Computer Animation Festival

Creator(s):
Mathilde Dugardin
Orane Laffra
Hugo de Magalhaes
Wassim El Hammami

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):
Pôle 3D

Synopsis: Deep into her dreams, Ava wanders through the mysterious walls of her childhood dollhouse.

Country(s) of Origin: France

Creator(s):
Chien Huey Yeow

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):
The One Academy

Synopsis: "A Folded Wish" is a graduation short film created by 19 students who majored in the Digital Animation and Illustration courses in The One Academy of Communication Design. Inspired by an ancient Japanese legend, "A Folded Wish" explores the influence of a wish shared by a pair of twin sisters, believing that the Gods would save them from their illness if they folded one thousand origami cranes. Referred to as 'Senbazuru' in Japanese, it is traditionally practised in hopes of recovering from an illness or as a symbol of peace at war memorials. Set in the 1940s during the Shōwa era (post World War II) in Japan, the story laments the incurable tuberculosis that devastated the world. Many patients could only remain at home until they succumbed to the illness. This historical fact was used as the underlying background for the film.

Country(s) of Origin: Malaysia

Creator(s):
Nat Yoswatananont

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):
Igloo Studio

Synopsis: We would like to present the aesthetic of Northern Thai culture in the past during the 1980s - 1990s. The story will be told through the eyes of 2 children who grew up during the age of Accelerated Rural Electricity Establishment, especially in the northern region of Thailand. You would see some notable cultural symbols and detail-oriented Thai art in the movie, such as Northern-Thai textile, Northern-Thai food, rural market, and Wichianmat cat. We used mixed techniques between 3D and 2D animation in order to create a unique look that is different from any animation style all over the world. As we intend to display the charisma and uniqueness of Thai animation and pave the way for this specific style in the global market, which we’ve called ’Thai Anime.’

Country(s) of Origin: Thailand

Creator(s):
Nata Metlukh

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):
Independent

Synopsis: A film featuring social awkwardness in everyday life.

Country(s) of Origin: United States of America

Creator(s):
Michael Lim

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):
The One Academy

Synopsis: Their job, their duty, their vision.

Country(s) of Origin: Malaysia

Creator(s):
Mohammad Danial Atoofi

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):
Delzaar Studio

Synopsis: "Farewell" is about a historical tragedy that happens about October 10, 680. when Hussein-ibn-Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, refused Yazid's demand for allegiance to his caliphate (kingdom). so Yazid's army surrounds Hussein-ibn-Ali and all of his family in a desert called Karbala and doesn't let them drink water for about 3 days! after that in a day called Ashura Yazid's army fight with Hussein-ibn-Ali and the 72 men that defending him and his family. they killed him and all of his loyal men brutally including his 6-month-old baby! Hussein-ibn-Ali (PBUH) sacrificed his life and his family's life for the sake of the truth and justice and to show the true face of Yazid and his men to the world. This animation is about the last moments, before the martyrdom of Hussein-ibn-Ali when he says farewell to his sister "Zaynab" and his 3 years old daughter "Roghaye". We all know that in many media they will talk bad things about Islam and Muslims but the main side of Islam is peace, brotherhood, equality, justice, and to love each other. something like ISIS has nothing to do with Islam and what prophet Muhammad teaches us. ISIS is an ideology that will come from Yazid and his dynasty, sadly we can see those harmful thoughts in all history and in every religion and every turn of history. we should fight with those ISIS-like thoughts with proper attractive media like animations and games, and that's why we make "Farewell". Mahatma Gandhi: ”I learned from Hussain how to achieve victory while being oppressed. My faith is that the progress of Islam does not depend on the use of sword by its believers, but the result of the supreme sacrifice of Hussain.” This animation was made with real-time rendering techniques by unreal engine.

Country(s) of Origin: South Africa

Creator(s):
Anna Szöllősi

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):
Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design

Synopsis: „Helfer” is about a young woman who is struggling with anxiety and recurring nightmares, which she wants to end. She seeks out a helper, who offers an alternative solution, but in the process she must confront her greatest fears. The film details their relationship in a surreal world through symbolic events. The story is based on personal events, portrayed between reality and a dream-like world. The film is a digital rotoscope animation, which visually uses minimalistic elements, so that way all the focus goes on the meta-communication between the two characters. The film's white-dark royal blue colour scheme pairing is reminiscent of Chinese porcelain, which reflects upon fragility, as the topic itself is fragile. The background in which the story takes place has no walls or limits, therefore it creates the illusion of being in an infinite, empty space, where the helper is the only one, who the questions can be asked from.

