AnimFX

The first thing we learned upon arriving in Wellington is how good the coffee is. We had a bit of time to wait at the airport before Kim and Ray picked us up, so we grabbed some coffee at a shop by baggage claim. I was introduced to a ‘Flat White’, which is a Latte with a double shot of coffee in it, and it was excellent. This has become my new standard in NZ.

Kim is a friend of mine through the Visual Effects Society (VES), and is the reason I was invited to speak at AnimFX. She and Ray (both from Sauce FX) picked us up and gave us a driving tour of Weta on our way to the hotel. After hearing about Weta Digital for the first time when they were ramping up for “Lord of the Rings”, I’ve been following their work and rise to CG superpower. As is the case with so many effects and animation ‘shops,’ their humble exteriors hide the amazing work that is going on inside.

The Weta Cave - their retail shop

We checked into the Museum Hotel, right across from the Te Papa Tongarewa Museum where the conference will be happening.

View of the Te Papa Tongarewa Museum from our room at the Museum Hotel. The AnimFX conference is held at the Te Papa.

After lunch down the street and a walk through the Sunday farmers’ market, we boarded a bus tour of Wellington to help us get our bearings. We learned a bit about NZ politics (though it still remains somewhat cryptic to me), saw some wonderful historic architecture, drove along the Carmel-esque shoreline, and went to the top of things.

Wellington, from the top of the cable car

Old St. Paul's, a beautiful wood church in Wellington

Sarah, in Old St. Paul's

The view of Wellington from Mt. Victoria

We ended the day with a walk along the waterfront, stopping for drinks and a great dinner at Macs brewery.

I had a Macs Wheat Beer, while Sarah dreamt of sleeping

Chicken breast marinated in hard cider, with leeks, carrots and mushrooms. Yum.

The conference starts tomorrow, so even though I’m ready for my sessions most of the day was spent reworking slides and fretting.

After breakfast (with great coffee!) at Joe’s Garage and lunch on a decommissioned tug boat nee cafe, Sarah toured the Te Papa museum as a visitor, and I toured it as part of tech prep to check out the rooms and computer/display compatibilities. I had the pleasure of meeting Enrico Casarosa of Pixar, who will be presenting the Southern Hemisphere premiere of his short ‘La Luna’ on Tuesday.

Enrico Casarosa checking out the projection of "La Luna" in the theater at Te Papa.

It’s always comforting to walk though the spaces you’ll be presenting in beforehand, especially when it’s as well organized as the AnimFX and Te Papa teams are – everything plugged in and worked perfectly the first time.

In the evening there was a VIP dinner at the Museum Hotel’s Hippopotamus Restaurant. Fantastic food with fascinating people. I got to meet many of the other presenters and hosts.

VIP dinner at Hippopotamus. I wish I could have sat at both tables!

This was one of the astonishing options for dessert at Hippopotamus - a raspberry delight with almond macaroons.

Welcome to AnimFX NZ at the Te Papa Museum

(Not too many pictures today, I was mostly sequestered away at the conference, and didn’t give Sarah a camera to take with her.)

AnimFX began its three day run today with a full schedule of sessions. I presented a session at noon, so was able to sit in on three morning sessions (which I wrote about on my main blog). Lance Priebe spoke about his experiences starting Club Penguin, Patrick Hudson talked about transitioning Robot Entertainment from a console game developer to a mobile and web game developer, and Tracey Sellar from Microsoft gave us insights into their user testing labs.

My forty minute Company Pitch Session was set up as a precursor to my Master Class on Entrepreneurship tomorrow – anyone who wanted to do a practice pitch about their company was invited to do so, with the promise of a friendly audience and constructive feedback. I had a Plan B ready under the assumption that people would show up to be in the audience, and no one would be willing to put themselves out there and pitch. It pays to be prepared, as there was an audience of over fifty people, and no one wanted to brave the crowd. So instead I spoke about reasons to pitch, some good rules of thumb to use, and then we deconstructed a very successful pitch from a company who made their TechStars Demo Day presentation available on line.

After lunch were more breakout sessions, but I spent much of the time talking to individuals in the lobby.

