Home again! Siggraph was fantabulous. Alas, coming back home last night, I accidently left my favourite piece of swag–a poster from Pixar advertising “The Incredibles”–on the airplane, which is sad, but oh well. I’ll see if Paul (my DMD friend interning at Pixar this summer and fall) could get his hands on another for me. It all works out. :D

As most of the “Intermediate” level courses were WAY over my head, I mostly stuck to the Beginning Level, which on the most part seemed to deal with special effects and 3D animation in recent movies. Therefore, I spent a lot of my time gurgling over SFX breakdowns of scenes in LotR, Shrek 2, The Matrix Revolutions, Van Helsing, The Day After Tomorrow, Harry Potter, etc. My respect for these films has increased a thousandfold. I had never really comprehended exactly how much detail and finesse went into these movies; sometimes the special effects are so seamless you forget they’re there. And if these effects happen to be tied in with a storyline that isn’t particularly impressive, as is the case in a few of the aforementioned movies, sometimes it’s hard to separate the awesome special effects from the lame story. Very eye-opening.

Photos to come later! In the meantime, I need to catch up on a week of flist posts!