Last Thursday I went to the Games 'N Motion Symposium in Rotterdam. This symposium's goal was to get the people within these two creative disciplines to meet each other and forge new alliances.
Matthijs Dierckx of Control opened the symposium with a collection of short video clips illustrating the difference in evolution between games and animation. One of his points was that games as a medium has continually progressed over the years in terms of visual prowess, whereas animation has established itself quite early during its life cycle. An interesting view and a great way to kick things off.
But, after that promising opening it went a little bit downhill. Well, in my opinion. It was basically a business meeting. All the other speakers talked about marketing, business models or copyright. All interesting stuff, but not necessarily I was hoping for. I was hoping to gain more insight into the creative processes behind these two disciplines. Aside from a helpful reference to a game developed by Level 5 and Studio Ghibli, there wasn't much I could use for my upcoming project.
On the plus side, I met two of my old MBO teachers there, namely Marco Zielhuis and Matthijs Clasener. It was great to see them again; the last time was like five years ago, when I graduated. We chatted a bit about different educations, games and whatnot. The most interesting development on the GLR since I left is the fact that they split my education Animation & Games, into two seperate educations. I'm pretty curious in what the exact difference in course material is between these two. I think this could maybe be of some help for my supportive narrative.
In short; the symposium as a whole was a bit of a letdown. I was hoping on a bit of more insight into the creative processes of games and animation, but alas. Hopefully talking to animation students and teachers on the HKU will give me better information.
Cheers,
Tom
