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Many of New Zealand's digital media exponents could be found in beautiful Wellington city this past weekend.
 
Not only was the city was alive with animators, painters, doodlers and other artists for the four-day conceptart.org workshop run by Massive Black, and the cartooning for peace exhibition attracting cartoon lovers New Zealand over, but the AnimFX (Games, Animation and Visual Effects) conference for 2008 was in full swing for Saturday and Sunday.
 
Kindly organised by NZ GAV and supported by many great sponsors, the programme included a lineup of well-known and impressive international speakers - among them Disney Animation Studio's Carolyn Soper (Vice President of Production), id software's Tim Willits (Creative Director) and EA's Henry LaBounta (Chief Visual Officer, EA Black Box) and Habib Zargarpour (Senior Art Director, EALA).
 
One great thing that the organisers did this year was set up one-on-one meetings between the speakers and members of the film, gaming and visual effects community in New Zealand.  This was obviously a fantastic opportunity to meet with these high profile people, and something I was not a little apprehensive about.
 
I caught up with Carolyn Soper (Disney Animation) at lunch before my meeting and got to chatting a bit with her, her husband and beautiful baby girl.  I needen't have been so apprehensive after all - she was as flesh-and-blood as the rest of us, and almost just as nervous about the meetings as I was!  Great to talk to you, Carolyn.  I hope you enjoy NZ and the imminent release of BOLT later this week!
 
Talking to Tim Willits (id software) later on, I asked how he had made his way from a community DOOM fan creating levels for the budding internet community to Creative Director and co-owner of one of the most famous game studios on the planet, to which he jokingly replied by 'carefully killing off those who stood in his way' :)  Despite the company's fame for violent games such as DOOM and Quake, I spoke to Tim and his lovely wife at length at the Sidhe big party that night, and suffice to say I can vouch that Tim would never be capable of such a thing!  I hope you two also enjoyed New Zealand during your brief stay.
 
For me, however, the best part of AnimFX was catching up with acquaintances and meeting new people from our very own national digital media industry.  As one person commented at a Digital Content Industry meeting the day before when we were sitting around a table with 60-odd (yes, some were odd!) of the who's-who of NZ digital media - '[Here we are to attend a conference of international speakers], and I haven't met most of these people around this table'.
 
Some of the AnimFX 2008 speakers
 

• Eric Roth (Executive Director, VES)
• Joseph Olin (President, Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences)
• Carolyn Soper (Vice President of Production, Disney Animation Studios)
• Aimee McCammon (General Manager, Park Road Post Production)
• Henry LaBounta (Chief Visual Officer, EA Black Box)
• Habib Zargarpour (Senior Art Director, EALA)
• David Scammell (President & CEO, Sohonet)
• Tim Willits (Creative Director, id software)
• Carolyn Giardina (The Hollywood Reporter)
• Mario Wynands (Managing Director, Sidhe Interactive)
• And there were many more!