Keynote Speaker:
Sacha Goedegebure
Writer / Director / Freelance Cartoonist
Blender Institute
Sacha Goedegebure is the writer, director, storyboard artist, character designer and one of the animators of 'Big Buck Bunny', the second open movie made with Blender3D and other open source software. While having a lifelong passion for 2D and being a freelance cartoonist for over 10 years, it was only since 2004 Sacha translated his ideas into 3D. In a short period of time he made a name in the worldwide Blender community for his simple style and off-the-wall humor, which got him a leading role in the first project of the Blender Institute. All this without any experience in any 3D production pipeline, something Sacha would call the power of open source. Sacha graduated as a teacher in Visual Art and Design, but he believes the world of CG and open content is just way too intriguing and fun to spend time in front of a classroom.

Andreas Goralczyk
Student / Art Director / Freelance CG Illustrator
Blender Institute
Andreas Goralczyk studies in the field of Media Arts and Data Visualisation in Karlsruhe, Germany. He is a freelance CG illustrator, drawing from a broad range of styles. Before joining Big Buck Bunny, he was art director of the world's first open movie production Elephants Dream.

Originally from Chicago, Illinois, Connor earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Motion Picture/Television from Illinois State University, where he was awarded Mass Communication Graduate of the Year 2003. Brian recently relocated to Singapore from San Francisco where he taught Advanced Visual Effects and Compositing at the Academy of Art University. Brian recently co-authored a book called The Encyclopedia of Visual Effects.

Jacques Dussault
Motion Capture Studio Director
Ubisoft Montréal
Jacques Dussault joined Ubisoft in February 1998 as an animator. He spent two years (1999-2001) in Shanghai as animation studio director where he did some of the first MoCap projects for Ubisoft. Since his return to Montreal, he has worked as animation team manager on multiple projects (Batman Rise of Sin Tsu, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Double agent) before joining the starting team of the MoCap studio in September 2005.

Sean Lewkiw
Technical Head of 3D
CIS London
Sean Lewkiw is Technical Head of 3D at CIS London, (formerly Rainmaker). He has over ten years of experience in CG, starting as an animator/FX artist in Japan, and later Toronto, an FX TD at Wota for the first two LOTR films, almost four years as CG and VFX supervisor at Jim Henson’s Creature Shop in London, a year at Framestore-CFC London where he contributed to both Xmen III and Superman Returns, before joining CIS two years ago to help create a full 3D department and pipeline.

Tino Schaedler
Independent CG Artist
Tino Schaedler has an academic background in architecture and visual effects. He graduated from the University of Hannover in architecture with honours, studied at the Berlage Institute in Amsterdam, UC Berkeley in the US and the Filmschool in Vancouver. He has taught at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin, the architecture department of UBC in Vancouver and the Architectural Association in London. In 2002 he co-founded studio digital analog with Michael J. Brown.

After working for three years in the offices of Daniel Libeskind and Barkow Leibinger architects his career took a turn and led him to film design. Since then he has worked on several big budget productions, such as Tim Burton‘s `Charlie and the Chocolate Factory‘, `Catwoman‘, `V for Vendetta‘ and `Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix‘ and the upcoming New Line production `His Dark Materials - The Golden Compass´ as art director for digital sets. He is currently working a book title and curating a traveling exhibition on contemporary film design. Recently, Tino has been featured in interviews and is holding talks at universities and conventions on digital set design.

Alessandro Paccinani
Director / VFX supervisor
Alessandro Pacciani is 22 this year and an Italian-based CG artist. In 2005, Alessandro Pacciani has been finalist at the Hollywood Awards together with other famous film-makers like George Lucas, Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, Ilayao Miyazaki, Chan-wook Park and Takashi Miike. In 2006, the London Metro News Paper elect Alessandro Pacciani as “one of the top prominent directors of the coming decay”.

Alessandro Pacciani is a member of the UK production company, “Lost in space” (featuring works for Chris Cunningham, Terminator 2, Bjork, Wrap records, Honda, BBC, Toyota, Adidas, Nike, MTV). He represented as commercial director in Germany by “Gap films”; EX company of Roland Emmerich (Independence day, The day after tomorrow). And he has other representation as commercial director in Canada, Spain, Italy, France, Poland, Thailand, Netherlands, and Singapore etc. His works have been featured in several compilation DVD sets and numerous magazines all around the world.

