Kariem Saleh
Rise Visual Effects Berlin, Germany
Title: Bringing handcrafted elements into computer animated movies
Biography
Biography: Kariem Saleh
Abstract
Today computer graphics are able to produce imagery in any artistic style desired. We have tools that enable artists to achieve cartoonish as well as hyper-realistic renderings alike. Most of these tools require the artist to sit in front of a desktop workstation and do nothing more than moving the mouse or the stylus while pressing a couple of different buttons on the keyboard. After millions of years the process of creating images and performances results in no more dirt, no more sweat, and a lot less fun. Therefore results tend to come out perfectly polished and slick. Somehow modern movies have a strangely bewildering quality to them and appear much more inhuman than the good old model plane on a wire or the giant guy in a rubber suit, destroying a model city scape. There seams to be the old-school low tech side of the spectrum as well as the high-tech end of the spectrum. Both areas still exist in modern pop culture. But the high-tech end receives much more exposure and attention. I believe that the most interesting and beautiful impulses come from the space between the two ends of this spectrum. Therefore I spent most of my time in film school, working on projects that celebrate my love for handcrafted arts, while also pushing the boundaries of high-end 3D animation and filmmaking.
In this talk, I will go over some of the different approaches we took to bring handmade miniature sets into a 3D world. Or to use glove-puppetry to enhance our animated character performances. Bringing the heart and soul back into computer graphics while still pushing technology forward is the main goal for me in virtual filmmaking and storytelling.