Established in the Philippines for More Than a Decade, Animation Vertigo Continues to Spotlight and Fund the Advancement of Motion Capture Animation Talent in the Region.

Animation Vertigo, a U.S.-based external development company that provides high quality motion capture animation to entertainment industry leaders with offices in the Philippines, is proud to sponsor the launch of GameFest 2017, the pre-event of this year’s E-Sport and Gaming Summit (ESGS), the largest e-sport and gaming event in the Philippines. The prominent conference will include an exciting lineup of key speakers.

“My mission has always been to introduce the vast creative talent of artists in my home country to the motion capture industry,” said Marla Rausch, CEO of Animation Vertigo. “Through Animation Vertigo’s sponsorship in GameFest 2017, and its amazing lineup of key speakers, Animation Vertigo continues to spotlight and fund the advancement of Filipino artists and graphic designers in to the world of 3D animation and motion capture.”

ESGS has grown to be the biggest e-sport and gaming event in the Philippines, with the highest number of game competitions, studios, and global and local games on display. With the launch of the GameFest 2017 pre-event conference, ESGS aims to surpass its record of over 17,000 attendees last year. The pre-event conference will feature the following speakers:

• Brian Recktenwald, environment artist of Naughty Dog, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
• Ian Lang, senior animator of Blizzard Entertainment
• Josh Axner, technical artist of Blizzard Entertainment
• Ryan Torrey, lead animator of House of Moves
• Jia Shen, vice president of product for Blackstorm Labs (makers of Everwing)
• Yi Fei Boon, former lead programmer of Sparkjumpers, now Field Engineer at Unity
• Max Cowen, motion capture and animation specialist of Vicon
• Sam Goodwin, motion capture technician of Vicon
• Max Murray, business development manager of Faceware

The motion capture industry is constantly evolving, and Animation Vertigo is at the forefront with new projects and innovations.

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The U.S.-based company that provides motion capture animation for various entertainment outlets is the official sponsor for this year’s GameFest, the pre-event leading up to the E-Sports and Gaming Summit (ESGS) event taking place in the Philippines. This exciting assembly will include a rather solid cast of speakers from some well-known platforms.

Marla Rausch, CEO of Animation Vertigo had this to say about the sponsorship:

My mission has always been to introduce the vast creative talent of artists in my home country to the motion capture industry,

Through Animation Vertigos sponsorship in GameFest 2017 and its amazing lineup of key speakers, Animation Vertigo continues to spotlight and fund the advancement of Filipino artists and graphic designers into the world of 3D animation and motion capture.

ESGS is the largest gaming event in the Philippines and boasts the largest number of game competitions, studios, and games displaying within. This year, ESGS is aiming to beat last year’s record of over 17,000 attendees. GameFest is sure to bring in more attention with their guest speakers, consisting of prominent staff members from companies such as these:

• Naughty Dog
• Blizzard Entertainment
• House of Moves
• Blackstorm Labs
• Unity
• Vicon
• Faceware

E-Sports and Gaming Summit 2017 will take place this October 27-29, 10 am to 8 pm each day at the SMX Convention Center on Seashell Lane, Pasay City, Metro Manila. Tickets range from 170 to 210 Philippine Pesos, depending on the day. More information about GameFest and ESGS can be found here.

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Marla Rausch, featured as August’s CEO Spotlight in HER Magazine, to Speak at Vancouver’s External Development Summit in September

Animation Vertigo, a U.S.-based external development company that provides high quality motion capture animation to entertainment industry leaders, is proud to announce Founder and CEO Marla Rausch will return as a panel speaker to External Development Summit (XDS), the only international games industry event with a primary focus on external development for art, animation and more, in Vancouver from Sept. 6-8, 2017. This recognition comes on the heels of Marla’s recent CEO Spotlight feature in HER Magazine.

“I am so humbled by the recent recognition by both XDS and HER Magazine,” said Rausch. “I have attended XDS for many years, and have had the honor of speaking on the panel in the past. I am amazed at how much I learn each year, and I know that this year will not disappoint – there are so many new innovations and exciting trends in the motion capture industry, and I’m looking forward to implementing them in future projects.”