Country(s) of Origin: Hungary

Creator(s):
Andrew Mcnally
Wian van Bergen

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):
Director
Art Director

Synopsis: Our overarching goal with Isaura, on a technical level, was to render all the shots directly in UnrealEngine (using Sequencer) in order to shorten our feedback loop and increase the number of iterations we get to spend on each shot, and to build a pipeline that can be used for other development & commercial projects. Isaura is a stylized 2D animation that relied heavily on separating complex hand-painted background artwork into layers in Photoshop, which was placed on cards or projected as textures onto 3D geometry and eventually imported into Unreal Engine via our “asset packages”. The scenes were built in 3D using Autodesk Maya. We created custom tools to handle importing and exporting between Unreal Engine and Maya utilizing USD at its core. This enabled us to seamlessly transfer cameras, geometry, animation, and textures to Unreal without much manual setup. While our aim was to render all the elements together for any given shot we did anticipate running into some situations where we needed to render certain elements separately, either to achieve a specific effect (in comp) or to overcome some technical limitation. We used the Foundry Nuke to add the final finishing and to add bells and whistles where needed.

Country(s) of Origin: South Africa

Creator(s):
Camille GUILLOT
Fanny HAGDAHL SÖREBO
Aleksandra KRECHMAN
Sarah NACIRI
Morgane RAVELONARY
Valentine ZHANG

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):
N/A

Synopsis: Loukoum can’t stand the passage of Time anymore. She decides to go face it in person and free herself from its control. But can you really get rid of Time itself?

Country(s) of Origin: France

Creator(s):
Arthur NOLLET
Maxime FARAUD
Mégane HIRTH
Emma VERSINI
Julien CHEN
Pauline CHARPENTIER

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):
N/A

Synopsis: In the Nordic Islands, Maïja, a little girl, waits for the return of her father, away at sea. But the weather is worsening and her father is not coming back.

Country(s) of Origin: France

Creator(s):
Toby Auberg

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):
N/A

Synopsis: Water then food. Agriculture then industry. Old then new. Critical then extra. Simple to complex. Concrete to abstract. Dirt to clouds. Real to unreal.

Country(s) of Origin: France

Creator(s):
Jose Yañez

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):
-

Synopsis: Raíces is a 3d short film that took almost 9 years of development and production. Since 2011 it began as a simple idea and slowly grew into a story worth being told. It expresses duality as a force that leads to recognize what unites all humans beings in essence, the very roots that we all share despite every ones religion, cultural ideas, etc. Now, more than ever we must see what unites us rather than what separates us. More than a story is a call for inner self-exploration in these times of great change. We are all part of THAT which makes this life and every moment possible.

Country(s) of Origin: Colombia

Creator(s):

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):

Synopsis: In Redefine Obstacles, a car outruns a pinball on its home turf - a pinball machine. This short was conceptualized and developed over a ten-week timeframe under the mentorship of The Mill New York. Inspired by 80s style arcade games, we utilized real time effects and mixed traditionally modeled assets with procedurally generated assets. It combines real time rendering in Unreal Engine 4 with live action footage to create a mock car commercial.

Country(s) of Origin: United States of America

Creator(s):
Yoko Yuki

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):
none

Synopsis: Music video by Japanese musician Shimizubonno. Various people, objects, and animals from different times are rhythmically enumerated. They exist in this world very equally.People, animals, flowers, streets, now and the past, all are equally flowing and Bonnnou(Kleshas) will never disappear.

Country(s) of Origin: Japan

Creator(s):
Harry Chen

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):
SVA BFA Computer Art

Synopsis: The story takes place on a deserted planet, where everything is abandoned due to the lack of life. However, there is a CORE(the giant cube) that sits somewhere far from the protagonist. The CORE, in this case, can bring the green plants back to the planet once it’s revived (It’s in hibernation by default, and can be revived with the key). This project is about showing the journey of our protagonist reaching the CORE, showing him walking through a series of landscapes & city ruins, and finally reaches the CORE(the giant cube) and revives it.

