Industry Talks

Miki has 20 years of experience in the media and entertainment industries, having held senior executive roles in content, creative and strategy at MTV Networks, Viacom and Pearson. She has a strong track record of launching channels and brands and building winning teams and products across the globe. Today, as a chief content and creative officer at Hopster, the UK’s leading TV and learning app for pre-school kids, she is responsible for the platform's creative direction and content strategy.

Video game project manager and artist. More than 6 years of experience in the games industry. Worked with top publishing companies like Atari on well-known IPs like RollerCoaster Tycoon 4 Mobile, Lunar Battle. Core skills are 3D modelling and animation. Strong passion towards the video game industry since I was 14 years old.

I have spent over 5 years in visual art industry and projects development, working for different companies. During this time, I had the opportunity to improve my skills in video games, animation, film making, graphic design, illustration and video effects. Furthermore, I had very good results in generating artistic ideas and concept art. I also have a strong background in innovative technologies such as motion capture, kinect, body scanning and 3D printing, etc., which gave me the opportunity to work with some start-up company'es in Vancouver. I strongly believe I can contribute in the art field with my knowledge.

Lukáš grew up not just playing video games, but also writing about them from a very young age. As a student of computer science, but not a happy one, he used his writing skills to pursue a career in PR that brought him all the way to Amanita Design where he is mostly responsible for talking with people.

A frequent speaker at the SIGGRAPH and GDC conferences, Renaldas Zioma is the mastermind behind the success of the Unity game engine. His mission is to understand the biological brain to build better hardware and software and his main goal is to empower artists, designers, animators and developers with creative tools to make better artwork.

Diego Gisbert Llorens (Alcoy, Alicante, 1980) started drawing when he grabbed a pencil for the first time and is yet to stop. After studying illustration and fine arts, he now works mainly with digital media, in the area of fantasy illustration, as well as for the entertainment industry as a concept artist. He is particularly well known for his work relating to Warhammer and Warhammer 40K, in addition to speaking at several events in Spain and other countries. His client list includes GamesWorkshop, Behaviour Interactive, Aeria Games, Paizo, Fantasy Flight Games, The Creative Assembly, Sega, Volta, Konami, Alderac, Axis Animation, and CD Projekt Red. <a href="https://diegogisbert.artstation.com">https://diegogisbert.artstation.com</a>

Alfred Nguyen is CEO of ThroughLine Games and creative director of Forgotton Anne, a 2D cinematic adventure game released on PC and consoles and published by Square Enix Collective in 2018. Based in Copenhagen, Denmark, ThroughLine Games focuses on developing story-driven games with high artistic ambition. Alfred is an award-winning animated film and games director who graduated from the National Film School of Denmark in 2008 and has since worked in a variety of positions in the film, animation and games industries.

Dominykas has been working in Unity Demo Team since creation of The Blacksmith Demo (2015). He has been making tools for his team and used Continuous Integration process for demo creation.

Dominik is a German writer-director with a strong passion for challenging narratives and technology. Combining both in engaging and innovative ways has always been his ambition. With his current work focusing mainly on animated Virtual Reality content, he is able to bring together his background in traditional movies and theater with his studies of animation at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. His previous project “SONAR” – an animated 360° short – premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2016. Later that year it was invited to the VR Pavillion at the Cannes Film Festival and participated in an exhibition about new media formats at MoMA in New York. FILMOGRAPHY: MindPalace (2018) / animated vr short / dir: Carl Krause, D. Stockhausen SONAR (2015) / animated 360 short / dir: Phillip Maas, D. Stockhausen Auster (2015) / animated short / dir: Carl Krause, D. Stockhausen

Mats Grorud is a film director and animator from Norway. He previously directed two short films and has worked as an animator on several feature films, documentaries and music videos. During his childhood, his mother worked as a nurse in refugee camps in Lebanon. In the 1990s, Mats studied at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon while working as an English and animation teacher in the Burajneh refugee camp. Based on the testimonies of refugees and his own experience, he wrote the script for his first-feature film "The Tower". FILMOGRAPHY: DIRECTOR AND ANIMATOR: SANTA KLAUS (2009), short film, co-directed with Robin Jensen MY GRANDMOTHER BEIJING (2008), short film ANIMATOR: ASYLUMSEEKERS (2005), short film directed by Kaja Polmar GRANDPA IS A RAISIN (2008), feature film directed by Pjotr Sapegin

Veronica was born in a small town in the middle of Transylvania (Romania) and currently lives in Berlin, Germany. After obtaining a degree in fine arts (2003), she began a self-training process to become an animator alongside making comics and illustration. In 2017, she graduated from the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF with a BA in Animation.

