Art & Animation Summit 2021 - devcom Developer Conference

Art & Animation Summit 2021Viola Tensil2021-11-26T16:36:01+01:00

Art & Animation Summit

Dec 14 & 15, 2021 (online)

Creating the look, style and imagery of digital games.

Join us at the devcom Art & Animation Summit on December 14 & 15, 2021!

For our next summit, we will create a 2-day program packed with talks, panels, fireside chats, and workshops.

Renowned international games industry experts and artists will be sharing insights into their work and their approach to topics like 2D and 3D animation, character design, environment building, UI, visual effects and more.

A game’s visuals are without a doubt one of the most important aspects – from gorgeous pixel art to photorealistic imagery, lighting, stunning VFX, and fluid animations.

During this 2-day summit, renowned artists from all around the globe will present their works to the devcom audience, share insights into their artistic work processes, and dissect the individual steps from first concepts to final products.

Attend numerous talks and panels, participate in Q&A and dedicated portfolio review sessions, be a part of our roundtables and exchange and discuss ideas with fellow artists from all around the world, or even exhibit your own artworks in our online gallery and – with a bit of luck – win some fantastic prizes.

Xsolla is excited to be a Platinum Sponsor at the devcom Art & Animation Summit on December 14 & 15.

We admire the creative talent that brings your games to life visually and partnerships that bring commerce to their hard work. Visit our virtual booth and learn how to accelerate your video game growth globally.

Speakers & Sessions

While we’re still busily working on the summit program, we can already share some of our speakers and sessions with you.
Please come back to check out more additions to the line-up and subscribe to our newsletter to be notified as soon as updates are available!

NEWSLETTER SIGNUP

Click on the speaker images to learn more about their sessions.

Thomasy Chesny
Kinetix

Christian DeAnda
SuperAlloy Interactive

Dan Fessler
Manticore Games Inc.

Medos Gashi
Kolibri Games

Mitch Gonzalez
The Third Floor

Sebastián González Majó
Pomelo Games

Eric Jacobus
SuperAlloy Interactive

Mark Johnson
SuperAlloy Interactive

Katherine Junginger
Kolibri Games

Elias Kremer
kaleidoscube

Richmond Lee
Bit Egg

Anna Mimik
2FOR2

Unna Pussayapaiboon
Niantic

Jenna Ruth
Insomniac Games

Stefanie Schmiedel
Kolibri Games

Dominik Schön
kaleidoscube

Kirill Tokarev
80 Level

Zac Swartout
SuperAlloy Interactive

Call for Speakers!

You’d like to be a speaker at the devcom Art & Animation Summit? Great! No matter whether you’re a novice or stage veteran, now is your chance!

And if you think your presentation idea might be a bit too out-of-the-box? Well, that’s just another reason to reach out and let us know, because you’ll have come to the right place.

Submitting your papers and ideas is simple: just follow the link to our application form – we’re already looking forward to it!

SUBMIT A TALK NOW!

Be a part of our Art & Animation artist gallery on Facebook!

How it works:

Send us your artwork & details
Get your followers to vote for your artwork before December 15, 2021

The TOP 3 artworks with the most likes can win a full conference pass for devcom Developer Conference 2022 and devcom Merchandise Store vouchers*!

*Prizes:
1st place: devcom Developer Conference pass for 2022 + devcom Merchandise Store item of choice
2nd + 3rd place: devcom Merchandise Store item of choice

Twitch Live Show

Streaming live from the devcom studio, our daily Twitch shows will complement the summit program with insightful interviews, additional talks, game demos and live interactions with the devcom community.

Join us on December 14 & 15, from 10 am to 8 pm (CET)!

devcom TWITCH CHANNEL

Get Your Ticket!

SocialMedia_16x9_TicketMatrix_Art&Animation_small 29 (1)

Press Accreditation:
Please contact Robin Hartmann (devcom Brand, Marketing & Communication) at robin@devcom.global.

80 Level is pleased to be a Partner at the devcom Art & Animation Summit on December 14-15, 2021.

The 80 Level Talent platform helps creative job seekers worldwide find their dream job. Visit our virtual booth to learn how to take your creative career to the next level.

