Highlights from the 2011 Digital Arts Festival The City of Redmond and Redmond Arts Commission once again put on the 2011 Digital Arts Festival which was held at DigiPen Institute of Technology and featured workshops, presentations, motion capure sessions, interactive installations and a beautiful digital art exhibit. See below for the program details: Dancing with Light Witness an out of body experience like none other as Melissa dances along herself in this beautiful mixed media project. This five minute performance is a spectacular merger of dance, animation and motion capture. Melissa Farrar, the performer and choreographer of the work started working on the piece back in April of '09 when Digital Double approached her with the idea. Collaborators Jordan Gottlieb (www.jordangottlieb.com and Amir Stone (developer of Digital Graffiti) jumped on board to assist with animation and effects Artist: Melissa Farrar Details: March 18th & March 19th at 5:30 pm & 7:30pm Admission: FREE Produced by Digital Double Registration is free: click here Digital Graffiti One of the most innovative and captivating pieces from last year's Digital Arts Festival was Amir Stone's Digital Graffiti, a digital painting program that allowed attendees to pick up a light stick, wave it around and make markings on a 14 foot screen (via a high-def 6000 lumen projector). The piece brought new meaning to the term "digital art" as it combined dance, play, collaborative design & technology to create beautiful and compelling imagery. Well guess what: It's back once more this year, so don't miss your chance to play with this incredible work of art!! Artist: Amir Stone Details: March 19th All day Admission: FREE Produced by Digital Double Registration is free: click here From Motion to Music, Presented by Organic Motion Organic Motion is responsible for having created the first commercially available markerless motion capture system, and through this technology, new and diverese innovations have been made possible. One such innovation was created by students at the University of Florida. The application allows attendees to step into the capture volume and become a virtual performer and play with virtual instruments. Artist: You! :) Details: March 18th from 5:30-9:00 pm & March 19th from 1:30-9:00pm Admission: FREE Booth produced by Organic Motion Registration is free: click here Joshua Homnick, The Art of Filmmaking Joshua Homnick is an independent filmmaker that has been around the world making films, commercials and music videos for companies such as Nike, Samsung, MTV, Ebay and many others. His eclectic body of work is a testament to the inherent diversity of our medium as digital artists and the cultures around the world that participate in the creative process. Joshua will be talking about this interaction, give us glimpses into his work and process and talk about where he believes film and entertainment are headed. This will the Friday's opening guest speaker, followed by a reception with refreshments for all speakers and attendees. Artist: Joshua Homnick Details: March 18th 6:00pm-7:30pm Admission: FREE Registration is free: click here Artist Website Chris Taylor, Entering a New Era of Gaming It is indeed, the man responsible for Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, Dungeon Siege, Space Siege and many other great games for XBOX, PC and the PlayStation. Chris Taylor is the owner and president of Gas Powered Games, a local gaming studio that specializes in producing AAA smash hit titles. Chris will be the first presenter on Saturday morning March 19th at 9am. He will be talking about the future of games as the competitive landscape has changed dramatically with new and innovative hardware devices and technologies that have been introduced to the market. And that's not all! Chris will be signing and giving away twenty copies of Space Siege. The winners will be picked at random from a list of all those that have registered for the event through this website. So hurry and register now! You must be in attendance to get your prize. Artist: Chris Taylor Details: March 19th 9:00-10:00am Admission: FREE Registration is free: click here Company Website Steven Stahlberg, Master Class in Digital Illustration Steven Stahlberg is a world-renowned and award winning digital artist who's work you may have seen published in a variety of online and printed digital art publications. Steven will be giving a master class on the art of digital illustration. When illustrating, Steven works in 2D and 3D and so this is your chance to get a behind the scenes look at some of the techniques Steven uses when producing his beautiful work. One of Steven's passions is the human body and so he will also be talking extensively about human anatomy and the important role it plays in his work and in the arts overall. Artist: Steven Stahlberg Details: March 19th 11:00am-12:00pm Admission: FREE Registration is free: click here Artist Website Free Motion Capture Sessions! Ever dream of being like those Hollywood actors that get their movement captured onto a CG character? Well, now’s your chance! Digital Double will be teaming up with Organic Motion to set up a motion capture volume right at the festival just for the weekend of the event so that attendees can get a chance to jump in the space and get themselves motion captured for free! But please note, capture sessions will only take place on Saturday morning. So be there or be square! Once capture sessions are over, the same booth and volume will be used for "Motion to Music", an opportunity for attendees to step into the capture volume and play virtual instruments with the movement of their bodies. Note: For best results participants should be over 4 feet tall and wearing dark form-fitting clothes (pants and sweater is fine; skirts, dresses and shorts or baggy pants are not). Artist: You! :) Details: