Wednesday 26 March 2008, 18.30–20.30

The speakers for this session are:

Duncan McWilliam VFX Supervisor / Moving Picture Company

Duncan has worked in 3D effects and animation for seven years at various facilities around Soho and is presently a VFX supervisor at MPC, voted this year's top facility. Having recently spent time working on Brett Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand, at MPC, Duncan has taken top end film production techniques and squeezed them into a commercials pipeline, most notably MPC's Sony Paint, making use of Scanline AG's flowline for simulation of fluid fireworks.
Duncan has recently worked closely with Johnathon Glazer, Richard Loncraine and Frederick Bond in order to help advise and direct the CG within their adverts. With experience across both film and comercials he advises clients on the fastest, most cost effective and best technical route to achieve a Director’s vision. He also acts as an interface between Client, Agency, Production and the 3D team; in this position Duncan is familiar with the benefit of implementing new technoligies offset against the practicalities of delivering work within very tight deadlines.

Ben Shepherd Visual Effects Supervisor / Cinesite

As one of the industry's shining talents in Visual Effects Supervision, Ben is currently supervising Cinesite’s work on Nutcracker: The Untold Story.
Prior to this he supervised a wide range of VFX for Cinesite and over 300 shots on Disney’s superhero dog movie Underdog (2007), leading a team of 50 artists. This huge award of visual effects work included high-end character animation, facial animation, lip sync, CG fur effects and full CG city environments.

Ben was nominated for a Visual Effects Society award for Outstanding Compositing in a Motion Picture for his work on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. His many credits include Post-Visualization Supervisor on the Dragon adventure Eragon (2006), in Budapest and prior to that he was Digital Supervisor on The River King (2005) and Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005) as well as his work on Alien Vs Predator (2004), Big Fish (2003), Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003) and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001).

Ben's practical expertise encompasses comprehensive knowledge of both 2D and 3D making his film and visual effects knowledge invaluable to Directors.
Ben trained as an artist, graduating with a degree in Fine Art from Newcastle University.
He worked as an Illustrator and Graphic Designer before starting his Visual Effects career ten years ago.

Sanjay Mistry Senior Manager of Electronics Arts University’s Graphics Training

As the Senior Manager, Sanjay oversees training and education for all EA studios World Wide. Sanjay has supervised the development and implementation of new hire training for hundreds of incoming computer graphics artists.
Working with EA’s art supervisors, project managers and HR teams Sanjay monitors artist development needs and provides a wide range of technical and artistic professional development programs, including asset development, acting for animation, lighting, foundation art courses and Mel programming. He also runs EA’s Art / Tech Speaker Series, which features presentations on important developments in computer graphics, art, design, science, and storytelling. Sanjay is responsible for the ongoing development of the companies' knowledge management systems, and the dissemination of information throughout the divisions to ensure that technical innovations and best practices are deployed across the company.
Sanjay is a key member of the EA team as training and education have become an indispensable component of Electronic Arts recruitment effort and is instrumental in the development of the company’s artists. He also represents EA on the BAFTA Games Committee, and in the larger academic community, working with educators at school level and advanced degree programs in Europe to encourage the development of digital arts curricula.

Henrik Wann Jensen, PhD. Chief Scientist / Bunkspeed

Dr. Jensen is an Associate Professor at UCSD following three years as a Research Associate at Stanford University. Before Stanford, he was a post-doctoral researcher in the graphics group at MIT, and between 1996-98, a research scientist in the industry working on visual effects software. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Technical University of Denmark in 1996.
He has lectured on the subject to computer graphics artists at major digital-effects companies including Sony Imageworks, Disney, Pixar, and Industrial Light & Magic, his work widely profiled in international media.
In 2004, Professor Jensen received an Academy Award (Technical Achievement Award) from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for pioneering research in rendering translucent materials. He also became a Sloan Fellow and he was selected as one of The World's Top Ten Scientists of 2004 by Popular Science magazine.

Richard Seymour Founder / Seymourpowell

One of Europe's best-known product designers, Richard trained initially as a graphic designer and illustrator, his career taking him from book and record-sleeve design , through advertising and film production design to a comanding position on the international stage with Seymourpowell (a company he founded with Dick Powell in 1984), now regarded as one of the world's leading Product Design consultancies.
Their clients include the Ford Motor company, Nokia, Guinness, Tefal, Casio, Tumi and Unilever.
Richard is a trustee of the Design Museum in London, a Past-President of D&AD and Consultant Design Director to Lever Faberge in London and New York.

Marc Petit Senior Vice President of Media & Entertainment / Autodesk, Inc.

With close to twenty years experience in management and technology, Marc Petit leads Autodesk Media & Entertainment as Senior Vice President, iIn his current role managing the Media & Entertainment division and guides the development and marketing of Autodesk’s leading 2D systems and 3D animation software solutions, including Autodesk Inferno, Flame, Smoke, Lustre, Toxik, 3ds Max, Maya, MotionBuilder, Mudbox and FBX.
He launched his career with French 3D software pioneer Thomson Digital Image (TDI) in 1987. From TDI, Marc joined Softimage in 1991, and helped the then-fledgling company reach critical mass in Europe. In 1996, he moved to Montreal to serve as Softimage’s Vice President of 3D Products before joining Autodesk in 2002.

Tate Modern  Starr Auditorium
£8 (£6 concessions), booking recommended