‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,’ ‘Dreams,’ and ‘Klaus’ presentations confirmed for upcoming animation, VFX, games and immersive storytelling conference.
Jesper, voiced by Jason Schwartzman, in Segio Pablos' 'Klaus,' being released by Netflix this holiday season.
VIEW Conference director Dr. Maria Elena Gutierrez has just shared with AWN that she has confirmed a great new set of top speakers for the upcoming VIEW 2019 conference, including Oscar-winning director Peter Ramsey, Media Molecule co-founder and game guru Siobhan Reddy and veteran designer, writer and director Sergio Pablos, who will present their work on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Dreams and Klaus respectively. VIEW 2019 runs October 21-25 in Torino, Italy.
“I’m delighted to announce that Spider-Man’s Peter Ramsey, the first African American director to win an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, will speak at VIEW 2019,” Dr. Gutierrez notes. “Also among our great speakers confirmed for this year are Siobhan Reddy, Media Molecule co-founder, a powerful woman in the games industry, and Sergio Pablos, who is creating a beautiful and funny 2D animated feature in Madrid, Klaus, for Netflix. We’ll see Image Engine’s dragons from Game of Thrones, Spencer Cook’s Godzilla animation, Todd Hue’s art direction for Apex Legends, and Sebastien Hue’s concept art. And we’re bringing back four of our most interesting speakers with new, exciting material to share: Josh Holmes, Rob Bredow, Tom Wujec, and Alex Williams. I love the quality and diversity in this year’s program.”
Director Peter Ramsey received Oscar, BAFTA, and Annie Awards for Sony Picture Animation’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. All told, the box office blockbuster received 62 awards and 46 nominations this year. Ramsey previously directed DreamWorks Animation’s Rise of the Guardians, was a story artist on several feature films, and has credits as a second unit director and illustrator.
Siobhan Reddy, co-founder and studio director for the UK-based Media Molecule, was one of Fortune Magazine’s 10 powerful women in gaming in 2014. Her company has just launched the powerful online game creation playground experience, Dreams, a platform where users build, share and interact with game, characters and music experiences shaped by their own imaginations. Before moving into the role of studio director, she was executive producer on Airblade, Burnout3, Takedown, and LittleBigPlanet.
Sergio Pablos is currently finishing up post-production and serves as the director, producer, and writer for Netflix’s hilarious and charming 2D animated feature, Klaus. An Annecy Festival sneak peek of Klaus footage left no doubt the film is both stunning and engaging, a “must see” this holiday when it’s released. The prolific artist is a former Disney animator (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Tarzan, Treasure Planet), was executive producer and writer for Despicable Me, a writer on Smallfoot, animation advisor for Underdogs, and character designer on Rio.
Executive creative director and head of Industrial Light & Magic, Rob Bredow, will present four decades of storytelling in Star Wars, highlighting innovative visual effects created during that studio’s 40 years of work one of the most successful film franchises of all time. In addition to his executive role, Bredow was visual effects supervisor on Solo: A Star Wars Story and will be available to sign his book, “Making Solo: A Star Wars Story.” Bredow has been a featured speaker at VIEW many times over the years and he always shares fantastic, never-before-seen materials in his presentations. His talk on Star Wars history should prove to be memorable.
Tom Wujec, another accomplished VIEW veteran attendee, is a multiple TED speaker, facilitator, and design thinker who guides teams via “Wicked Problem Solving” to create inventive, exciting, and successful products, services, and solutions. The technology pioneer and former Autodesk Fellow has written five books and was a founding professor at Singularity University. Today, his consultancy helps organizations design technology transformation and plan for the future of work.
Image Engine visual effects supervisor Thomas Schelesny and animation supervisor Jason Snyman will present their work on Daenerys’ Dragons in the final season of Game of Thrones. The two artists have a wealth of experience with live-action visual effects for broadcast and feature films. Their work on GOT is some of the most compelling creature effects work on episodic projects that has ever been done.
Josh Holmes is the co-founder and CEO of Midwinter Entertainment, an independent game studio working on Scavengers, its first multiplayer survival shooter. Holmes is the former studio head and creative director for the Halo franchise at 343 Industries, and former producer and game designer at Electronic Arts, where he co-created two franchises: NBA Street and the DefJam fighting series.
Spencer Cook was senior animation supervisor on Warner Bros.’ sci-fi adventure hit, Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Currently an animation director at Double Negative, Cook previously was an animation supervisor at Framestore, where he led teams working on Alien Covenant and Beauty and the Beast. He received a BAFTA nomination for his work as an animation director on Spider-Man 3 while working at Sony Pictures Imageworks.
Video Game Artist Todd Hue was most recently art director for Respawn’s highly successful game Apex Legends. His 16 years in the game industry include contributions to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2, Tony Hawk’s ProSkater: Underground, Titanfall and Titanfall 2. For the latter two, he was lead environment artist and environment art director, respectively.
Alex Williams is head of animation at Escape Studios. He has more than 25 years’ experience in the animation industry and has film credits on The Lion King, Robots, The Road to El Dorado, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and The Iron Giant. He has worked and taught in higher education for 20 years.
Sébastien Hue is a concept artist, matte painter, and illustrator who focuses on environment design and science fiction. He has created concept art and matte paintings for publishers, game developers, and feature films.
This new set of speakers joins previously announced award-winning keynote speakers Brad Bird (Incredibles2, The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol, and Tomorrowland), composer Michael Giacchino (Spider-Man: Far From Home, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Incredibles 2, Up), long-time Pixar filmmaker and production designer Ralph Eggleston (Incredibles 2, Inside Out, Wall-E, For the Birds) and director Dean DeBlois (all three How to Train Your Dragon films). Also keynoting the conference are industry leaders Changhan (CH) Kim, CEO of PUBG Corporation, Maureen Fan, CEO and co-founder of Emmy- and Annie-award-winning Baobab Studios, and renowned scientist Daniel Zajfman, president of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
The international VIEW Conference, Italy’s premiere event for Computer Graphics, Interactive and Immersive Storytelling, Animation, Visual Effects, Games, and VR, AR and Mixed Reality, brings top professionals from those fields to the beautiful baroque city of Turin, Italy for a week of talks, presentations, workshops, B2Bs and recruitment.
This year’s conference takes place from October 21 to 25 in the exciting new OGR venue. Registration is now open.
https://www.viewconference.it/pages/registration/
For more information:
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/viewconference
Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/channel/UChGdAnZQE6UcH_OQ5DNFW_Q
Twitter: @viewconference
Source: VIEW Conference 2019
Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
