenomena but rather to make visible the effort of scientists through their scientific production, totaling 170,000 articles on July 1, 2020.

• Talk - COVID19 Insights : Digging into a sea of knowledge

  Sat - 15:30 - room2

Cabeza Patata is a multidisciplinary studio specialising in character design. It was created by Katie Menzies and Abel Reverter in 2018 and has a focus on diversity and female empowerment within a world of playful characters, full of energy and positivity.

– We’ll go through 10 ‘tips’ for how to create a design studio; not too serious, more as a way of structuring the talk.

– First we explain our backgrounds and how we came together to create our studio.

– Through the talk we explain what motivates our work and go through some projects, showing some process and basis for different pieces over the 2 years of our studio.

– Finally we look to the future, at our current situation and what we’re working on now and hoping to look to in the future.

– The talk is light and fun but includes a lot of advice and things we’ve learnt and would like to share about our work and about the industry more generally.

• Talk - How to make a studio

  Fri - 14:30 - room1

Erin Sarofsky is the internationally heralded creative visionary regularly chosen by brand and entertainment titans to lead their most artful storytelling projects.

In 2009, Erin Sarofsky launched Sarofsky in Chicago’s booming West Loop neighborhood. Recognized internationally for brilliant design-driven production that is limited only by the imagination, Erin and her firm have forged longstanding relationships with proven leaders of the advertising and entertainment industries.

Under Erin’s leadership, Sarofsky is well known for creating gorgeous, innovative main title sequences for blockbuster movies and television series, including “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” “Guardians of the Galaxy,” “Ant-Man,” “Doctor Strange,” “Animal Kingdom,” “Shameless” “Community,” “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee,” and many others.

Over time, Erin’s artistry has expanded exponentially in every conceivable way, including in style and medium. Stylistically, she constantly breaks new ground as a live-action director. Recent examples include her mesmerizing macro imagery that sublimely introduces each episode of Animal Kingdom and her patent, iconic look brought to life for Jeep’s three-spot Release Your Renegade campaign. There’s also her signature, original short film piece written and directed for Apple, which earned acclaim from the brand’s audiences worldwide.
The art and conceptualization of main titles sequences is what draws viewers into their favorite shows. This talk will focus on that as well as the science and practical matters surrounding the genre.

At their best, main titles capture the tone of the show they are representing because their purpose is to transition the viewer from their own life into the world of the show. Every show has that unique thing about it that makes it stand apart from other shows and our job as main title designers is to find that insight and define a look/technique that further cements the concept.

This art form sits in an interesting part of our field and requires many different expertises; design, typography, ideation, short format narrative, visual effects, editorial, color treatment… and so on. And beyond that, it also requires other skill sets we rarely acknowledge such as legal, producer and client management support.

When the stars align, you can be part of making iconic imagery that transcends any other medium.

• Talk - Demystifying Main Title Sequences

  Fri - 16:00 - room1

Matthew Ward is the Cinematic Lead at Bungie where he provides creative direction and oversight on all cinematic content created for the DESTINY 2 video game franchise. Fueled by a passion for visual storytelling with over 20 years of experience in pre-visualization and digital cinematography, Ward’s career began by specializing in working directly with film directors and production designer to help realize their films through early 3D pre-visualization. His contributions span numerous live action and animated feature films working with big-budget, technically-driven film directors like George Lucas and Robert Zemeckis. As an independent filmmaker, Ward has produced and directed commercials, short films, and music videos for major recording artists including Toad the Wet Sprocket and CAKE.

Join us as we discuss Ward’s beginnings in the film industry and his experience in the early days of pre-visualization and motion capture, sharing stories of early forays into fan films, music videos, podcasting, video games and more. We’ll discuss creative advice and inspiration, along with Ward’s latest challenge; creative directing, communicating, and collaborating during a pandemic.

• Talk - Professional Profiles - in conversation with Brian Main

  Fri - 17:30 - room1

Tobi Trebeljahr has been working in the Games and Animation Industry since 2008. He lives and works in Leipzig, where he’s freelancing in Visual developent and trying to establish a studio with his collegue Carol Ratajczak.

I this talk i will go step by step through my process for creating fast and professional looking character Animation using Blender Grease Pencil.