Karolina Bielskytė is a director, set designer, animator and interdisciplinary art practitioner. She was recognized in 2014 with a Viscom Ian Emes award from Birmingham Repertory Theatre, and her work was displayed in London's Victoria and Albert Museum as part of Designing for Shakespeare weekend. Her hybrid installation “The Contraption” was recognised at festivals across the UK and Lithuania and was one of the 65 projects from 23 countries selected by the international jury to be part of the NEU/NOW. From 2016 to 2018, Karolina studied for a MA in Animation at the University of the West of England and explored different animation techniques, projection possibilities and digital technologies. She worked with companies such as the BBC, the Royal Academy of Music, Studio McGuire and Tessa Bide Productions. Specialising in set design and animation, Karolina works across theatrical and multidisciplinary projects, art installations, projection mapping work, music videos, commercials and live shows.

Gediminas Šiaulys (aka Ged Sia) is an animation director, a visual artist and founder of the PetPunk studio. The artist’s primary areas of interest lie in animation, tactile crafts and various experiments within these fields. This leads to authentic work that is visually and aesthetically challenging, yet peculiarly subtle. Gediminas's works have gained recognition at some of the world’s leading art and design magazines and have become a synonym for the “New Eastern European Design”. In 2009 Canadian magazine Boards included PetPunk in the top 6 of its “New Wave of Designers”, and in 2010 leading UK's design magazine Computer Arts featured PetPunk as “The New Wave of Animation”. Gediminas Šiaulys, together with PetPunk, are the first Lithuanians to win the “Young Guns” prize from the Art Directors Club of New York and have also been invited to numerous international festivals. These include the European Design Conference (Stockholm), Visuelt (Oslo), Picotplasma (Berlin), Onedotzero (London), Anima (Brussels), Arsenale (Florence), the Holland Animation Film Festival (Utrecht), Anima Mundi (Brazil), Zlin (Czech Republic) and many others.

Skirmanta Jakaitė (b. 1969) is a director and animator, who graduated with a BA in Animation from Vilnius Academy of Arts and has experience in animation production since 1989. “The Juggler” is the third short animated film she has directed. With her previous films also made using the technique of 2D drawn animation, Skirmanta's graduation film “We May Meet, We May Not” was screened at many acclaimed international film festivals, including the Ottawa International Animation Festival, Hiroshima International Animation Festival, Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film and Melbourne International Animation Festival. Her debut film “Non-Euclidean Geometry” (co-directed with Solveiga Masteikaitė) was awarded with an Ecumenical Jury Prize at the 60th Short Film Festival Oberhausen and a Special International Jury Prize at the Hiroshima International Animation Festival, as well as the Lithuanian Film Academy award for Best Lithuanian Animation Film of the Year.

Modesta will turn 24 on the third day of the BLON festival (April 13th, 2019). Modesta currently works as a freelance illustrator and creates music in her free time in Vilnius.

Gabija Žygaitė - is an animator and designer. She completed her animation studies at Middlesex University and is now working as a static and motion graphics designer for companies such as Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures.

Dorte Bengtson is a director, scriptwriter and illustrator, who was born in Denmark, in 1971. She graduated as an animation director from the National Film School of Denmark in 2008 and has worked in animation since 1996. Her graduation short "The Sylpphid" (2009) was selected for competition programmes in Cannes Film Festival, Annecy; Giffoni etc. "Vitello gets a Yucky Girlfriend" (2018) is a short, but is also part of a Vitello TV-series, directed by Dorte that won best TV-series script at the Emile Awards in 2018.

Film-maker and designer Kristian Pedersen (b.1980) graduated with an MA in Visual Communication from Bergen Academy of Art and Design. He works as an animator and director at Mikrofilm in Oslo, Norway.

Born in 1987, Lizete Upīte is an animation film director from Latvia. She graduated from Latvian Academy of Arts and Film School in La Poudrière, France. During her studies, she made several documentaries and animation films, including her 4 min long animation film “A Night on The Lake”. The main topic in her films is emotional overwhelm – our natural awkwardness while finding ourselves.

Florian Maubach was born in 1989 in Hamburg, Germany. Until October 2018, he studied Visual Communication at the Kunsthochschule Kassel. He is a member of the "Animation collectiv" and "Sticky Frames".

Šarūnas has been involved in games development for 15 years and is a co-founder and CEO of the award-winning indie game development studio Tag of Joy. The company constantly looks for new ways to innovate with experiences in games and has already won multiple awards and nominations. Šarūnas is also chairman of the board at the Lithuanian Game Developers Association, which helps local games developers meet, share their knowledge and learn.

Žilvinas Ledas has PhD in informatics and has been developing video games more than 8 years. He is a co-founder and CTO at Tag of Joy, an indie game development company that creates games merging fun and innovation. With its products, the team has won multiple awards at various international competitions. Žilvinas also teaches Game Development at Vilnius University and is active in the local games development community.