VFS Acting Essentials and Acting for Film & Television grad Aili Storen is making her mark in the industry – and not only through acting in film and on TV.

On top of landing the lead in multiple Canadian independent films and commercials for such companies as London Drugs, she’s taking on the roles of Producer and Director.

Since graduating in 2005, she’s co-created a theatre company, GAL Prods, landed a gig directing a short film, and started her own production company, Spinning Top Productions. Her first production will be a short dramedy called Double Occupancy.

“It’s a great story about a down-on-herself travel agent who decides to ‘live a little,’” Aili tells us. “She falls for a handsome man who is booking a vacation with her. Is it a simple love story or one wrought with miscommunication?”

She plays the lead character, Sophie.

Putting together her first film was somewhat chaotic for Aili, but she knew she was in good hands. Her crew included VFS grads from multiple programs – among them, Acting grad Katherine Wright as Acting Director, Acting grad Ryan Younglao as Production Assistant, and Sound Design grad Trevor Mason – as well as Acting faculty and staff including Program Manager Kim Tough, Production Coordinator Hilary Marsh, and Production Manager Michael Chase.

“We are all excited for the film to be done so that I can send it off to numerous festivals around the world,” Aili says.

What’s next for Aili?

“I recently returned from LA where I signed with my manager Cheri Barner with CG Artist Management. I’m just trying to keep busy and tell stories I want to tell.”

Slap Shot 3: The Junior League, the second sequel in the beloved and enduring Slap Shot franchise, came out on DVD this week. And Vancouver Film School faculty and grads were a huge part of the production!

The film’s director, Richard Martin, is an instructor in our Film program. When he needed crew he could rely on, he went right to VFS grads he knew were up for the job. This includes Nemo Balkanski as Storyboard Artist, Thomas Pound as Assistant to the Director, and PAs Lexy Burg, Jeffery Hornung, and Katy Boriskov.

The film also featured VFS Acting grads in major roles, including Sara Canning as Hope, and Peter Benson as Mark.

Richard keeps it simple in terms of the graduates’ success on set: “They were all amazing!”

Congrats on being part of the Slap Shot legacy, everyone!

Recently, Dave Warfield, the Head of Game Design at VFS, visited Philadelphia, PA - invited to deliver a keynote at VGXPO as part of the ‘Breaking In’ segment.

“My keynote speech about the Changing Role of Game Designers was received very well, with a lot of questions, and a large group of interested gaming fans quizzing me after the presentation,” he tells us. “What a great opportunity to see another group of gamers that aren’t from Vancouver or California.”

Of course, Dave will be at our very own Game Design Expo 2009 in Vancouver February 7-8. Find out how you can be there, too.

A group of Classical Animation grads, spanning several overlapping classes, has gotten together again to enter the Trick 17 Stop Motion Competition in Vancouver. Called By the Beard of Moose (after veteran animator and VFS instructor Moose Pagan), the group includes grads Michelle Clement, Tammy Dubinsky, Choom Lam, Ian Milne, Tzanko Tchangov and new member Bill Ede.

In fact, they entered as Tricky 17’s defending champions, and although they didn’t take top spot this year, they did walk away with the Best Editing award for their trailer of an action/superhero epic starring office supplies, “made in 52 hours on two dozen Red Bulls.” Most importantly, they got a chance to work together again.

Michelle: “A big part of it is the ‘who knows what we’ll make’ adrenaline kick, but the camaraderie and bouncing ideas off of each other is the best! Everybody has their niche, and we just laugh the whole time - creating the story, while we’re animating, and especially in the editing/sound phase - and if we’re laughing that’s the whole purpose of the thing. I guess maybe we’re just so animation crazy that it feels natural to meet and hang out and just happen to make a film while we do so!”

Check out their film, which is so densely packed with sight gags and silliness, you really have to watch it twice.

L-R: Tammy, Michelle, Choom, Ian, Bill, Tzanko

Update: We’ve also gotten word of a number of other Classical Animation (and Foundation Visual Art & Design) who entered, including Classical Animation grad Lawrence Chung - on the team that won Best Production Design!

