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Judges
Kekai Kotaki
Born and raised on the Big Island of Hawaii, Kekai Kotaki has always had a passion for art. Finding the sunshine and beautiful scenery distracting, he moved to dreary Seattle in 2000 to attend art school. After graduating, he proceeded to attempt a career at doing art. This meant getting a job at ArenaNet, the makers of the Guild Wars franchise, as a lowly texture artist. Through hard work and more than a little luck he was able to become a concept artist.
Kekai can still be found in Seattle at ArenaNet. He is working hard as Lead Concept Artist on Guild Wars 2 and on a burgeoning illustration career.
Anthony Francisco
Anthony Francisco is a Concept Artist/Art Director who has worked on many projects for both the film and electronic gaming industry. He has created concepts for movies like Men in Black 2,Alien Vs. Predator, Species3, Spiderman, and Chronicles of Riddick to name a few. He has also taught character design at Gnomon School of Visual Effects, and Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Arts. He is currently the Lead Character artist at Offset Software.
http://www.ubermonster.blogspot.com/
Ben Neall - Senior Texture Artist, Digital Domain
Ben Neall received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Chico State University, with a major in Painting and Drawing. With a background in traditional art, Ben started his career in texturing at Luma Pictures, and has been Lead Texture Artist at Luma since 2005. In this position he has worked on many projects, including City of Ember, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, No Country for Old Men, and Underworld: Evolution. Ben is currently a senior texture artist at Digital Domian where is working on Transformers 2and Ttron 2.0
Cajun Hylton - Senior Modeler
Cajun earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Computer Animation from the International Fine Arts College. Since then he has worked on and freelance for numerous films and commercials. Since 2005 he has been a Lead modeler at Luma Pictures, working on projects ranging from Underworld 2: Evolution to Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Caj is currently working at Weta Digital on Avatar and the Hobbit.
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/product/396/
Francisco Cortina
Francisco's digital career began soon after earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Maryland Institute of Art. He got his start working at Johns Hopkins University's Madlab as a medical animator. In 1996 he joined the Japanese video game giant, Square USA, where he worked on several game titles including "Parasite Eve" and "Final Fantasy IX", the animated feature film "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" and the animated short "Animatrix: Final Flight of the Osiris".
From 2002-2005 he was at both Dreamworks Animation and Digital Domain, working on several feature films including “Sharktale”, “Aeon Flux” and “My Super Ex-Girlfriend”. He recently finished working on-site at Digital Domain as the Modeling supervisor for “Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor”.
http://www.cortinadigital.com/
Gabriel Betancourt
Gabriel Betancourt began working in the animation industry over 9 years, and has contributed his experience and talents to music videos, commercials, and games for a number of clients. He currently works with ACTIVISION: TREYARCH, where he is the lead lighting artist for an upcoming “Call of Duty: World at War” videogame; a sequel to the highest grossing videogame of all time: Call of Duty 4. In the same year, he was Sr. Lighter and materials artist for Eidos on Tomb Raider: Underworld also releasing this November for the XBOX 360, Playstation 3, and Wii. Mr. Betancourt’s previous video game projects include Lair (for PS3), and the Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning (for PS2).
Mr. Betancourt co-founded and worked for MindJuiceCG Studios from 1999 to 2005, where he created storyboards for commercial projects and designed lighting composition. He also created 3-D visual effects on commercials for high profile entities such as Bacardi, NBC, Univision, SBS, and FIFA World Cup Soccer, as well as several music videos for bands Coheed & Cambria and Thursday’s song “5-4-3-2-1.”
Pete Zoppi
Pete Zoppi grew up in Connecticut and attended Trinity College in Hartford where he received a BA in Fine Art. After finishing college he moved to LA to attend The Gnomon School of Visual Effects. He has worked in both visual effects and gaming as a character modeler and texture artist. His notable projects are Underworld: Evolution, Night at the Museum, The Golden Compass, Kung Fu Panda the Game and James Bond: Quantum of Solace the Game. He is currently employed as a Senior Character Artist at Treyarch in Santa Monica, CA.
Raphael A. Pimentel
Raphael A. Pimentel has worked as an animator for more than eight years. He is currently an animation supervisor at Luma Pictures, where his responsibilities include leading the animation team in character performance and choreography, helping to create believable motion and performances, assigning shots to animators, providing leadership, assisting with project scheduling, and ensuring that the director’s vision is reflected in the character’s performance. His recent projects include Pirates of the Caribbean, Apocalypto, Harry Potter, City of Ember, Underworld 2 and 3, and The Nutcracker.
http://www.luma-pictures.com/hpPublish/index.html
Ted Davis
Ted Davis attained his BFA in Computer Animation from the International Fine Arts College in Miami, FL. He has foundations in traditional, modern and contemporary techniques of drawing, painting, sculpting and other mixed media art forms. Upon graduating from college, he began applying his various skill sets into the field of Computer Graphics, ultimately becoming a texture artist. He has done work for major visual effects houses, video game studios, broadcast campaigns and freelance clientele. Projects include Speed Racer, Transformers 2, God of War II, Spyro the Dragon, Silent Hill Experience, Ratchet and Clank, Tools of Destruction.
http://texturepainter.blogspot.com/
Kevin Chen
Kevin Chen has worked for many of today’s top entertainment companies as a lead and freelance concept artist.
His past projects include “Medal of Honor”, “Call of Duty”, “Guild Wars”, “Alien vs Predator”, “9”, “Gatchaman”, and the upcoming film, “Sucker Punch”.
Kevin has been instructing classes and professional workshops for various schools and studios during the past 12 years. His clients include studios such as Blizzard, Disney Feature Animation and Valve and schools such as Art Center College of Design and Gnomon School of Visual Effects. He is also the founder and director of Concept Design Academy located in Pasadena California.