Brian Windsor wins Innovation Award for Digital Puppetry

This is just a quick post to say congratulations to Brian Windsor, who won the Puppeteers of America Jim Henson Award for Innovation for his work in digital puppetry at the recent Puppet Rampage 2007 festival in St. Paul, MN. Awarded by Puppeteers of America biannually, The Jim Henson Award for Innovation is given to recognize "innovation in puppetry that is technological, dramaturgical or collaborative in nature".

Brian and I held an impromptu demo of Brian's impressive digital puppetry work and the still work-in-progress Panda Puppet system at Puppet Rampage last week and I got to know him a bit. He's a great guy who's doing really great work and his award is well-deserved.

Congrats Brian!

Realtime Film Festival seeking entries

Here's something interesting...The Realtime Film Festival takes place May 2-4 in Stuttgart, Germany, as a part of the FMX conference for animation, effects, games and postproduction and the Stuttgart Festival for Animated Film. They are currently seeking entries in the following categories:

Cut Scenes - Films and sequences which are part of computer or console games based on realtime technology like intros, trailers etc.

Flash - Films in the SWF format, using realtime features of Macromedia Flash (eg. Actionscript,tweenings).

Machinima - Movies shot in real time with game engines.

Demos - Small EXE programs that make the computer generate 3D animations in realtime.

VJ Visuals - Realtime shows by VJs mixing visuals live to the music (please send in a showreel that documents your live performance).

While there's bound to be several Machinima entries, I'm curious to know if there will be any other examples of digital puppetry entered in the festival.

Link via MachiniBlog.