{"id":10492,"date":"2011-06-10T09:20:19","date_gmt":"2011-06-10T14:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=10492"},"modified":"2011-06-10T09:33:42","modified_gmt":"2011-06-10T14:33:42","slug":"digital-effects-specialist-from-avatar-lord-of-the-rings-will-speak-at-brock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2011\/06\/digital-effects-specialist-from-avatar-lord-of-the-rings-will-speak-at-brock\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital effects specialist from Avatar, Lord of the Rings will speak at Brock"},"content":{"rendered":"

A digital effects specialist who has worked on movies such as Avatar<\/em> and King Kong<\/em> will headline next week’s Interacting with Immersive Worlds<\/a> conference at Brock.<\/p>\n

\"WetaDejan Momcilovic is a motion capture supervisor at New Zealand\u2019s Weta Digital<\/a>, a studio co-founded by director Peter Jackson. The studio has won Academy Awards for its work on Avatar<\/em>, King Kong <\/em>and Lord of the Rings<\/em>. It has also worked on films such as District 9<\/em> and X-Men First Class<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Motion capture is the process of transferring an actor\u2019s performance onto digital characters, such as the blue-skinned Na\u2019vi in Avatar<\/em> or Gollum in Lord of the Rings<\/em>. Momcilovic will give the conference keynote speech, which is free and open to the public, in Academic South 202 from 4 to 5:30 p.m. on June 13.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a major coup for St. Catharines and for nGen<\/a> (the Niagara Interactive Media Generator),\u201d said Martin Danahay, conference organizer and director of Brock\u2019s Centre for Digital Humanities<\/a>. \u201cDejan represents the premier special effects company in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Michael

Michael Schmalz<\/p><\/div>\n

Momcilovic, who is currently working on Rise of the Planet of the Apes<\/em>, will talk about how the studio created its award-winning work, from on set to post production.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to get too technical,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ll keep it for a general audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Momcilovic\u2019s talk, there will be a guided tour of the motion capture studio at the Generator at One, located at One St. Paul St. in downtown St. Catharines.<\/p>\n

Work at One St. Paul illustrates that Niagara is emerging as a digital media hub, Danahay said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrock\u2019s Centre for Digital Humanities and nGen downtown is a model for how industry and universities can work together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The conference is June 13 and 14 at Brock. This weekend, two teams of students will embark on a 24-hour game design marathon where they create a game based on a concept proposed by Michael Schmalz, CEO of the London, Ont. Gaming company Digital Extremes<\/a> and a conference keynote speaker. Digital Extremes has co-developed games such as Unreal Tournament<\/em> and Bioshock<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Other keynotes will be Jon-Paul Dyson from the International Center for the History of Electronic Games in Rochester, NY and David Benyon, director of the Center for Interaction Design at Napier University, Scotland.<\/p>\n

During the conference, participants will also play an interactive game designed by a team led by Kevin Kee, Brock professor and Canada Research Chair in Humanities Computing.<\/p>\n

Other session topics include activism in Second Life<\/em>, adolescents\u2019 identification with video game characters and immersive advertising.<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

WHO:<\/strong> Dejan Momcilovic, motion capture specialist
\nWHAT:<\/strong> Keynote speech at Interacting with Immersive Worlds conference
\nWHERE:<\/strong> Academic South 202
\nWHEN:<\/strong> Monday, June 13, 4 to 5:30 p.m. (followed by a tour of the nGen motion capture studio at One St. Paul from 6 to 7 p.m.)
\nFor other keynotes and sessions, view the conference program<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dejan Momcilovic from Oscar-winning Weta Digital will headline next week’s Interacting with Immersive Worlds conference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[263,122],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10492"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10492"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10495,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10492\/revisions\/10495"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}