BFX 2018

I was fortunate enough be able to attend this year’s BFX festival held at the BIC in Bournemouth. This year they had talks from Double Negative, Blue Zoo, Epic Games, Walt Disney Animation Studio and many more.

I attended on the Thursday, eager to listen to Ben Lumsden from Epic Games, creator of Unreal Engine, who are bringing interactive experiences to VR, CGI imagery and TV. During the talk Ben discussed the recent uses of Unreal Engine in games, TV, new media and architectural visualisation and in turn, how it is changing how we, as visualisers, are using it to bring to life our creations.

An example of this is animation studio Blue Zoo, who are using Unreal Engine to create their next animated short. They spoke about how this new software has aided their animation process and gave the BFX audience a teaser of their new real time rendered animation.

Also at the festival was Lighting Supervisor Malcolm Neailey from Double Negative (DNEG), who spoke in depth about the lighting set-ups used in the Edinburgh scene of The Avengers - Infinity War. This scene included 3 CGI characters interacting with real actors and he spoke about how he used real lighting along with CG lighting to highlight and emphasize each character’s personality.

Isle of Dogs visual effects supervisor, Tim Ledbury spoke about the process when creating the stop-motion animation Isle of Dogs. From design to post production he covered the challenges his team faced and how they overcame them with logistical and technical planning throughout.

It was a very insightful and interesting day and I would like to congratulate Bournemouth University on another wonderful BFX Festival.