Update 2: The Beard of Moose’s entry has been Dugg and it’s spreading like wildfire!

Alastair Macleod, the Head of Animation & Visual Effects at VFS, was in Korea earlier this month for PISAF 2008 (Puchon International Student Animation Festival) which had invited him to be one of the festival judges. He’s back, with an account of the trip and event - in his own words!

By Alastair Macleod
Head of Animation & Visual Effects

I was invited to attend PISAF in Korea to be on the panel that was judging the student work submitted. The event was held in Puchon (also spelled Bucheon), which is about an hour out of Seoul. VFS sponsored the event by offering a scholarship to the 3D Animation and Visual Effects program.

I watched over forty short films during my week there - all of them produced as part of a school program, from high schools, colleges and universities around the world.

There was some excellent work, most of which I had never seen before. VFS itself was represented by The Switch by Zack Mathew and Seeking You by Jean-Julien Pous, who also presented a workshop.

As part of the jury, I was very conscious of where the films were produced. It was interesting for me to hear the other judges’ wide-ranging opinions of the work, and there was some general consensus as well as some disagreement, which led to healthy discussion.

I consider myself to be fairly well-travelled in the world, but have never been to anywhere in Asia, let alone Korea, so I had no idea what to expect other than what I had seen on TV.

The food was amazing. I think I must have eaten one of everything there was to offer. The kimchi was tasty and was served both cooked and raw, the various fish, meats, noodles, soup you cook at the table… It was all there. I learned not to ask what I was eating, and I enjoyed it all. The soju was tasty too.

All in all, it was a brilliant trip and a very positive experience. I learned a lot about Korean culture and the wide selection of work currently being created in Asia and around the world.

Recent Digital Design alum Jenny Kim - she graduated in August - is one of three finalists for Print magazines’s 45th Student Cover Competition!

In fact, all three finalists are Canadian, although the competition was open worldwide.

The description alone makes it all worthwhile: “Kim took a grid of formal graduation photos and inserted a picture of herself with an iguana on her head.”

How can you resist? The winner gets featured in an upcoming issue of Print. Voting closes on December 12, so cast yours now!

When 3D Animation & Visual Effects grad Anna Tonrungroj finished her year at VFS and unleashed her visual effects reel on the world, she couldn’t have predicted just how much of a chord it would strike.

But The Moon has gotten a steady stream of praise on YouTube from a mix of 3D aficionados and average viewers. They know good stuff when they see it - it’s a simple concept exceptionally and beautifully executed.

Anna had already been working as a 2D compositor in Thailand before deciding to come to VFS to broaden her skills.

“I checked out the 3D Animation and Visual Effects Showcase of the former students,” she explains. “I was convinced that I might be able to do some cool stuff like that, so I decided to come to VFS right away. Vancouver is such a beautiful city - it made me want to come to study at VFS even more.”

We managed to catch up with Anna to find out about her experience and her thoughts on why the The Moon is so successful.

What was your experience at VFS like?

I found some talents I’d had but never shown, I got to improve my learning skill and my language skill at the same time, I learned not to be afraid of learning some new things each day - well, actually, we really had no time to be afraid, because all of the schedule is very intense and we just had to finish every assignment on time.

However, my favorite part from VFS is I found a lot of friends who have the same passions and interests as mine from all over the world. We exchanged our experience, knowledge, cultures, and friendships, which I will never forget.

Focusing on visual effects at VFS meant you got to actually get outside and shoot the footage on location. How was that experience? It looks like a lot of fun, judging by the footage at the end of your reel.

Definitely a lot of fun. I had a lot of talented friends in my class and we all helped each other out when it was time for us to shoot our films. I spent a lot of time just planning things out for my shooting day, because I had only one chance to shoot at the soccer field due to the expenses and had only one hour and a half to finish shooting all the shots I needed before the light at the soccer field shut off.

It was very difficult to get everything exactly as I wanted, but with all the help from all of those people who were on set with me that day, it was finally successfully done and we all had a great time there. I also would like to give them all the credit for that.

What appeals to you about visual effects as opposed to other areas of 3D, like animation or modeling? What are some of the challenges in VFX work?

