SIGGRAPH 2005 - Monday

Lil and Jen's Excellent SIGGRAPH Adventures Follow Lil and Jen as they take you on a first-class adventure into this year's SIGGRAPH conference

Day Two ... Monday August 1, 2005

LiL Here ... Today we saw the Keynote Address with George Lucas as the Keynote Speaker and the Awards Ceremony. Mr. Lucas had some interesting things to say. Among the highlights was the acknowledgement that he has completed his journey on the Star Wars movies. But, we can look forward to his new animated TV series "Clone Wars." George said that he wanted to continue on the digital cinema path using television, as it is "more fun, less stress and more forgiving." There will also be additional television projects on the horizon for Lucas Films. George is also focusing a lot of time and energy on his "Presidio" project by putting in a Digital Art Studio to bring a unified way of training for advanced CG studies, outreach in the Bay Area for CG education for kids. He also wants to provide client education to the decision makers that need to understand what CG is, what it can do for their business, and how to communicate in order to make it work. The "Holy Grail" of the CG industry? Mr. Lucas believes this to be real time rendering with high quality imagery. Right now, you can get one or the other. But, we are moving closer and closer to have both at the same time. George Lucas said that he would be doing most of his new work on a Mac, using a camera readily available to anyone at the local store. The technology in computing and video equipment is now at a point where independent filmmakers can achieve a very high level of quality on a very small budget. This is bringing the film age into the digital age! "The wheel of computer graphics has to be intertwined and is now integrating itself into our visual story telling. Visual effects are now simply integrated into all the films coming out. It is the new standard."

George Lucas Keynote Speaker [.mov file]

Jen and I had dinner at Clifton's, which was a very old and rather retro dinning place with a long history. It was oddly reminiscent of the Country Bear Jamboree at Disney World. (Could have been the animatronic racoons and bears ;-) An evening with friends [.mov file] We met up with several of the R'Osity folks including Slav, agiel, EricofSD, AgentSmith, Shawna and Jim Thacker and Kai Woods from 3DWorld Magazine also made an appearance.

After we had a fun time hanging, it was time to move on to the ACMSIGGRAPH Professional and Student Chapters party, at the the Mayan. Where we enjoyed a fun party with lots of lights, graphics, music and dancing! Okay, that was enough dancing for the night. Time to go back to the room and post about the days events. Have to get some rest as tomorrow's going to be a very busy day on the Expo floor!

Be sure to drop in tomorrow to Catch the further Excellent Adventures of ... Lil and Jen The "R'Osity Roving Reporters"