Be a Partner of the Art & Animation Summit

Promote and showcase your services, tools and technologies to the audience

Use your virtual booth to present what you and your company have to offer.

Increase your visibility in the games industry

In our sponsoring packages we include visibility on our website, social media channels, newsletters, Twitch program and in the PINE event app.

Engage with an experienced crowd of games industry representatives

60% of our anticipated attendees are working Senior / Lead positions, with significant experience in their fields.

Stay in touch with the game dev community

Numerous networking opportunities are available throughout the devcom Art & Animation Summit.

Find and recruit new talent

devcom Art & Animation Summit can help you to present yourself to new talents for your company.
Be it newcomers or veterans with a creative focus, find them within our attendees.

We offer various ways for you to become a sponsor, exhibitor or partner and meet your target audience at the devcom Art & Animation Summit, from give-aways to digital advertisements or even special sessions.

We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

Roufina Guenkova
(they/them)
Head of Sales
roufina@devcom.global

Astrid Gooding
(she/her)
Sales Manager DACH
astrid@devcom.global

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Our Partners

Main Summit Partners

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Animating with no Skills – AI Web-based 3D Motion Capture Workflow

How to easily animate biped characters for your games and cinematics, using AI Web-based 3D Motion Capture technology, Kinetix. Learn simple motion capture, animation retargeting and cleaning workflows within Maya and Unreal. Whether you are an independent game developer, 3d animator, motion graphic artist, layout artist, anyone who needs to create 3d animations and seeks options to accelerate this process or iterate around it to get the perfect results. From capturing a performance to getting 3d animation out of it in no time, no matter the software you are using.

QA and localization are often forgotten in long-term planning. However, this couple can really set you back month on your timeline. Let’s not waste time and avoid localization problems at the stage of initial development. QA problems are more challenging to avoid, but we can be prepared for what to expect.

Speaker:

Thomas ChesnyLead Technical Animator at Kinetix

Layout, Rotoanimation and Matchmove expert with solid experience in camera and body tracking. I worked for mid to large VFX studios in Canada for nearly 10 years. Very flexible and solution oriented, I am now focusing on developping a more accessible way to produce 3d animation, thanks to AI, with my team at Kinetix.

Motion Capture Pipelines for Indies (and AAA)

Join the team from SuperAlloy who's worked on AAA titles like "God of War", "Destiny 2", and indies like "Midnight Fight Express" as they discuss how to stand up a motion capture pipeline for your project. We get asked questions all the time like how do mocap pipelines work? What options are out there? Do I need a million dollars to make this work or just a few thousand? Do I actually need motion capture to assist my animation teams? And once I have all the gear - then what? Come find out those answers and more as we discuss how to tackle projects that scale from solo devs to AAA.

Speakers:

Eric JacobusHead of Studio at SuperAlloy Interactive

Eric Jacobus is a stuntman, action designer, and Head of Studio at the Las Vegas-based SuperAlloy Interactive studio. Preferring to answer to the title "mad scientist," Eric has helped design and motion capture some of the most hard-hitting action games in the business such as "God of War", "Mortal Kombat 11", "Demon's Souls", "Destiny 2", "Godfall", "Midnight Fight Express", and a bunch of others that he'd love to promote but would be sued for mentioning.
Driven by his philosophy of "Make content, or you don't exist", Eric and his team have also developed in-house action films with the latest technology, creating action in a new way and driving eyes to SuperAlloy's industry services. Eric believes that technology will drastically change the filmmaking process and rekindle genres like action comedy. Because, especially these days, everyone needs to be able to laugh a bit.

Christian DeAndaProduction Supervisor at SuperAlloy Interactive

Mark JohnsonStudio Manager at SuperAlloy Interactive

Zac SwartoutCo-Founder at SuperAlloy Interactive

Zac is a Co-Founder of SuperAlloy and its Head of Business Development. With a 20 year business background, he has helped grow organizations in health care, finance, and tech. A life long nerd, Zac has always loved games and been fascinated with the people who make them. He sees games as windows into the soul of both fans and creators. Through SuperAlloy he’s building a platform to connect world class stunt talent with game creatives to unlock the potential of action as story.

