"3D CONFERENCE & EXPO -
Expo & Big Kahuna"
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The show floor offered up four substantial rows of exhibitors. There were approximately 50 to 60 booths. Some quite large and up to the scale and as elaborate as Siggraph exhibits.
The exhibit was much more substantial then I had originally thought.
The Big Kahuna Awards is the gala ceremony awarding 3D Magazines selection for best animation or still CG work in a variety of categories. Some of the categories were, Commercial, Imagination, Industrial, Scientific and Medical, and a few more. The Kahuna Award show was actually my big disappointment of the show. I had thought that the show would primarily be lots of animation. Instead it was a real awards show calling the names of the nominees and then the winner. It was an enthusiastic crowd and the presenters were all just fine however if one hadn't seen the animations the too brief snippets of the nominated animations left me feeling short changed. Obviously the award show would run too long if all the animations would be shown during the ceremony. It would be much better to run the animations in their entirety during the show in a screening room or even on some kiosks on the convention center floor so we could get a better idea of the nominated work.
They did however show the entire animation of the grand prize winner, the Big Kahuna, which was a great animation
called "Bowling for Souls". It was a great effort by a couple of guys who just wanted to create some
animation to show people, which got supported by the Spike & Mike folks who encouraged them to finish, and it was clearly well worth it.
However one totally awesome event did occur during the Kahuna award show. After the actual awards are given out 3D Magazine hold a raffle giving out
a lot of prizes to the attendees. The primary master of ceremonies was Chris Tome 3D Magazine's technical editor and co-chair
of the conference. The first number he read for the raffle turns out to be
his girl friend who reluctantly comes up to the stage, Chris tell people it's his
girlfriend and the crowd starts to boo. Then about 5 seconds later Chris pulls out a ring, gets on his
knees and proposes to her! Its was pretty cool. After that the real raffle started.
All in all the 3D Conference & Expo was a terrific show. The quality of the workshops and the scope of the exposition make it well worthwhile. In many ways the show is better than Siggraph because it's much smaller and one can ask questions of the presenters and interact in a lower keyed environment with other people.
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