• Talk - Animating a Knight in Blender Grease Pencil

  Sat - 10:00 - room1

Simon already created short, animated Movies since he was six years old. With his first career wish being a stage technician, Gaffer or Director of photography, he offered his help to local film schools and theatres before finding his true passion in computer animation. Before starting his career in the industry in 2018, Simon achieved a degree in Animation and Media Art at HTL Spengergasse in Vienna. Alongside his studies, he completed internships at ZDF and Pro7sat1puls4 gaining invaluable real life experience of the industry. In addition, Simon joined a team of artists from Disney, DreamWorks Animation, ILM, Sony, Blue Sky and Illumination working as Compositing Supervisor and Lighting Artist on animated short film, Being Good. The short premiered at CTN, also featuring at SIGGRAPH, IFCC, Artella, Artstation and Sketchfab as well as garnering recognition at CFIFF, Los Angeles Independent Film Festival Awards and Paris Art and Movie Awards. Simon has also worked for esteemed institutions such as CG Generalist at Animation Mentor and Lighting and Compositing Artist at Arx Anima.

Joining Jellyfish Pictures in February 2020, Simon has been working as a Lighting Artist for a DreamWorks Animation feature film.

Together with Manuel Reyes he shines a light on visual storytelling in animated movies and how light, colours and shadow is used to tell a story well and help viewers dive in and believe into a world for a few minutes.

• Talk - A Spotlight on Visual Storytelling

  Sat - 11:30 - room1

Manuel is an experienced CG supervisor with a career spanning over 15 years. With both a technical and artistic background, Manuel has a second to none-knowledge of the production pipeline. Manuel joined Jellyfish Pictures in 2016 as CG Supervisor on CBeebies animated pre-school show Bitz & Bob. His most recent credit includes DreamWorks Animation Holiday Special How to Train Your Dragon: Homecoming and is now working as VFX Supervisor on the DreamWorks Animation feature film currently in production at Jellyfish Pictures.
Starting his career as a 3D artist working specifically on commercials, Manuel progressed to work as a lead 3D generalist on Hiroku: Defenders of Gaia, a fully CG 90-minute feature film, which went on to be nominated for the Spanish Film Academy Goya Awards.
Shortly after this Manuel began work as CG and On Set Supervisor for CBeebies animated preschool show, Messy Goes to Okido. During this time Manuel also directed, produced and supervised his own short entitled Nouvelle Cuisine. To date the film has garnered 14 international awards including, Best Animation Short film at Sacramento Underground Film & Arts Festival and Best Animation Short Film for Children at ANIMA2017.

Together with Simon Blüthenkranz he shines a light on visual storytelling in animated movies and how light, colours and shadow is used to tell a story well and help viewers dive in and believe into a world for a few minutes.

• Talk - A Spotlight on Visual Storytelling

  Sat - 11:30 - room1

College and Masterclass at Graphics and Communicationdesign Leyserstrasse
Freelance Illustrator and concept artist since 2009. Working for advertising, games and movies.

Three Artists, three amazing renderings. In their talk Xi Ding, Erkan Karagoez and Thomas Moor discuss their different approaches to colouring and finishing the same character. They discuss the advantages of different techniques and guide the others though their unique process of rendering. An exchange among experts with a lot a tricks and tips.

• Talk - Digital Painting Techniques

  Sat - 13:00 - room1

Erkan Karagoez is a Vienna-based concept artist, Instructor & Art director with over a decade of experience working in the entertainment industry. He works mainly in the field of Games & Animation and is currently Art directing at Rare Earth Games.

Three Artists, three amazing renderings. In their talk Xi Ding, Erkan Karagoez and Thomas Moor discuss their different approaches to colouring and finishing the same character. They discuss the advantages of different techniques and guide the others though their unique process of rendering. An exchange among experts with a lot a tricks and tips.

• Talk - Digital Painting Techniques

  Sat - 13:00 - room1

Xi Ding grew up in Shanghai and lives in Vienna. He works as live caricature artist, character designer and illustrator. He has illustrated artworks for the film Klaus. He also teaches digital painting online. In his talk he will show you his analytical approach to digital 2D rendering. This approach is inspired by the methodology of 3D CG rendering and has its strength in certain aspects for digital painting. More importantly, you can gain a deep understanding of how light and shadow works through this approach.

Three Artists, three amazing renderings. In their talk Xi Ding, Erkan Karagoez and Thomas Moor discuss their different approaches to colouring and finishing the same character. They discuss the advantages of different techniques and guide the others though their unique process of rendering. An exchange among experts with a lot a tricks and tips.

• Talk - Digital Painting Techniques

  Sat - 13:00 - room1