Dr. Ian Palmer, Director at Escape Studios 

The VFX Festival EDU will kick off with an introduction from the Director of Escape Studios, Ian Palmer. 

Virginie Bourdin, Art Director 

About Session

Going through various creative phases viewed through the prism of concept art, Virginie will give an original overview of blockbuster production. 

About Speaker

After 7 years of in-depth academic art and communication studies, she developed her skillset exploring different visual fields such as advertising and animation before dedicating herself to high-end VFX for Hollywood movies. Virginie was Head of Department and VFX Art Director for almost ten years at VFX house MPC. She then launched The Art of Direction in 2015, a creative studio dedicated to pre-production for visual entertainment, drawing from a deep pool of international artists who share with her the need to satisfy an insatiable curiosity for novelty, creative processes and storytelling design. 

David Paget, Concept Artists at Sumo Digital 

About Session

In this presentation, Dave Paget will discuss the creative roles available within the games industry.  He will be highlighting the best practices to help develop your games portfolio and help begin your career. 

About speaker

Dave Paget has been working as a concept artist within the entertainment industries for 10 years.  Specialising in character design, Dave has mainly worked as a freelance artist on a variety of game, film and animation projects including the recently announced Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War, Spider-Man, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Love, Death+Robots Season 1 and 2, Kong: Skull Island and Bloodshot.  Dave now works as the Lead Concept Artist at Sumo Digital Nottingham, most recently working on the anticipated horror game, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 

Hamish Ballingall, VFX Artist at The Mill 

About session

Get a run through of the Mill's overall VFX process on 'Uniqa', a 1 minute commercial. The session will be focusing on how they created a full CG Hurricane using Houdini. 

About speaker 

Hamish Ballingall has worked at a variety of the top VFX companies in London and Canada, on some of their best projects including Dune, Thor Ragnarok and Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (to name a few!).

Hamish has 6 years of experience in FX TD, 5 years of experience in FX for film & TV and over 1 year of FX experience in advertising. 

Dorothea Gerassimova, Art Director at Walt Disney Television Animation 

Dorothea has over 20 years of experience in the animation industry. She has worked at MGM, Warner Brothers, Starz Animation and Dreamworks TV. Currently Dorothea works at Walt Disney Television Animation as Art Director. During her career. Dorothea has had a variety of roles such as painter, lead painter, song sequence designer, color designer, visual development artist, and Art Director.  

Dorothea has delivered projects for a range of audiences, with a sense of humor and artistic styles.  She has been part of the talented crews on The Avengers TV Series, Tom And Jerry: Robin Hood and His Merry Mouse, NFL Rush Zone TV Series Season 2, Trolls TV series, Milo Murphy’s Law, Mira Royal Detective - 3D TV Series and more. 
 

Iliana Franklin, Head of Story and Previz and 2D Animation at Escape Studios 

Iliana is the Head of Story and Previz and 2D Animation at Escape Studios and has worked in the animation industry for over 30 years, since 1987. She is also the Art Director at Mediaframe Ltd. She has worked on various TV shows such as TMNT Classic Series (1991-1993), Do the Bartman (1992), Mr. Men and Little Miss, (1995) Mecki and his friends (1994), Hungarian Folk Tales (1992-1996), Spirou and Fantasio (1993–1995), Carland Cross (1996), Kipper (1997-1999), Rugrats in Paris: The Movie - Rugrats II (2000), Mona the Vampire (2002), Okido (2010) Wishandpoof (2016). She's also worked on Feature Films including Aaron's Magic Village (1995), The Fearless Four (1997) A Monkey’s Tale (1999), The Princess and the Pea (2002), The Three Wise Men (2003), The Tale of Despereaux (2007). 

Iliana Franklin has been appointed "Toon Boom Ambassador" for 2022.