If you missed SIGGRAPH 2017 watch a selection of recorded Live Streaming Sessions.
Meet the Jury
The SIGGRAPH 2017 Computer Animation Festival Jury
If you missed SIGGRAPH 2017 watch a selection of recorded Live Streaming Sessions.
The SIGGRAPH 2017 Computer Animation Festival Jury
Polly Ing is an accomplished computer graphics artist and leader. She has 20 years of experience in the visual effects industry. Polly recently joined Apple, Inc. as a Senior Engineering Program Manager.
Before Apple, Polly was a Computer Graphics Supervisor at Industrial Light and Magic, the visual effects division of Lucasfilm, Ltd. She helped reboot the “Star Wars” franchise in her role as Global Computer Graphics Supervisor for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Her filmography includes movies such as the Academy Award winning “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” and “Star Trek Into Darkness.” During her tenure at ILM she was also a Computer Graphics Supervisor on “Rango,” the first animated feature produced by ILM. It won an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. She has been nominated for three and won two Visual Effects Society awards for her work in film. Polly also lent her expertise and leadership to a real-time collaboration between ILM and LucasArts. “Star Wars 1313” was a real-time game cineractive built on top of the Unreal Engine that debuted at E3 and won several accolades.
Epic Games CTO Kim Libreri is responsible for continuing Epic’s tradition of fusing state-of-the-art technology with the pinnacle of visual artistry, and for defining the studio’s Unreal Engine as the platform of choice for all types of interactive experiences including games, movies, visualization and virtual reality.
Prior to joining Epic Games, Kim was the Chief Strategy Officer at Lucasfilm, where he was responsible for the company’s Star Wars technology strategy and innovations in interactive storytelling, including the highly-awarded 1313 prototype.
Kim’s career in digital technology and visual effects spans over 20 years, and he has credits on more than 25 films including “Super 8,” “Speed Racer,” “Poseidon” and “The Matrix Trilogy.”
He led the development team for the award-winning “What Dreams May Come” as well as for the original “Matrix,” developing the now-legendary Bullet Time technology.
Kim is a respected member of many visual effects bodies, including the visual effects branch of the Academy. He has received numerous awards for his work and contributions to Motion Picture technology including an Oscar nomination in 2006 and two Academy Awards, in 2000 and 2015.
"Kubo and the Two Strings" marks Jessica Lynn's fourth film at Laika. First starting in Puppet Fabrication on "Coraline" and then becoming the Head of Hair and Fur Fabrication on "Paranorman" and "The Boxtrolls," Jessica has now worked with Laika on their Oscar nominated feature films for over 10 years. Prior to Laika, Jessica's career began in the theatre world working on costumes in Washington DC for the award winning Shakespeare Theatre Company, and in 2005 she returned to the Pacific NW where her work spanned from large scale theatrical pieces for Michael Curry Design to stop-motion commercial work at Bent Image Labs. Jessica is a member of ASIFA Hollywood and her work on the character of Monkey from "Kubo and the Two Strings" was recently nominated for a Visual Effects Society Award.
A self-proclaimed cartoonist, Floyd Norman has worked in motion pictures, television, comic booksand strips for what seems like forever.
Floyd has written the Mickey Mouse strip and worked as an animator and story artist on at least a dozen feature animated films for both The Walt Disney Studio and Pixar Animation Studios.
Though retired, Floyd continues to work as a consultant for the Walt Disney Company and is currently creating a new book about the Disney legacy. He has also developed video games and toys for Disney Consumer Products.
On occasion, Floyd works outside the Disney Company on other animated projects such as Curious George, Free Birds, The Annoying Orange and Robot Chicken.
Till Nowak is a digital artist, designer and filmmaker from Germany, now based in Los Angeles. His short films have been awarded with more than 70 awards, including in Annecy, at the AFI Fest Hollywood, at Aspen Shortsfest or at Anima Mundi, and his work has been exhibited in hundreds of international film festivals and exhibitions, featured in many art books and at SIGGRAPH 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2011. Till has conducted several permanent art installations on historic buildings, such as the Rendsburg high bridge in Germany or the historic water tower in Neumünster, Germany. He has given lectures about his unconventional CG workflows at international events, such as FMX conference, Tampere Film Festival, universities in Korea, Germany and Australia, at the 361° conference in Mumbai and at the NIFFF in Neuchatel. Till is a member of ASIFA Hollywood, the Art Directors Guild, the German Film Academy as well as the European Film Academy and has worked as a jury member in a number of film festivals. He currently works as a concept artist at Marvel Studios.
Lytro Cinema VFX Supervisor Cristin Pescosolido is responsible for leading the internal R&D VFX team, defining the on-set and post-production workflows, and working with clients as Lytro brings the first light field cinema camera to market.
Prior to Lytro, Cristin was a stereo supervisor at Industrial Light and Magic, where she also worked as a technical lead for desgning and implementing ILM’s canonical Nuke system. Cristin’s career in visual effects spans many roles over 20 years and many films, including “300,” “Rango,” “Titanic,” and “The Matrix Reloaded,” and “The Matrix Revolutions.”
She studied animation under Derek Lamb, Suzan Pitt, Jules Engel, and Christine Panushka, as an undergraduate at Harvard and graduate at CalArts.
Rick Sayre has been at Pixar Animation Studios for three decades. His feature credits include a long list of Pixar films from “Toy Story” onwards. He has also been involved extensively in theater, live action visual effects and interactive art. Recently, he contributed to standards and workflows for high dynamic range feature film production and exhibition. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, the Visual Effects Society and SMPTE. He is currently supervising an upcoming animated feature.
Jeremy Cowles is a Senior Software Engineer in Google’s AR/VR group working on Tilt Brush with a focus on rendering and performance. Prior to Google, Jeremy was the technical lead of the GPU team in Pixar’s R&D group, where he was the co-designer of the high performance render engine, Hydra, and contributed to Pixar’s open source projects Universal Scene Description and OpenSubdiv.
Dioselin Gonzalez is a Lead Principal Engineer at Unity Labs. She architected, lead and delivered the prototype of Carte Blanche (consumer VR authoring tool). She now heads the mixed reality research group at Unity Labs. She holds a master’s degree from Purdue University, where she was involved in collaborative VR research for CAVE™-like systems and real-time immersive theater initiatives. As a research scientist at University of Louisiana, Dio was part of an R&D lab for a large scale VR simulation framework for the US Army Research Laboratory. Dio worked 5 years in the animated film industry at DreamWorks Animation (DWA) and Pixar. She also lead an immersive storytelling platform at DWA for an initiative to commercialize animation technology. Additionally, for 2 years in Singapore she was a games programming lecturer at Nanyang Polytechnic and a government consultant on future immersive technologies.
Stephan works on the VR research team at Pixar Animation Studios. Previously he worked on shading and lighting tools for various productions at Pixar. Prior to working at Pixar he was a senior engineer at Lucasfilm Animation.