Art Directing the Metaverse - Deadmau5 Oberhasli Concert Post-mortem

In this talk, Dan will discuss the opportunities and challenges around creating art for the metaverse. He will then walk the audience through some of the things he learned when creating the world for the famous EDM artist Deadmau5’s Oberhasli Concert - an interactive concert series and social hub in Core.

Speaker:

Dan FesslerChief Visual Officer at Manticore Games Inc.

Dan Fessler is the Chief Visual Officer of Manticore Games, the developer of Core, a platform for making real-time multiplayer games and experiences for the Metaverse.
Before Manticore, Dan was Art Director at A Bit Lucky, a social games company acquired by Zynga in 2012 where he worked primarily on VR and other R&D projects.
Dan's background is as a pixel artist, having started his career in the pre-iphone era of mobile gaming and worked on various indie games including as the lead environment artist on Chasm.

The Design Evolution of Idle Miner Tycoon

We want to showcase the evolution of the art of Idle Miner Tycoon. We will highlight how our art style was developed five years ago, how it has changed and grown over the past years, and how we adapt other things (like characters and LiveOps events) to our now signature look of the Idle Miner Universe.

Speakers:

Katherine JungingerSenior 2D Artist at Kolibri Games

An Artist from the Philippines who graduated with a degree in BS Animation. Has worked in a range of jobs from animator to freelance artist, with a specialization in characters, before coming to Germany and making her way into the games industry, applying all her previous skills to the range of tasks needed in creating games and constantly learning new skills still.

Medos GashiHead of Art at Kolibri Games

I studied communication design, which is a very broad field. Worked on typography / classic design / illustration / animation and more: These points also included a lot of theoretical topics that go hand in hand, such as photo/Art and film history as well as psychology for designers and other topics. After that, I worked for a long time at Gameforge, starting as a junior in the art team and later as a senior artist in the mobile game team, where I was able to learn a lot about games. At Kolibri Games, I started as the first lead back in the days, where I had a small, young, dedicated team and I'm currently Head of Art for the IMT team, but also for the many artists we have in the MVP teams!

How Hollywood Cinematography is employed to support Games Cinematic Visualization

This presentation takes a deep dive into how Hollywood cinematography is employed to support games cinematic visualization with a case study from a high profile and highly regarded game, "Apex Legends". "Apex Legends" delivered the new back story cinematic "Fight Night" which was fully visualized by The Third Floor. This cinematic later went on to reach the #1 trending spot on Youtube in the US. This in-depth presentation will be delivered by one of The Third Floor's visualization supervisors, with years of industry experience.

Speaker:

Mitch GonzalezVisualization Supervisor at The Third Floor

Before earning a BFA in Computer Animation at Ringling College of Art and Design, Mitch Gonzalez was “rocketed” into the VFX industry after landing a job as a remote animator on the Wile E.Coyote and Road runner short films during his senior year. In College. Soon after graduating, and with a few Looney Tunes short films under his belt, Mitch relocated to Los Angeles, California. Over a decade later, Mitch is passionately pursuing his work in the visual effects industry at a Supervisory level. Recently, he has been involved with large scale cinematic action sequences in Feature films and game cinematics including Bad Boys For Life and Apex Legends. Before working at The Third Floor, Mitch collaborated on a wealth of mediums and worked with an A-list cast of companies featuring: Apple, Google, 20th Century Fox, Bungie Studios and Warner Bros, among many others.

How do Programs feel when we touch them?

I invite you to try and perceive the software interaction as a sensory experience, in which all our senses want to be present in the dialogue with the intangible part of a computer. Looking through this lens we'll think and explore how can we use our audiovisual and design resources to make the content of such dialogue, an effective and rich experience.

