Wellington Trip

Porter here,

Recently I was offered the opportunity to go to AnimFX, a games and visual effects conference held in Wellington. Media Design School was kind enough to afford me this excellent opportunity to meet and greet some of the most creative people in New Zealand, as well as some awesome guest speakers.

I left Auckland around 8:00pm on a Wednesday, because the very next day at 9:00am, I had a Game Industry Master Class. Basically, this class was all about the business of games, contact gathering and management and what the latest trends in games that publishers are interested in. I really enjoyed the classes and the speakers had quite a bit of information to give. The speakers were:

Joseph Olin (President of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences), Jim Simmons (Producer at Sidhe), Sean Kauppinen (CEO of International Digital Entertainment Agency)and Christian Svennson (Corporate Officer and Vice President of Strategic Planning and Business Development). I felt a little outclassed, just being a 3D Tutor and not something like Mike Porter (Creative Director in Charge of Education, Digital Creativity and Conflict Resolution Mentor to the Stars) Oh well...

The flight out of Auckland went off without a hitch, however the blustery conditions in Wellington made the landing a little more hairy than I would have liked. Nothing like the sideways landing I had in Amsterdam, but not as smooth as I would have wished.

MDS was extremely kind in booking me at a very nice place called the Museum Hotel. I was told I was sharing a room with another tutor and the first thing that came to my mind was "I Love Luci" and twin beds side by side in a small room. What I was shocked to find, was a wonderful apartment with my own "wing". Later I realized (realised to my Kiwi friends) that the room was to serve a double purpose. More on that later.

Below left is the Museum Hotel and the two pictures on the right are the conference room and a portion of the lobby. The picture in the middle is where I spent my entire Friday morning writing furiously, trying to get every bit of knowledge that the guys were very gracious to part with.

Thursday night, I found out the real reason we had an apartment and not a regular hotel room. Paul Millett had invited several guests up for beer and conversation. We had a pretty good turn out where I met Jeff Okun is a visual effects supervisor and has worked on movies such as "The Last Samurai" and "Blood Diamond". Jeff is also Chair of the Visual Effects Society Awards Committe and is on the board of directors for the Gnomon School of Visual Arts. A heavy hitter for sure. Has to be a jerk right? Wrong, awesome guy and we had a great conversation about space, sci-fi and why our brains try to help us, even to the point where it will hide stuff from us that we need to see. I also met three very nice people from Massive Software, the guys and gals that had a hand in the visual effects of Lord of the Rings, whose adaptive AI crowd software was used for the massive (get it?) battles in Middle Earth. These guys were nice enough to send me a demo, which I have yet to download, but will do so soon. I am horrible with names and several of the other people escaped my grab for business cards. I am sorry if I left you out!

Jos Ruffell was the host for the event (Above left). He is one of the guys from Sidhe Interactive and was kind enough to facilitate a great guest speaker for MDS. More about that speaker later in the post. This was on Friday and the event moved from the Museum Hotel to Te Papa. This was a wonderful venue to have the keynote speeches. The picture above middle is a Māori group that started the ceremony with song and speeches and the finale was a lady with a booming voice telling us to follow along to a song in Māori. She was awesome! You can see her in the middle picture on the far right, back row. After the speech, the Keynote speakers pressed noses with the Māori group, which is a traditional greeting.

After this, the keynote began. I have to say, my three favorite speakers are pictured below. Richard Taylor on the left, is the man in charge at Weta Workshops. Click the link, you will be glad you did. In the middle is Jeffery Okun, introduced above and last but not least is John Stevenson. His keynote was so powerful that I pestered him to no end to come speak to the students at MDS. He did and they were moved. He was a co-director on Kung-Fu Panda, but also worked on Dark Crystal and Labyrinth as well as many more productions, cartoons and movies. He is unabashedly not politically correct, but is also extremely focused and passionate about being the best you can be and giving 110% to everything you do. Thanks Jos for hooking this up and thank you John for being one of the nicest people I have had the pleasure of meeting.

After these keynotes, there were several others that had to do with games, however the guys giving the keynotes were also the guys that I spent an entire day with, the previous day, so I spent some time looking around Te Papa and taking pictures. This is a small sample. The cool this here is there is a "holograph" playing on a glass panel. This allows you to see the actors projected on the model of the boat in the middle. It was almost a "Help me Obiwan, you are my only hope" moment. It was a very cool effect.

The left and right side pictures were from inside the Museum Hotel lobby and the middle picture is on the way to the Sidhe party on the docks. I would like to show more pictures but it appears I have used up my limit or something. Weird. Anyway, it was a wonderful trip, I met many cool people and I am still trying to write all my emails for all the contacts I made. Whoever painted that Willy Nelson, nailed it! The larger picture is even more amazing.

Wellington Harbour, Te Papa and a beautiful church up on a hill. Wellington was a very cool place to visit and I hope to make it back there during Christmas holiday.

Huge thanks to Mario Wynands, Jos Ruffell and all the awesome people that put AnimFX together. I hope to see you all next year!