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French
The Visual Effects Society announced the winners of the 22nd Annual VES Awards, a few hours ago in Los Angeles. The full list is available: The Creator, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and The Last of Us, received prizes. One of the most coveted categories is Outstanding Visual Effects in a Student Project, which sheds light on young talented artists.
This year, four short films were competing in this category. All of them from French digital arts schools:
- Au 8ème Jour by Piktura students.
- L’Animal Sauce Ail from Rubika.
- Loup y es-tu ?, also from Rubika.
- And Silhouette, from ARTFX.
The award went to Silhouette, created at ARTFX Montpellier by Elliot Dreuille, Marc Forest, Baptiste Gueusquin, Alexis Lafuente, Antoni Nicolaï, and Chloé Stricher.
This is the third time an ARTFX short film is awarded this prize, following Terra Nova (2019) and Green (2022).
Silhouette tells the story of a young woman named Claire who just moved into a big city. We follow her into this cold environment where she quickly witnesses her body disappearing, as a visual representation of her isolation and loneliness.
Here is the film if you haven’t watched it yet. It is followed in the same video by a making-of with the team.
Since graduating from school, the Silhouette team has moved into the professional world: Alexis Lafuente is an animator at Fortiche, Antoni Nicolaï is interning at Ubisoft Montpellier as 3D Cinematic Animator, Elliot Dreuille worked at Mathematic and is currently seeking a new position, Baptiste Gueusquin works at Electric Theatre Collective in London as Generalist, Chloé Stricher is grooming artist at One of Us, looking for a new position, Marc Forest is visual development artist.
The ARTFX teaching staff is obviously delighted with the award received by the former students. ARTFX President and founder Gilbert Kiner sees it as a reward for the team’s talent, but also for the education provided by ARTFX, which is about to celebrate two decades of existence:
Often compared to the Oscars of the visual effects field, the VES Awards represent a true consecration for our six students. We are very happy for their success and warmly congratulate them on this well-deserved recognition! This is the third time that ARTFX films have been awarded, which not only demonstrates the individual talent of our students but also the quality of teaching provided by our teachers. As we prepare to celebrate ARTFX’s 20th anniversary this year, this success represents a wonderful early gift for our entire community.
Dominique Peyronnet, director of the ARTFX campus in Montpellier, highlights the fact that the short film focuses on a current theme and that the students used AI-related techniques:
This award is the most prestigious recognition bestowed by industry professionals. Winning three of these awards in just five years is a magnificent affirmation of our school’s position in the field of visual effects. I am extremely proud of this achievement, which demonstrates the progress made by our students and teaching staff! This film addresses current social and technical issues with a very impressive use of artificial intelligence. This accomplishment demonstrates that our students are trained with passion and rigor, preparing them to work alongside the greatest in the film industry.
Regarding the use of AI, it should be noted that it is not generative AI but various techniques: normal generation and clipping, motion capture from a single video stream, style transfer thanks to EbSynth. The making-of after the short film will provide you more details, at the 8 minutes 10 seconds mark.
We had the opportunity to interview the Silhouette film team as part of a partnership with the school: we conducted a series of interviews for ARTFX during their 2023 jury. The videos are in French, except for the first one. Part of the Silhouette team can be seen at 0:40 in the second video.