Read the rest of this story »

If you’ve been following along, all last week we spent time with - and got insight from - the five members of the Game Design student team who made Bloom, now a year into their post-VFS working lives.

As Game Design Senior Instructor Andrew Laing puts it, “Simply a remarkable group that produced something greater than the sum of its parts… Even the ‘parts’ were all pretty awesome!”

If you missed them, here are the interviews:

Part 1 - The Narrative Designer (Mike Wilson, Relic)
Part 2 - The Cinematic Designer (Guilherme Ramos, BioWare)
Part 3 - The Concept Artist (Brennan Massicotte, United Front Games)
Part 4 - The QA Guy (Adrian Audet, Blue Castle Games)
Part 5 - The Mission Designer (Brian Vidovic, Radical)

Thanks to these guys for taking part! We kept the spotlight on the Game Design grads, but it’s important to note that Bloom had a lot of incredible collaborators helping out along the way, including many from other VFS programs.

- Audio: Sound Design for Visual Media’s Joel Green, with contributions by Denise Ng
- Original Score: Balanced Records (Equanim, Sohcahtoa, Rogue Unit, Kasm)
- 3D: 3D Animation & Visual Effects‘ Ryan Barney, Aishath Nasir, and Vicky Au-Yeung, and Game Design’s Daniel Bittencourt
- Plus many, many mentors!

We have one more special follow-up planned to wrap up the story, so stay tuned!

Update: Read our fifth and final interview, with Sound Designer Joel Green

Disney’s Bolt comes out today, and judging by the previews and very positive reviews, it’s shaping up to be one of the big hits of the season.

Congrats are in order, then, for 3D Animation & Visual Effects alum Lino DiSalvo. Lino, who graduated from VFS in ‘98, served as Supervising Animator for the character of Mittens, the hard-edged alley cat who accompanies Bolt on his adventure.

And it doesn’t stop there - he was also the voice of Vinnie, the New York pigeon!

We last spoke to Lino a few years ago - check it out for a little background on how he began his long tenure at Disney.

It’s been a year since the seventh class of Game Design students at VFS graduated. One of the teams from that class created a third-person action-strategy game called Bloom, which would end up helping the five teammates begin their careers.

One year later, we asked them to reflect on their experiences at VFS and to discuss careers: 5 grads in 5 different roles at 5 different game companies.

This is the fifth part of five in a series of interviews we’ve been running all week. Read Part 1 with Relic Narrative Designer Mike Wilson, Part 2 with BioWare Cinematic Designer Guilherme Ramos, Part 3 with United Front Games Concept Artist Brennan Massicotte, and Part 4 with Blue Castle QA Guy Adrian Audet.

We interviewed Brian ‘Danger’ Vidovic back in January, where he spilled on how he got hired at Vancouver developer Radical Entertainment (he started the job the week after graduating from VFS) and his role as Mission Designer on the highly anticipated action title Prototype (”I design missions - next question”). One year on, we caught up with him to see if his views of the industry have changed at all. One thing’s for sure - he’s the same ol’ Brian.

Brian Vidovic
Then: Bloom’s Level Designer
Now: Mission Designer at Radical Entertainment

What did you, personally, get out of being part of the Bloom team?

It has been a good year… A journey, it was. One filled with magic, excitement; dragons and espionage. Those were the days.

As I wipe the tear from my eye, I can tell you that the team we had was a very rare one. The processes we had, the decisions we made, the Slurpees we drank - all of it happened in unison. Very rarely was there a discussion in which we did not leave satisfied with whatever flavour it happened to be.

Now you might be saying, “All right, buddy, enough with the slap-happy high fives. Give us the dirt!” If this is the case, please, calm down. Take a few deep breaths and step away from the computer.

The experience did have its fair share of road bumps. Tasks being forgotten about, deadlines slipping, Guitar Hero stealing precious minutes from production - it was all there.

Tomfoolery aside, being on that team taught me a lot more than I could ever say in a small text space such as this, but I will say that the bonds of friendship and trust that were forged within that team will never fade.

Has your perspective on games, the game design process, or your role changed in the last year?

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