Topics for these notes:

• The Comic-Con:
• New Orleans:
• Electronic Film Festival:
• Partly Cloudy:

The Comic-Con:

The Comic-Con has grown: that's an understatement... mutated into an event larger that the components. More art than you'd dream to see in one place. Seminars and panels people wait overnight to see. Digital programming is integral to the Con, it's evident in the exhibit hall, with cg cartoons and game previews looping on giant screens, vendors displaying digital sculptures of action figures,  digital comic art, movie previews of comic hero and special effects films...

New Orleans:

New Orleans is a great city for SIGGRAPH..art, music, cuisine... it's better to arrive early to spend time here... great homemade ice cream... wireless almost everywhere... very comfortable for the digital artist. The city is in the process of rebuilding, and people are pulling together to bring the city to normalcy, but it's poignant to see so many homes ruined or gone. The volunteers rebuilding residences are doing their best to build new homes, though several years after the hurricane, many homes are still not built. The neighborhoods have so many abandoned, gutted or demolished houses, it's hard to imagine the city of just a handfull of years ago: neighbors out on the porches, parties and dinners, business meetings and happy kids. Well, the kids are still happy...

Electronic Film Festival:

This year, the electronic film festival is full of short films emphasizing a narrative and characters among the entries, with the usual gang of companies showcasing clips from features and breakdowns of shots... many clips of major blockbusters are in the festival, including "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", "Transformers II", and "HellboyII". If you want to see the current state of the computer graphics industry, you must see this festival.

Partly Cloudy:

The Partly Cloudy director presentation was a really bright spot in the SIGGRAPH conference landscape. Peter Sohn presented a visual history of the making of the short, beginning with his childhood memories ( in caracature form ) of going to the movies with his mom... to his pitch of the short to Pixar Execs ( mostly animators ) and their cartoon reactions. Peter reviewed the production process, but his cartoons and comic delivery really wowwed the crowd, though this was his first public presentation ( his story experince at Pixar helped a lot ). The way Peter spoke of experiences from his life was enjoyable and funny...what a good way to present: cartoons and funny jokes....