Ilion at FMX 2008

Fmx it´s one of the most famous festivals in Europe, and this year Ilion participated with two conferences/talks about Panet 51 feature film.

		Rigging at Ilion: More than a Comic Strip
		Kai Stavginski, Character TD, Ilion Animation Studios
		Pablo San Roman , HR Director , Ilion Animation Studios
		The task of the rigging department is creating a connection between  the modeling and animation departments.  The initially static models are articulated so all movements and emotions required by the story can be expressed effectively. This involves a wide range of challenges, starting with simple props like pens and newspapers to complex characters that require hundreds of animation controls and months of work for defining aesthetically pleasing deformations in any pose. Pipelines and tools need to be developed for each individual project. This is especially true for a project like "Planet 51", where we needed to create over 300 unique characters and hundreds of props, all of them necessary to give the computer generated world the required depth to believably tell the story. In this talk we are going to give an outline of the process we developed to be able to efficiently generate rigs for a diverse range of individually designed characters. Kai Stavginski began as a generalist TD in the animation industry. From 2004, Kai has worked at commercials and animation studios, developing character rigging tools and pipelines. In 2006, joined Ilion Studios taking on the role of Character TD of the studio´s first feature film, "Planet 51". Pablo San Roman worked for US multinational companies for over 7 years. In March 2006, he became the Human Resources Director at Ilion Animation Studios. Ilion Animation Studios was started in 2002 by the founders of Pyro Studios, one of the world’s leading video game developers. Situated in the outskirts of Madrid, Ilion was founded to create state-of-the-art computer animated movies for theatrical release around the world, using purpose-built technology enabling it to compete on the highest level with other leading animation studios, and currently has its first 3D CGI movie in production, “PLANET 51”, as well as a second project already in the development stage.

		Animation at Ilion Studios: Sequence analysis
		Fernando Moro, Animation Supervisor, Ilion Animation Studios
		Pablo San Roman , HR Director , Ilion Animation Studios
		There will be a 2 hours animation session with the  Animation Supervisor at Ilion Studios, (Fernando Moro)  and HR Director, (Pablo San Roman) in which all of you will have the opportunity to go together with them through the following subjects: - Modern animation: a short opening talking about the animation nowadays. -Animation at Ilion: Fernando Moro will introduce Ilion as one of the most important studios in the world at present, and will talk about how we do animation at Ilion, patterns followed, quality required, the animators day to day work and what do we expect from them. -Sequence Analyisis: the speech will be illustrated and commented with samples of the sequences we are working on at the moment, that we consider that are very representative and of a superb quality. - Company vision and Animators career path: after Planet 51 there will be a solid industry for animators. - Questions / Meet & Greet: there will be time enough to go through audience doubts or comments and talk specifically about Ilion recruiting plans with Pablo San Roman. Isaak

One Year...

This week it was a special day for me and three more animators, because we have one year working in Ilion Animation Studios on feature film Planet 51. We start to work on it the same day and now we want to celebrate it as the first day.

From left to right we are Isaak Fernandez / Qcho Sanz / Pako Bagur and Christian Dan, all great friends and great animators, it´s a pleasure meet this guys and all the rest of the animation department.

Thanks for this first year!

Isaak