Rausch’s CEO Spotlight feature in the August issue of HER Magazine outlines her journey through motion capture, the challenges she overcame as a woman in technology, growing with the industry’s technological advancements, the formula for Animation Vertigo’s success and more. To read the future, visit: http://hermag.co/marla-rausch-leader-tech/

The motion capture industry is constantly evolving, and Animation Vertigo is at the forefront with new projects and innovations. To stay up to date with the latest on Animation Vertigo, please visit the company’s Facebook page or website.

The post ANIMATION VERTIGO FOUNDER AND CEO CONTINUES TO LEAD THE MOTION CAPTURE INDUSTRY appeared first on Animation Vertigo.

Animation Vertigo provides motion capture animation tracking and animation solutions for leaders in film, television and video games by utilizing the talent of more than 50 Filipino artists located in Manila. The gaming industry, a global market behemoth, is clearly comfortable knowing that its intellectual property is protected and work is financially sustainable when outsourced.

As founder and CEO of Animation Vertigo, I am very familiar with the stresses and benefits that come with managing a workforce an ocean away. If you’re thinking about moving part of your company or even certain projects outside of the country and you’re unsure how to manage that team moving forward – below are a few tips to help you get started:

About Marla Rausch: Filipino-American businesswoman Marla De Castro Rausch founded Animation Vertigo more than a decade ago when she saw a need in the film, gaming, motion capture and technology industries to hire stable teams of talented artists. She is the CEO and manages a successful and growing team of more than 50 employees in Manila, Philippines out of her office in Utah. She is a true leader on the topic of outsourcing with her knowledge and experience in seeking topnotch talent, delivering quality work for a reasonable cost. For more information about Animation Vertigo, please visit www.animationvertigo.com.

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 appeared first on Animation Vertigo.

Other players may have become jaded by the same FIFA year after year. But for us, it was fresh. My kids are not natural console gamers, and they only sit down in front of the console when they have a very good reason. We laughed when the commentators said our play was bad. My girls recognized the famous U.S. players from the World Cup, and they fought to see who got to play the U.S. The young one always wanted me to push the “celebrate” button after I scored a goal. They didn’t really care that the movements of the players didn’t really look realistic, or that their faces were relatively expressionless.

On the eve of our GamesBeat 2015 conference in San Francisco next week, I was almost weepy at the happy moments that EA gave us simply by putting women in the game and making my girls feel like they mattered. They would never play a game with male soccer players, and they never have. Because it just doesn’t give them a sense of identity. Just think of the new audiences that video games can reach simply by being a little more inclusive. I can’t tell you how rare it is for my girls to feel like a video game company acknowledges their existence. For games to grow up, they need to make leaps of faith across divides to find new audiences.

We’ll be talking about these issues a lot, in part because we have more women speaking at the event than ever before and because the industry desperately needs to take home some long-term lessons from last year’s GamerGate fiasco, when Internet hate surfaced on such a level as to scare women and minorities away from the industry. As much as they would like to leave it behind us and focus on fun, the leaders of the game industry have to remember that the horrific online harassment of women and other leaders of gaming happened in 2014, not in 1865. We have so far to go.

I was disappointed with the faces and body movements of the female players. They didn’t seem alive, and moved like wooden toys at times. EA tried hard to capture the bodies of women and translate their real motion into animated form. EA’s designers didn’t want to just add a woman’s head to a man’s body, said Nick Channon, senior producer on the game, in an interview back in May. They did a lot of work to make the bodies appear authentic. I believe that if they keep investing in that technology, they’ll make an emotional connection between the game and the player that is really important for female video gamers.

It may be a long time before a fast-action sports game can deliver the kind of raw emotion that we saw in this summer’s women’s World Cup. But I’m glad that I don’t have to wait that long to try out something new on the girls. Microsoft is publishing Rise of the Tomb Raider on the Xbox One on November 10 as a timed exclusive. Back in 2013, when the Tomb Raider reboot came out, I tried to convince my now-18-year-old daughter that she should give this game a try. Lara Croft was now about female empowerment and coming of age, not just big boobs.

“Sure Dad,” she grinned and skipped it altogether.

But Crystal Dynamics has soldiered on and the newest game adds more character and nuance to Lara Croft. It tells how her father inspired her in her childhood and it shows how she has developed into an intellectual powerhouse, someone who is capable of solving puzzles to save her life. The facial animation is more advanced than the characters in FIFA 16, and you really do feel like you’re getting to know a real person.

