Masterclasses from Industry Titans

J.C. Cornwell has been training VFX & Animation students and professionals for the past 20 years. As Director of Training at DreamWorks Animation, he leads the training team that teaches proprietary and 3rd party software to in-house artists and studio personnel.

Prior to DreamWorks, he spent 14 years at Sony Pictures Imageworks, starting as a studio trainer and eventual department director. He teaches software used throughout the production pipeline, from storyboarding to compositing.

He also serves as adjunct faculty at Art Center College of Design, and at Biola University’s Snyder School of Cinema & Media Arts. He has also taught at Gnomon School of VFX, Games, and Animation, as well as Studio Arts Los Angeles – all located in Southern California.

In this talk, we answer an often-asked question, “How does Respawn keep making hits with its smaller team”?

The focus is on how the art department solves this riddle. However, as with most things in game development, it is intertwined with the larger picture of the project. So we will peer behind the scenes into factors that shaped Apex Legends and what challenges they presented to the art team.

We will dive into the strategy behind the art direction and the culture that helped us launch successfully. Apex Legends is a “live service” game, something that Respawn has never done before. We shed some light on how the Apex Legends team adapts to these new challenges.

Marko Chulev has been working at Industrial Light & Magic for the past nine years. He started in Singapore, then moved to London, and has been in the Vancouver office since 2015.

Since joining Industrial Light & Magic, Marko has contributed to many features including Terminator: Dark Fate, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Kong: Skull Island, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, The Mummy, Warcraft, The Avengers, and Star Trek: Into Darkness, among others. As a Model Supervisor, he specializes in the creation of creatures and digital humans, hair grooming and textures. He oversees the daily work of the DMS team both creatively and technically.

He was nominated for a Visual Effects Society Award in 2017 for Outstanding Model in a Photoreal or Animated Project for his work on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Laurens Corijn is a technical artist with a background in video games, having worked at Splash Damage (project Dirty Bomb) in London and EA Dice in Stockholm (Mirror’s Edge Catalyst).

His focus is on procedural, smart workflows, and enabling other artists to create better work in a more efficient way.

These days he mainly works on training and education for Substance by Adobe.

Nikola is a generalist 3D artist with 10 years of versatile experience. He started his higher education as an engineer but pivoted to interactive media after a couple of years.
His professional baby steps were making models, animations, and VFX for music videos and movies.
After that, he ventured into architectural and product visualization for some time but then transitioned into graphics and web design.

He was making interactive art installations in parallel, for most of the time, but he did find his happy place eventually – as a game artist.

Darko Mitev has been working in the CG industry for 12 years. He currently lives in Dublin and is the Lead Character Artist at Brown Bag Films.
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He began his career in visual effects at FX3X, a Macedonian company. Since then, he has worked on numerous projects for various companies such as V-House, Axis Animation, Alt VFX, Sehsucht, and clients including Disney, Netflix, Apple TV, Microsoft etc.
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In this presentation, Darko takes us through the entire process of creating one of his latest artworks called Oris City. He talks about the concept, modeling, texturing, lighting, rendering and compositing of the final shot, as well as how he is turning this shot into a short film.

In this presentation, Erik, a former cinematographer at Pixar Animation Studio, shares his insights on how films are constructed, and visual language is developed.

He takes us through his creative process and demonstrates how storytelling is elevated through cinematography, using examples from his favorite projects at Pixar: Incredibles 2 and Piper.

With a diverse background in art, action, cinematography, and science, Erik’s 20 years of experience at Pixar make him the perfect person to explain how he uses these skills to tell emotionally compelling stories with the laws of physics.

Mihajlo Dimitrievski, also known as The Micho, is a talented illustrator from Bitola.

He began his career as a comic book illustrator, but over time he has expanded his skills to include a variety of different disciplines.

He has worked as a lead illustrator on numerous comics, as well as creating illustrations, concept art, storyboards, and animations. In addition, he has also taught these skills to others.

An influential figure in interactive entertainment, IP, and technology, Joe Rubino brings a wealth of experience as a Cinematic Director, Creative Leader, and Storyteller.

His expertise spans from cinematography to bleeding-edge procedural systems, shaping some of the industry’s most acclaimed projects.

Dexter Cornwell is a 17-year-old filmmaker from Los Angeles, California, who uses the art of stop motion to make comedic short films and bring LEGOS to life. He runs a YouTube channel, Shark Suit Studios, which he started in 2020. In addition, he takes on freelance editing projects and is a volunteer video editor for his school and youth group.

For this class, Dexter will share his entire process of creating a stop-motion short film, starting with just an idea, all the way to the final product. He will cover animation, lighting, rigs, editing, advanced techniques, masking, sound, voice acting, music, and more including a LIVE demonstration.