Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1536119
a p r i l • m ay • j u n e 2 0 2 5 c g w 2 1 detect signs of life. This ancient, gigantic, menacing dragon-type creature from the lost world or ancient universe comes up over a mountain ridge and blows them away with his fiery roar. It's pretty awesome. It's a beautiful cinematic. That dragon was never really supposed to talk, but Ozone and I had always talked about wanting to work on non-human characters together. So I said, "Well, let's make this dragon talk. Let's give them an actor's personality." He's cast in this cinematic, and then he's go- ing to talk to the folks at GDC about what went into the project. So he moves from being his character in the cinematic—very menacing and as you'd expect—and then his off-stage persona is very egocen- tric and diva-y. It's very silly, but it was super fun. The team at Immersive Enterprise Labs brought Mark Andrew's [Pixar's Brave] to direct live, unscripted animation in a small volume that House of Moves stood up, with some help from our friends at Vicon. I loved the fact that we probably improvised how we brought these characters to GDC together like 18 times, so it was a real test of each other's production resilience. I think it just showed how tight we have started to become. At SIGGRAPH, we had to work really hard to communicate what made sense for all these teams to be demonstrating together. This time around, people were already pick- ing up on the narrative that there's a moment that's going to happen as a result of this collaboration. There's something that's emerging, which is exciting. It's nice to see how this is evolving. Will you be bringing the Anim Revolution back to SIGGRAPH this year? Sarah Watling: We're definitely evaluating the strategy for there. I think we're looking to complement whatever we do as the collec- tive with some speaking opportunities as well. We have been invited to participate at the upcoming Unreal Fest in Orlando this June, so that's exciting! More about JALI Research: jaliresearch.com More about Anim Revolution: animrevolution.com VIDEO: "Outpost" Cinematic by Anim Revolution at GDC 2025 Render of the GDC 2025 Anim Revolution booth Mark Andrews (animation director of Pixar's Brave), speaks to the crowd at the Anim Revolution booth at GDC 2025