Technology is actually delivering something that we didn’t really think was that important. Rather than simply improving combat games to be more realistic, the advance of graphics is giving us better, more realistic, and more intriguing characters who are more widely appealing to girls and women. I’m looking forward to playing Rise of the Tomb Raider, which carries on the theme of female empowerment, with the kids, just to see if it will hold them in front of the console longer.

One of the women responsible for this technology is Marla Rausch, chief executive of Animation Vertigo, an Irvine, Calif.-based company that turns motion-captured actors and actresses into characters in video games. Her teams worked on making human characters look real in games like Until Dawn and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. In this kind of artistry, technology is delivering better emotion, rather than just motion, Rausch said in an interview with me.

“What we have now are the best consoles we’ve ever had as far as showing amazing animation,” Rausch said. “It’s a matter of putting these pieces of technology together correctly to where it conveys what you want. The face, especially, is where we get the most criticism. It’s something that you and I would look at and understand — there are some nuances that we can pick up that are very subtle, subtle enough that they sometimes aren’t conveyed by an actor in a game. It could be the engine, or how it was pushed through the rendering, or whatever. But somehow, sometimes, the face just doesn’t quite look right.”

Brianna Wu, head of development at Giant Spacekat, has high expectations for technology. She received a lot of death threats during GamerGate, but during a practice call for our fireside chat next week at GamesBeat 2015, she told me that her interest in virtual reality is in direct response to GamerGate and the hate that poured out on the Internet.

“VR can deliver emotion and empathy,” she said. “We didn’t realize how a lack of empathy on the Internet made it terrible for a lot of people. We are convinced that VR has tremendous potential to deliver emotion and user intent. We are thinking about technologies that can make it better for everyone. So many women I know are pumped about VR because it can be used to tell stories and communicate emotion in a way that no medium has before. As we move into the next frontier of computing, this is where diversity pays off. This isn’t just about women getting jobs. This is about getting different ideas on the table.”

We’re taught that technology can’t solve social problems. Humans have to do that. But in this case, technology just might deliver something that can make a real difference in both the growth of female audiences and the nurturing of women game designers.

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In today’s global market, many industries have expanded their workforces to other parts of the world, animation and entertainment industries included. The demand for the production of high-quality animated titles continues to increase with the release of newer consoles, but so does the desire to keep production costs low. Cost is one of the main factors that have industry leaders looking outside the U.S. for production help, as it is a much more viable and cost effective support option. When I began Animation Vertigo in 2004, the idea of outsourcing was a pretty unpopular topic for discussion. Today, people have begun to embrace outsourcing to grow businesses and avoid falling behind in the industry.

Animation Vertigo provides motion capture animation tracking and animation solutions for leaders in film, television and video games by utilizing the talent of more than 50 Filipino artists located in Manila. The gaming industry, a global market behemoth, is clearly comfortable knowing that its intellectual property is protected and work is financially sustainable when outsourced.

As founder and CEO of Animation Vertigo, I am very familiar with the stresses and benefits that come with managing a workforce an ocean away. If you’re thinking about moving part of your company or even certain projects outside of the country and you’re unsure how to manage that team moving forward – below are a few tips to help you get started:

Read full article here: https://ceoworld.biz/2015/08/06/managing-a-global-workforce

The post Managing a Global Workforce appeared first on Animation Vertigo.

In today’s global market, many industries have expanded their workforces to other parts of the world, animation and entertainment industries included. The demand for the production of high-quality animated titles continues to increase with the release of newer consoles, but so does the desire to keep production costs low. Cost is one of the main factors that have industry leaders looking outside the U.S. for production help, as it is a much more viable and cost effective support option. When I began Animation Vertigo in 2004, the idea of outsourcing was a pretty unpopular topic for discussion. Today, people have begun to embrace outsourcing to grow businesses and avoid falling behind in the industry.

Animation Vertigo provides motion capture animation tracking and animation solutions for leaders in film, television and video games by utilizing the talent of more than 50 Filipino artists located in Manila. The gaming industry, a global market behemoth, is clearly comfortable knowing that its intellectual property is protected and work is financially sustainable when outsourced.

As founder and CEO of Animation Vertigo, I am very familiar with the stresses and benefits that come with managing a workforce an ocean away. If you’re thinking about moving part of your company or even certain projects outside of the country and you’re unsure how to manage that team moving forward – below are a few tips to help you get started:

Read full article here: https://www.industrynewscorp.com/managing-a-global-workforce/

The post Managing a Global Workforce appeared first on Animation Vertigo.