Speaker:

Sebastián González MajóAnimator at Pomelo Games

After studying in the University of Fine Arts in Montevideo, Uruguay, he taught himself animation and worked for several years as a 3d generalist, animating and doing post-production for advertising, documentaries and music videos. Later in 2013 he joined a group of friends to form Pomelo Games, a studio that today, has successfully developed and released 7 titles for Android and iOS. Until this date he continues to try and beautify games at Pomelo, working on animation, VFX, interaction design and user experience.

Motion Capture Pipelines for Indies (and AAA)

Speakers:

Eric JacobusHead of Studio at SuperAlloy Interactive

Christian DeAndaProduction Supervisor at SuperAlloy Interactive

Mark JohnsonStudio Manager at SuperAlloy Interactive

Zac SwartoutCo-Founder at SuperAlloy Interactive

Motion Capture Pipelines for Indies (and AAA)

Speakers:

Eric JacobusHead of Studio at SuperAlloy Interactive

Christian DeAndaProduction Supervisor at SuperAlloy Interactive

Mark JohnsonStudio Manager at SuperAlloy Interactive

Zac SwartoutCo-Founder at SuperAlloy Interactive

The Design Evolution of Idle Miner Tycoon

Speakers:

Katherine JungingerSenior 2D Artist at Kolibri Games

Medos GashiHead of Art at Kolibri Games

A Juggler's Tale - A Game restricted by Puppet Strings

We will introduce you to the world of "A Juggler's Tale", an atmospheric sidescroller puzzle game. "A Juggler’s Tale" is all about the relationship between the puppeteer Jack and little marionette Abby. The puppet strings are not only a visual representation of the connection between storyteller and puppet, but also our main game mechanic, creating lots of unique puzzle moments.

We give insights into our development process in Unreal Engine 4. We will show you our approach for creating atmospheric, colorful sceneries that artists can radically change up until the last days of development.

Speakers:

Dominik SchönManaging Director & Game Designer at kaleidoscube

Dominik started developing games when he was still in school. During his studies at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg he founded the development studio kaleidoscube together with his study friends. Together they are working on atmospheric story games like A Juggler's Tale (2021).

Elias KremerTechnical Artist at kaleidoscube

Elias Kremer is a technical artist based in Stuttgart, Germany. After finishing his studies at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg and having already worked in the realtime departments of bigger studios like Goodbye Kansas and Mackevision, he and his study friends founded the game studio kaleidoscube.

Spine Rigging & Animation: most common Mistakes and how to avoid them

Bit Egg is one of the world’s top Spine animation studios. It’s portfolio of international clients includes some of the biggest names in game development. In this talk, Richmond Lee, Bit Egg’s Co-Founder and CEO, will explain common mistakes made by Spine animators, as well as how to spot and correct them.

This talk is ideal for beginner and intermediate level artists and animators, and will also include useful tips for art directors and advanced Spine users. For those who have never used Spine before, the talk will be a good introduction to the capabilities of the program, and will also include tips applicable to any kind of 2D animation.

Speaker:

Richmond LeeCEO / Art Director at Bit Egg

Richmond Lee is the Co-Founder of Bit Egg, a leading indie game developer and art outsourcer based in Thailand. Richmond originally majored in animation, but has worn many hats in his 14 year long career in games which has spanned several startups and enterprise level companies. His goals are to make great games and to help the Thai game development scene grow in a healthy direction.

How to make all your Assets and keep your Sanity

Asset development for a 3D adventure game.

In this session we will cover a complete artistic workflow of a 3D development pipleline. I will share my experience in process organization when working with limited resources.

Prototyping for adventure games.
When prototyping it is logical to look into ready assets, however, it isn’t always the case when you are working on an adventure game. Let's decide when it is best to invest time on your own asset creation, rather than money on a ready asset or asset packeage.

Project style can be a tough choice for some artists. Especially when you are a well-rounded professional who can work in many techniques. Many ask themselves: “What to choose, at what time in development should I make this choice, how much time should I spend going back and forth?“ I’ve been through this myself and I believe that my experience will save you both time and artistic struggles.

Social media is a great tool that will help you raise awareness about your project and will provide that necessary feedback in the process. But when should you start your SM channel and how to manage it to get best results for your project? Sometimes the answer is more difficult than “as soon as possible”.

