The three-day Collider Conference begins this Sunday, June 9th, so you have a chance to sign up to attend something very unique: this event is the very first Siggraph-style gathering in New York aimed at animators, visual effects artists, and motion graphic designers.
“Being New York-based, we’re ready to fill a massive gap in the creative, production, and staffing needs of digital production studios,” says Collider founder Stephen Price, Editor of Stash Magazine.
For a first time out of the gate, this is as comprehensive as you might hope. At the Hotel Pennsylvania, where it all unfolds, you’ll find panels with top talent talking about industry challenges, a chance to learn techniques from folks from WETA and Blue Sky, and tech demos.
There will be plenty of networking opportunities and job hunting too.
On Monday, June 10 at 6 PM the VFX Town Hall will be held at the Hotel Pennsylvania. Unlike the conference, which has a charge, this free and open for all evening features talks and presentations aimed at addressing the quandary that visual effects artists face in today’s skewed economics for talented graphics designers.
Visual effects designer Kim Lee created the Master Class series for the conference. As someone who works locally — Kim is also the chair of the local 3ds max user group — he chose presenters who have some specific value for City-based motion media artists. “The challenge for me in curating this first incarnation of Collider Master Classes was trying to find the right mix of topics that would appeal to the largest audience yet fit within the limit of only eight available class slots,” says Lee.
“The mandate to our instructors was to keep the classes high-level, making these sessions more about how to think about the work and leverage your available tools rather than just a step-by-step, press this button approach” says Lee. “We also wanted the classes to be less platform specific. For example, even though a given class may be presented using Maya or Nuke, artists using other apps would still reap valuable insight .”
Want info about the Master Classes Kim pulled together? Click here.