Country(s) of Origin: United States of America

Creator(s):
Aleksander Sakowski

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):
Sakowski Studios

Synopsis: If the futures from the Matrix and the Terminator had a nineties anime love child, Skynut is it. The Skynut video is a collaboration between The Gentle Men (Cr1TiKaL aka Penguinz0 and Troy McKubre - Solstate) and Sakowski Studios. The Gentle Men’s outrageous take on humanities fate required a cunning visual execution. While the animation style throws you into a 2D neon apocalypse the narrative is left to lurk in the depths of your subconscious. Rejoining forces with Linhan Ye (Atheums Way), we started the animation as a two man team eventually expanding to a small but talented skeleton crew. Skynut is designed to maximise the limits of motion comic techniques using a combination of limited-frame character art, epic volumetric backgrounds and slick motion graphic compositing showered in cyber-neon cinematography. A love letter to the legendary animes of the last three decades, Skynut is a homage to the likes of Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, Ninja Scroll, Samurai Champloo and The Animatrix to name a few; Combining all your anime war-porn fantasies into one epic audio-visual feast.

Country(s) of Origin: New Zealand

Creator(s):
Di Lu

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):
Ringling College of Art & Design

Synopsis: This is a film about a character gets sad after being called "super generic" by an art teacher and goes to extremes to get noticed. The note he got and the action he took in the film were representing the relationship between the students and the instructors, which is also how the feedback and note dressing process looks like sometime in the industry.

Country(s) of Origin: United States of America

Creator(s):
Noya Mizrahie

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):
degree

Synopsis: A classic animated video about the incarnations of a personal adventure story told before bed by my grandfather and passed by word of mouth to the entire family – and everyone remembers the story differently.

Country(s) of Origin: Israel

Creator(s):
Frederic Siegel
Benjamin Morard

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):
Team Tumult

Synopsis: Leaving for his dream job, a satellite technician keeps solitude at bay by constantly texting with his old friends. After neglecting his duties, a satellite leaves its orbit which causes the world's network to collapse.

Country(s) of Origin: Switzerland

Creator(s):
Michael Lim

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):
The One Academy

Synopsis: The Casio calculator watch has a very strong cult following as a techno-retro fashion icon. This film has strong pop culture references of the late 80s, and also showcases how people during that era imagined the future (year 2020) to look like.

Country(s) of Origin: Malaysia

Creator(s):
Helena Hilario

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):
Stratostorm

Synopsis: Umbrella was created and produced independently in Brazil with a small team of artists and it is the first-ever full character-and-story-driven animated short that was rendered using Corona Render.

Country(s) of Origin: Brazil

Creator(s):
Ivan Nikolaev

Studio/Organization Affiliation(s):
ZenArt VR

Synopsis: Zen Universe is a fully immersive VR experience, based on photogrammetry. We scan real life places and turn them into real and fictional destinations, enabling you to freely explore time and space. Whether it's the most famous landmarks you never thought you'll see, or places of fiction you've always dreamt of visiting, the power of VR will take you there. Our state-of-the-art technology raises the industry bar in realism, entertainment value, and interactivity. Take your picks from a library of real and unreal experiences, developed in Unreal Engine4. Whether it’s the most famous landmarks you’ve never dreamt of visiting or places of fiction you’ve always dreamt of, the power of VR will take you there. Our state-of-the-art technology raises the industry bar in realism, entertainment, and interactivity. Explore the many worlds of ZenArt VR to marvel, learn or play. Day & Night Cycle Discover beautiful virtual worlds as they change before your very eyes. The Zen Universe day & night cycle and dynamic lighting technology give an accurate representation of the effects of time on the environment, but also allow us to create a larger-than-life movie-like atmosphere for you to immerse yourself in. Real-life Explore the world’s most renowned landmarks without leaving the comfort of your home. Our team travels there for you and spends countless hours recreating the locations as accurately as possible so you can feel like you’re actually there. The line between reality and virtual simulation has never been so narrow. ZenART VR is on the cutting edge of 3D-scanning technology. Our wide range of surfaces, textures, and materials, not only look stunning at first glance but hold up on close inspection. We use powerful tools to render photoreal images in real-time, while our post-processing technology allows us to put the finishing touches for Hollywood-grade image quality.

Country(s) of Origin: Bulgaria