Feng Zhu
Founder
Feng Zhu Design, Possibility Space
An expert and highly regarded concept artist, Feng Zhu was involved in the design process for numerous high profile games and movies like Battle-Realm, Star Wars ep.3. He also worked with renowned Directors like Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Michael Bay on the conceptualizing process of feature films. Feng previously also assume the role as a Creative Director at NCSoft and now runs his own Game studio, Possibility Space in Beijing.

Kingston Chan
Games Artist
Ksatria Gameworks
Kingston Chan, from Hong Kong, is currently working as Lead artist in Ksatria Gameworks based in Singapore. He specializes in next Gen Game Art development and is a professional in Modeling and texturing with a strong illustration and conceptual design background. He is experienced in the Japanese and Western Game industry as well as CG movie development. Kingston has 6 years of experience working in game conceptual design and 3d development while working for game companies; Sega Japan, KOEI Singapore and now in Ksatria Gameworks. He has personal involvement in 5 game production teams, in charge of character and environments modeling, conceptual design and digital illustrations. Other responsibilities include training artists and setting up production pipeline. His works can be seen at: http://www.coroflot.com/Kingston

Other than working in Ksatria gameworks, Kingston also teaches in 3D Sense Media School, setting up pipeline and teaching for their Game Art and modeling specialization in their Diploma course. He also teaches drawing, conceptual design, digital painting, ZBrush, and Maya Software training.

Ho Chee Yue
President
Association of MACHINIMA Arts and Sciences (AMAS)
Chee Yue holds a Business Administration degree from the National University of Singapore and has more than 18 years of business, advertising, digital entertainment and online games experience.

Started his career in advertising and worked for a decade at various multinational advertising agencies before Chee Yue started his first business venture in 2000.

Chee Yue charted his creative marketing company towards the path of globalisation. His work led to the merger with three marketing companies in U.S. and Europe in March 2001. The merger has been described as ¡°The biggest new media deal of the year¡± by Financial Times, April 3, 2001.

His passion for creativity has translated itself into machinima. For the last three years, Chee Yue has been evangelising machinima, convinced that the potential of this powerful platform will nurture a whole generation of aspiring animators, filmmakers and game makers.

In 2006, Chee Yue is instrumental to the formation and launch of Machinimasia, a community project supported by Creative Community of Singapore(CCS), an initiative by the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts(MICA), the Media Development Authority(MDA) of Singapore, and the New York based Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences.

Most recently, AMAS and Wuhan's Animation and Comics Society jointly organised the inaugural Machinima China Festival in conjunction with the Wuhan's Animation Festival in May 2008.

Gregory Ho
Vice President & General Manager
Animax Asia, SPE Networks - Asia
Greg is the Vice President and General Manager of Animax Asia, helming one of Asia¡¯s leading youth brands and the world¡¯s first channel dedicated to the fastest growing youth entertainment genre - Japanese animation (anime).

Launched in 2004, Animax Asia now reaches over 29 million households across 21 countries, with an annual viewership of over 50 million. As the channel head, Greg oversees all the business operations and profitability of the channel

Gregory is no stranger to the building of young, challenger brands. He first joined the network as Director of Marketing for AXN in 1999. Overseeing viewer & trade marketing as well as corporate communications & PR, he created brand campaigns and conceptualize signature events that have made AXN one of the most popular and recognized TV brands in Asia today

He was subsequently promoted to Vice President of Marketing & Creative Services, with the added responsibility of overseeing the on-air presentation for both AXN Asia and Animax Asia.

Prior to assuming his current role, Greg was Vice President of Advertising Sales & Marketing where he lead SPE (Sony Pictures Entertainment) Networks ¨C Asia to 3 years of unprecedented ad sales growth and spearheaded the network¡¯s effort in branded entertainment with mega productions like The Amazing Race Asia, Sony Style, Samsung Sports World and Ultimate Escape to award winning shows like Mondo Magic Singapore and Man¡¯s World.

A lawyer by training, Greg has spent more than 15 years in the broadcast industry. He began his broadcasting career at SBC Radio (Mediacorp Radio) and made his mark in the cable and satellite industry with Asia Business News (ABN) / CNBC Asia.

Alan Harris
Managing Director
Atlantic Film Group
A producer involved in the feature film scene, Alan Harris brings with him a wealth of experience in the industry relevant to co-funding and financing films. He recently completed ¡®The Ferryman¡¯, a film which he had produced as well as a series of other films like ¡®N azi Officer¡¯s Wife¡¯ and ¡®Wallis and Edward¡¯.