Speaker:

Anna MimikGame developer at 2FOR2

I am a game developer for a family-based team 2FOR2. After a successful Kickstarter our first adventure game "KAPIA" was released 2021. My role in the project included: Concept development, writing, 2D/3D modeling, marketing, and social media management. My prior 10 years of experience revolved around architectural visualization, game asset development, and educational simulation. I plan to stay in game development professionally and continue making games. This career choice not only intrigues me, but it also challenges me just enough to keep that initial spark of interest in this career.

Raid Visual Improvement in "Pokémon Go"

"Pokémon Go" is a location-based game that was launched in 2016. In 2017, the game added more battle mechanics to the gym and introduced the raid system where players can battle the raid boss. In 2021, we added more features to the raid and also updated the appearance of the gym to make the raid and the gym experience look more exciting. This visual update also gives possibility to use for special events in the future. This talk will go over how we improve the latest visuals for raid and gym in "Pokémon Go". I’ll walk through the process from start to finish of how the workflow and the iterations look like, as well as how we work with people across disciplines and the IP owner along the way.

Speaker:

Unna PussayapaiboonTechnical Artist at Niantic

I come from a computer engineering background; working as a software engineer in Thailand for 2 years and came to the US in 2017 to pursue my dream of becoming a game developer. My journey starts from a master program of interactive technology in game development specialized in art creation at Southern Methodist University. After graduating, I joined Niantic as a technical artist on Pokemon Go and have worked on many features. I enjoy problem solving ,making art, as well as learning about the process and technique behind creating beautiful games.

Storytelling through VFX: The making of the Reactor sequence in Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales

Big VFX spectacle moments can be a powerful tool in your narrative, but it can be easy to miss out on opportunities to push the emotional storytelling too. How can you maximize your storytelling through VFX?

I’ll show you how on "Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales", our VFX team at Insomniac Games was able to define a clear emotional goal, take that foundation, and ground it to achieve clarity and believability.

To illustrate this process, I’ll be walking you through the development of the finale Reactor sequence in "Miles Morales". My goal is to give you the tools to think about narrative like a VFX artist, so you can harness that power of visual storytelling in your work.

Speaker:

Jenna RuthVFX Artist at Insomniac Games

Los Angeles native Jenna Ruth is a VFX artist at Insomniac Games and has worked in the Games Industry for 5 years. She started her career as an environment artist but quickly fell in love with VFX. She also loves painting and anything horror related.

Pivoting your career – staying agile as an Artist

I will talk about the reasons why you would want to change your career in the arts. My own personal experience of switching careers multiple times. And how to do it successfully.

Speaker:

Stefanie SchmiedelLead Game Artist at Kolibri Games

Stefanie started as a traditional Animator in the movie industry about 20 years ago. Since then she has moved careers several times to go with the ever evolving creative industry. Stefanie worked in Traditional and digital 2D Animation, moving to 3D character animation and VFX Animation. As well as illustrating children’s books and now working as a Lead Artist at Kolibri Games.

A Juggler's Tale - A Game restricted by Puppet Strings

Speakers:

Dominik SchönManaging Director & Game Designer at kaleidoscube

Elias KremerTechnical Artist at kaleidoscube

Advice for Your Journey in the Video Games Industry

In this session, Kirill Tokarev talks about important pieces of advice from the 80 Level community that will help you excel and thrive in your video game career.

Speaker:

Kirill TokarevCEO & Editor-in-Chief at 80 Level

Kirill Tokarev has been writing about games for most of his career. Having worked at major publications in Russia and Ukraine, he made a successful transition to an English-speaking audience by helping to create 80 Level - a media publication dedicated to covering game development and technical questions of game art production.

Motion Capture Pipelines for Indies (and AAA)

Speakers:

Eric JacobusHead of Studio at SuperAlloy Interactive

Christian DeAndaProduction Supervisor at SuperAlloy Interactive

Mark JohnsonStudio Manager at SuperAlloy Interactive

Zac SwartoutCo-Founder at SuperAlloy Interactive