March 19th 9:00am-1:00pm Admission: FREE Registration is free: click here Company Website John Tynes, From Words to Pixels John Scott Tynes, also known as Rev, is a writer and game designer in Seattle. He currently is a Lead Designer at Microsoft Game Studios creating original downloadable games for Xbox Live Arcade. John founded Pagan Publishing and Armitage House and has worked for Wizards of the Coast, Atlas Games, Steve Jackson Games, Daedalus Games, Chaosium, Acclaim, Bungie, Salon, McSweeney's Online, The Stranger, The Escapist, Tablet, and many other companies and publications. Come listen to John speak about the ways that games tell stories and how the best gaming stories are the ones players tell themselves. Artist: John Tynes Details: March 19th 1:00-2:30pm Admission: FREE Registration is free: click here Artist Website James Oliverio, Music in the Digital Age James Oliverio is a multi-Emmy award winner, musician, composer, musical inventor, educator and producer. He has served as Founding Director of the Digital Worlds Institute at the University of Florida since January 2001, with full professorships in Digital Arts & Sciences and in Music. His work in internationally-distributed performing and digital arts has been featured on CNN International and the BBC. James will be speaking about music in the digital age and the unique challenges musicians are facing and the innovative solutions rising in this field of music and technology. Artist: James Oliverio Details: March 19th 3:00-4:00pm Admission: FREE Registration is free: click here Artist Website Ryan Woodward, Taking you behind the scenes Ryan Woodward is an accomplished animator and storyteller. You may have seen some of his work in movies such as: The Iron Giant, Ironman 2, Where the Wild Things Are (2009 film), Cowboys and Aliens (2011). The list could go on. Most recently Ryan produced and animated his own short film called "Thought of You", one of Ryan's most breathtaking works of animation and winner of the Golden Pencil Award. Come see the film and listen to him talk about his process and techniques used to produce this beautiful work. Artist: Ryan Woodward Details: March 19th 4:30-5:30pm Admission: FREE Registration is free: click here Artist Website Bay Raitt, The Art of Valve Indeed it is, the man responsible for modeling Gollum from Lord of the Rings and also the one credited for having popularized the term and technique edge looping, a technique now common among all 3D artists. Where is Bay now? Bay is now a Senior Artist at Valve, and has worked on the Half Life and Left4Dead franchises. Come listen to Bay talk about "The Art of Valve" as he gives you a behind the scenes look at the cool art Valve artist have been so busy creating and what YOU can do to get your work in their games. Artist: Bay Raitt Details: March 19th 6:00-7:30pm Admission: FREE Registration is free: click here Artist Website 2D or not 2D Film Night, Best of show by Tony White Tony White is the founder of the 2D or not 2D animation festival which took place earlier this year. The festival welcomes submissions by a variety of 2D and 3D animators around the world which attendees get to watch at the beautiful IMAX theatres. 2D or not 2D has agreed to assemble the best of show and feature them for an animated short-film night as the closing event for our festival here in Redmond! So if you missed the the 2D or not 2D festival earlier this year, this is your chance to watch some of the best animated cartoons and shortfilms that came out of the event. An event not to be missed! Artist: Tony White Presents Details: March 19th 7:30-9:00pm Admission: FREE Registration is free: click here www.2dornot2d.org JURORS, for the 2011 Digital Art Competition Juror: BJ Becker www.bjbecker.net BJ is a seasoned oil painter, master colorist and esteemed member of the DigiPen faculty. BJ spends most of his time training the new generation of digital artists in the ways of classical painting, sculpture and composition, so his keen eye and experience will bring great value to the works selected. Juror: Abbott Smith Black Smith Knitting Abbott is a veteran educator and illustrator with degrees in art and animation and a Master's in Illustration from Syracuse University. Abbott was the former Associate Dean of Art and Animation at DigiPen Institute of Technology, where he helped build the BFA program and curriculum from the ground up. He is a passionate artist, writer and educator and most recently has become a very accomplished knitwear designer and instructor. Juror: Royal Winchester www.royalskeys.com Royal is a phenomenal digital 3D artist and anatomy enthusiast. His primary tools include Zbrush and 3DS Max but is always experimenting with the latest and greatest tools. Royal got into the arts after concluding a career in physics and aviation. It's no surprise that he was soon after recruited by Microsoft as their Technical Director on the award winning Flight Sim. Now Royal has been busy working with Microsoft's research team on devleoping new technology and content for the Kinect console. Juror: Ivan Simoncini Artist's Website Ivan is stellar level designer and artist. He currently works at Valve Software where he gets to design some of the coolest games out on the market. Ivan's experience as an artist dates back 17 years when he began a career as a musician where he did some independant work, then theatre and even film. His experience as a level designer began in 1998 when he got to develop a series of Unreal Deathmatches for PC game magazine which eventually lead him into an award winning career as he got to work with Valve on Alien Swarm, Left4Dead, TeamFortress 2 and most recently Portal 2, a game for which he's been in charge of the bulk of the art direction and level design. As you can imagine, we are extremly thrilled to have Ivan be part of the Jury. AND LOTS MORE !