Just a year after launching her motion-capture animation company, Animation Vertigo, Marla Rausch landed one of those long shot, nice-to-even-get-your-foot-in-the-door meetings.

It was back in 2005, when she and thousands of others converged on an L.A. convention center for the Electronic Entertainment Expo, best known as “E3.”

Rausch had a good track record in the industry: She’d done freelance work for her husband’s former animation company, L.A. Spectrum Studios. And when her husband got a job with Sony, the company often paid her to help out during a crunch time.

But as a newbie animation entrepreneur, her clientele list was sparse.

So when Activision Publishing Inc. — one of the largest third-party video game publishers in the world, well known for creating “Call of Duty” and the video games for the “X-Men” and “Spiderman” franchises — asked for a meeting, Rausch was thrilled. And it only got better.

“He said, ‘I’ll be honest with you. I’m already half-inclined to give you the work, without even meeting you,’” Rausch recalled.

Why?

Apparently, Animation Vertigo was a hot topic at the convention, particularly among the Sony camp sertraline cost. Sony folks were talking about all that Rausch and her team of six had been able to accomplish and how easy it was to work with them.

Given all that, the Activision executive didn’t need much convincing.

“He said, ‘Let’s try it,’ ” Rausch recalled.

Nine years later, as Rausch celebrates her company’s 10-year anniversary, Activision is still a client — a rare long-term relationship in the tech world. Rausch’s team, now 54 employees strong, has worked with the company on some of its biggest video-game franchises, including “Call of Duty: Black Ops I” and its sequel.

The Irvine, Calif.-based company also has worked on top sports games from Madden and FIFA.

Most animation companies don’t start with giants such as Sony and Activision. They start small and build a track record. But Rausch learned a key principle early in her career — far from the world of video game animation when she was a financial adviser for American Express Financial Advisors and its spinoff, Ameriprise Financial — that helped her earn that critical word-of-mouth praise and a roster of top-notch clientele: Always exceed expectations.

“We were always meeting them at what they think they should have,” Rausch said, “and then pushing it just a little bit more.”

Here are three ways Rausch exceeds expectations — and how you can tap the best form of marketing: a good reputation:

1. She replies to emails quickly and thoroughly.

Rausch says she tries to reply to every email within 24 hours — an attentiveness her clients appreciate.

But she also takes the replies one step further: She tries to figure out why they need that information and addresses any related issues she thinks could come up.

“If they ask me for information,” Rausch said, “I make sure I give not just the info they need, but I anticipate what they’re asking it for, so it’s more complete.”

That simple step shows that Rausch is on top of the project and is in tune with the needs of her clients. It’s also a time-saver, eliminating some of the back and forth that can make email so time consuming. Simple resolution, big returns.

2. She plans well for emergencies and never lets clients see her sweat.

Deadlines are a reality in any industry — as are the occasional complications. That’s particularly true in motion-capture production, Rausch says, where even a small tech problem could put a wrench in well-laid plans.

But Rausch never waits until the last minute to give her clients a heads up.

“If I do find myself in a tricky situation where I might not be able to meet the deadline, two days before that I’ve already been in conversations with them,” Rausch says.

And when she does, she’s already got a plan — how her team is going to work around the problem, how they’ll execute plan B to get the job done. And even if they get an extension, she pushes her team to try to finish the projects early.

“Then when we make it, (the clients) are like, ‘Oh you didn’t have to do that,’” Rausch says.

3. She trains before she delegates.

Rausch isn’t one to want to control every aspect of the operation. But she wants her direct reports to be 100 percent in tune with the way she operates and what her clients have come to expect.

When her producer Nick started, Rausch included him in every conversation she had.

“I had him with me when talking with clients, so he’d be familiar with how I deal with clients…and the speed and the quality and the communication…they have learned to expect from me,” Rausch said.

And for a period of time, she had him copy her on email conversations, so she could dissect them with him and advise him on how to tackle the situation as she would. It helped clients get a seamless experience. And it perpetuated the company culture Rausch worked so hard to build.

“These are things that are easy to say but easy to break,” Rausch says. “Those are values that, if you make a mistake with one, you’re going to have a tarnished reputation.”

Read the full article here

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