The highlight of the afternoon was a presentation by Enrico Casarosa from Pixar speaking on the making of his short, “La Luna.” It’s a beautiful film and he put together an inspiring presentation about the design process.

Meanwhile, Sarah went on a tour with one other woman who was visiting in the area. They went to the northeast of Wellington, through the suburbs and along the high-cliffed island-studded coast. They visited a chocolate factory, where Sarah discovered that kiwi chocolate wasn’t covered fruit, but rather covered jelly. Yeech. But the honey chocolate was fantastic – or so she says since she didn’t bring any back for me. The tour also went to the Southward Car Museum, Sir Southward’s personal collection, including Mickey Cohen’s 1950 Cadillac with bullet proof windows, bomb proof floor and reinforced doors. The windows had been strafed with bullets. The most impressive feature to Sarah was the pivoting windshields for machine gun accessibility. I had no idea she dug that kind of stuff. The Nash Metropolitan (similar to the one I used to have which she didn’t really dig at all) looked huge next to a Fiat 500 and an Isetta.

We had dinner at Ortega’s Fish Shack, enjoying wonderful dishes that we had never heard of before and couldn’t pronounce anyway.

After a great dinner at Ortega's Fish Shack

This was my big work day. I distilled my fifteen week Entrepreneurship in Entertainment Technology class down to a five hour Master Class.

Forty four people signed up for the class, all Kiwis, with a variety of backgrounds and experience from students to business owners to producers to representatives from NZ Trade and Enterprise. I had timed out the whole day on my notes and was right on schedule until about half way through. Utimately I ran long by about 15 minutes and sadly had to rush the last section. The people in the class made this a very enjoyable experience – I wasn’t nervous about having enough material (in fact I was throwing stuff out right up until yesterday), but I was a bit concerned about keeping everyone engaged though a five hour session. As it turned out we had a great dynamic – people shared their experiences, asked questions, and participated in some great discussions. I’m excited now about an opportunity to do this again, with obvious tuning based on today’s experience. And lemon and honey tea to fight off a subsequent day of hoarseness.

There were about 40 people in attendence, but I only remembered to take the picture after the class was over. These are most of the survivors.

While I was at the conference, Sarah was learning more about Wellington at the Wellington City Museum and the local shopping district.

We had dinner at Ambeli, an excellent restaurant recommended by my buddy Jeff. Thanks, Jeff!

Lamb chops at Ambeli

Poussin at Ambeli

Alas, another day with too few pictures. Weta Digital sponsored a Weta Day for AnimFX and presented a series of fantastic talks at one of their facilities: Park Road Post. They requested no photography or recordings on campus, so the best I did was this:

Me, outside Weta's Park Road Post

The morning had five speakers breaking down the making of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” including Eric Winquist (formerly of PDI!) going into detail on the Golden Gate Bridge sequence which he supervised. During the afternoon we were treated to talks by Wayne Stables and Jamie Beard about the genesis of the digital version of Tin Tin for “The Adventures of Tin Tin,” and pre-script visualization of action sequences for the film.

In between the sessions they hosted lunch for all of us at the local (lawn) bowling club. As is typical at conferences, these types of meals and coffee breaks make for great opportunities to meet new people and catch up with old acquaintances. Though I tend to be introverted in large groups of people, this crowd made it very easy to make some new friends.

I stuck around after the main events to watch two screenings of Enrico’s “La Luna” that were arranged for Weta employees in the evening. After seeing his talk on Tuesday it was fun to see the finished film a couple times more to appreciate the nuances that he exposed us to.

AnimFX closed with a party at Red Square in downtown Wellington.

While I was whiling away the hours at Weta, Sarah was sightseeing and shopping along the seaside.

Back in our hotel room that night, Sarah let out a scream in the dark that I was sure would have the police showing up. The perp would have been our luggage on the floor that attacked one of her toes with enough energy to break it. The beautiful picture of the now purple ped was not approved by its owner for public publication, but it is quite glorious in its rich hues. Some tape and limping will hopefully be sufficient for a full recovery.

(In review, it’s pretty clear this was written late at night. All that alliteration!)

Acclimating in Wellington

Tech Prep and Meet the VIPs

AnimFX NZ – First Conference Day

AnimFX NZ – Master Class Day

Weta Day