Patrick De Moustier
COO
Electronic Arts Asia Pacific
Patrick brings to EA over 2 decades of experience in the Digital Media and Entertainment arena across Asia, the United States and Europe.

He started his career with EA in 2005 as COO of EA Chicago where he grew the studio from a single game developer to a multiple-franchise studio staffed with 200 people. EA Chicago was the best performing standalone studio within EA in 2006.

Patrick moved to EA Asia in August 2007 as COO of EA Asia studios. His knowledge in design, building and development of global, cross-cultural operations, as well as cross- platform integration, is key to establishing a strong studio presence in Asia.

Prior to EA, Patrick was President and COO of Vivendi Universal Net USA, managing a portfolio of high growth new media and technology companies. At Vivendi, Patrick led the post-merger (Vivendi, Canal+, Seagram) integration. He also championed the execution of the Vivendi Universal new interactive and multi-access strategy (web, mobile, Set top box), establishing Vivendi as a leader in Digital Entertainment.

Patrick¡¯s career stints also include President and CEO at Vivendi Universal Net Technologies, CTO at Vivendi Universal Net, CEO of Activcard Technologies (EASDAQ, NASDAQ - he took the company public in Europe in 1998), and COO at Cap Gemini Asia where he established and built Cap Gemini¡¯s significant Asian operations.

Yasushi Uchida
Vice President & COO
GDH K.K.
Mr Yasu Uchida received BA from the Literary Department of Seijo University. He also studied at Professional Producer Course at U CLA. After some time at American Investment Bank and assignment at the Foreign Ministry, at the Japanese Embassy in London, he joined Gaga Communications Inc. There he acted as Vice President of Interactive Media and Acquisition and Marketing for US Films. Currently, he is the GDH joint COO and he is also a guest professor representing Digital Hollywood Graduate University.

Feng Zhu
Founder
Feng Zhu Design, Possibility Space
An expert and highly regarded concept artist, Feng Zhu was involved in the design process for numerous high profile games and movies like Battle-Realm, Star Wars ep.3. He also worked with renowned Directors like Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Michael Bay on the conceptualizing process of feature films. Feng previously also assume the role as a Creative Director at NCSoft and now runs his own Game studio, Possibility Space in Beijing.

Pierre Hennes
Co-Founder and Partner
Upstream Ventures
Pierre has over 5 years experience in VC and new venture creation across Asia, supported by 8 years of international corporate and startup experience. He has worked as an IT consultant to the financial services industry with Accenture in New York City, and as a private strategic consultant in Europe and the US for companies across various sectors including internet and new media, mobile communications, real-estate, and the arts. Pierre also worked extensively throughout Russia with the Deloitte Touche ILA Group to stimulate regional economic growth and investment through the commercialization of local emergent technologies. Prior to Upstream Ventures, he held the position of Director of Marketing for a Brussels-based B2B e-procurement startup. Pierre currently serves on the board of several Upstream Ventures portfolio companies including Mikoishi Pte. Ltd. And Tagit Pte. Ltd. and is a frequent guest speaker and business plan competition judge at industry events and universities including INSEAD, SMU, NUS and NTU.

Pierre earned a B.A. with Honors in International Relations from Boston University, and an MBA from New York University's Stern School of Business. He also studied at the Hochschule St. Gallen in St. Gallen, Switzerland as part of NYU¡¯s International Management Program.

Pierre serves as a Director of the Business Angels Network of Southeast Asia (BANSEA), is a Charter Member of TiE Singapore (The Indus Entrepreneur), and is the head of the NYU Stern Alumni Group in Singapore. He speaks seven languages, serves as a Committee Member of the Armenian Church of St. Gregory in Singapore, and is a member of the Singapore Lyric Opera Choir. He is also a member of the Board of International Human Benefit Services, a non-profit organization created to relieve educational and health-care needs in rural India.

David Quli , Media Finance Partner, Wiggin LLP
David is a media finance specialist and advises financiers, producers and distributors on film, television and video game productions and financings.  He has extensive experience in structuring complex international film financings (single picture, slate and library financings) and advises clients on all production and financing documents including loan, security, completion guarantee, inter-creditor and distribution agreements.  

Eric Calderon
CEO
Wild Boar Media