June 30, 2006

Blight, a Digital Media student-produced short film, has earned first place in the Visual Effects division of the SIGGRAPH Education Committee S.P.A.C.E.?Time Competition. SIGGRAPH is part of the Association of Computing Machinery, an organization that promotes the dissemination of everything related to computer graphics and interactivity. Their annual conference brings together hundreds of creative researchers, award-winning producers, provocative artists, energetic executives and adventurous engineers from the world?s community of digital innovators. The students will receive their award during this year?s conference, which will be held in Boston from July 30^th ? August 1st.

Blight tells the story of a mysterious figure slipping through the streets of a gothic-era European town. This figure sometimes appears as a sinister human-like form draped in cloth and acts as a thief in the night, quickly, quietly, and methodically extinguishing the lights of the city. Fix it in Post was able to create a system for generating the entire city from modular building pieces, allowing them to focus on storytelling and achieving the desired visual effects within the short time frame. High-end 3D animation software was used to achieve many subtle effects such as flame, smoke, water, and cloth.

This piece was a group project for an Advanced Animation and Visual Effects course taught by Chris Redmann. The first cut was conceptualized and produced in ten weeks as their final project for the course. Over the following term, the piece was cleaned up, authored to DVD, and a new ending was added by the team?s director, digital media student Seth Kendall. Digital Media Students Patrick Kemp, Russell Falk, Andrew Michael, and Joel Catalan also worked on this film. Congratulations!

View Blight online through Westphal College?s New Online Portfolio!