World Animation Summit

Lamont Mims & Jean Thoren-President of Animation Magazine
Lamont Mims-Fox & Jean Thoren-President of Animation Magazine

Last night and today I attended The World Animation Summit in Marina del Ray. The Summit was kicked off with a lovely party honoring, the 96 year old, amazing, June Foray, the visionary John Knoll,  and the talented humanitarian Tapaas Chakravarti, all with Lifetime Achievement awards. To my friend’s horror, I became the total geek fan when I realized who John Knoll is and the special effects he brought to so many of my favorite (also top grossing) movies. He is the visual effects supervisor for Industrial Light and Magic, that should give you a clue to this man’s talent. I was standing right next to him and couldn’t resist telling him what a huge fan I am of his work. I did stop short of begging for a picture, I do have some sense of decorum. 😉  Luckily, I got a chance to talk more with him and Hal Hickel – animation supervisor at ILM, today at the panels. Very nice men. They shared some special effects secrets and we discussed the sfx work on Gravity, definitely an Oscar contender. Hmmmm, maybe I should have asked for a photo then….

This afternoon I attended a panel where my friend Mark Vulcano , Animation Director- Heavy Iron Studios, sat with other panelists Shannon & Chris Prynoski -Top dogs at Titmouse productions and Evan Spridellis, Co-founder- JibJab . (If you know Jibjab, Evan is the one with the fat mustache, his brother has the curly)  Okay, I geeked out again and this time I did get the picture.

Evan@Jibjab
Evan@Jibjab

Fingers crossed we’ll work together soon. Heck, I’d be happy to work with any of these talented folk!

Hats off to Animation Magazine for creating a wonderful World Summit!

Comments are closed.

Scroll to Top