Last Thursday, 28 June, La Salle Campus Barcelona - Ramon Llull University hosted its first annual University Animation & Visual Effects Festival, which saw an attendance of around 200 people, and which rewarded the talent of future industry professionals. During the ceremony, which was sponsored by Cinesa, Hewlett-Packard and Wacom, and with collaboration from the Moritz brewery, the best projects by digital art, animation and visual effects students were awarded prizes.
The person in charge of opening Festival for its first year was Armand Serrano, Visual Development Artist and Production Designer for feature-length films, known for his work at Walt Disney Animation Studios and Sony Pictures Animation. His latest work with Disney includes such renowned, award-winning films as Hero 6 and Zootopia. Serrano offered a talk titled ‘Creating Believable Worlds’ on the process he follows in the visual development of believable environments for feature-length films.
The festival also saw the award ceremony for the prizes for the best work and end-of-year projects by our university students. These were assessed by an academic jury of professionals from the sector such as Fèlix Balbas, the Grangel brothers, Jaume Arteman, Josep Maria Saez, Sancho Albano and Sergi Espada, among others. The winners were:
First year:
· Award for Best Character Diorama: David Ulivarri
· Award for Best Concept Art: Pawi (Emanuel Espinoza, Ilona Escudero, Marina Salas, Mercè Prats, Oriol Pérez and Laia Batlle)
· Award for Best Project: Steamville (Mònica Aguilà Garcia, Jan Fuentes Hernández, Julia Jiménez Torres, Bernat Mas Pastor, Álvaro Moga Montero, Arturo Moreno Ruiz, Laura Rincón Gusinye, Anna Trigos Tobella)
Second year:
· Award for Best Animation: Cintia Sabater
· Award for Best Character: Xiao Peng
· Award for Best Project: The Form of Venus (Alex Díaz, Paula Díaz, Arnau Barrabeig, Cintia Sabater, Gaspar Segura, Gerard Rodríguez, Isabel Aldamiz, Alex Caballer, Xiao Peng, Sergio Navarro, Alicia Ortega, Núria Farrés)
Third year:
· Award for Best Render: Judith Baules
· Award for Best Virtual Set: Judit Navarro and Dani Rojas
· Award for Best Project: Chandalman (Pau Clos, Sergi Díez, Pablo García, Miguel Morera, Jordi Fusté)
Prizes from the IV La Salle-URL Animation Contest
The winners of the IV Animation Competition for pre-university students in the categories of character, screenplay and animation were also announced, and they received a scholarship to cover 30% of the tuition fees of the first year of the La Salle-URL Degree in Animation & VFX.
In the characters category, a total of 11 projects entered, all of them highly promising. The Grangel brothers, founders of Grangel Studios, chose ‘Captain’ by Herman Rojas. Grangel emphasised that “this composition offered a good amount of information about the character, with poses and detail of the face and a basic turn-around in full colour, as well as a presentation title. It's very well done and quite comprehensive.”
In the animation category, 9 animations using different techniques were received. The prize went to the project ‘Le Phare’ by Montse Larqué, for their original, creative idea. Finally, the screenplay category this year had no eligible candidates.