| Sumario: | Welcome to the SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 Computer Animation Festival! I have attended many wonderful animation festivals and events, but for me nothing compares to the excitement of sitting down to watch the animations collected for the SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festivals. Each year, I get to see the previous year's outstanding work in the field, selected and arranged to make a stirring experience, and I leave inspired to take our field to new and even richer levels of artistic and technical achievement in the future. As chair of this year's festival, I hope not only to help create that experience for all our attendees, but also to provide a show that gives expression to the rapidly maturing and dynamic animation industry throughout Asia. In the story of the SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 Computer Animation Festival, there's no question who the hero is; the animators and filmmakers who submitted works to the show are the heart and soul of the event. We received over 600 submissions from around the globe, and our selection process had to focus on trying to sort out the very best works among all of them. A huge thanks also goes out both to the local jury in Tokyo that did the initial viewing and the international jury from the US, Germany, Korea, and Japan who came together to make the difficult final selections. In the end, focusing on the best works has created a show that is truly international in character, reflecting the fact that computer animation is now a truly worldwide endeavor. We see also that the "computer" in computer animation is becoming far more varied. While the majority of works in our festival are recognizably computer-generated imagery, the range of appearances is broadening, and the show proudly showcases several works where the computer was critical not for drawing the final pictures but for planning and executing the production. The jury recognized two pieces of particular merit. Lindsey Olivares' "Anchored" demonstrated an accomplished ability to balance the music, characters, action, composition, and typographic elements of a film around a core message, for which it received the Best of Show award. Digic Pictures' trailer for "Assassin's Creed 2" simply represents an undeniably high level of technical achievement in computer graphics employed to create a dynamic, immersive piece, and it received the Best Technical award as a result.
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