Canadian VR artist Nick Ladd will participate in Next Lab 2022

Next February 25th and 26th, Next Lab will hold its event at Talent Garden Madrid, thus putting the finishing touch to the second edition of its workshop, which began with its online phase on January 10.

In addition to various conferences on the latest in the sector, the event will host the pitch of the 10 finalist projects of the workshop.

He jury, which will determine the two winning projects, is made up of five international professionals from the sector and cover different profiles. Arriving from Canada we will have Nick Ladd, VR artist and animator, founding member of the Virtual Animation community. Nick is one of the world's great pioneers in the use of Quill VR software and has worked with clients such as Facebook, Nickelodeon, TEDtalks, Baobab (People, short film shortlisted for the 2022 Oscars) and Studio Syro (Tales from Soda Island, series made entirely in Quill).

From France we also find as part of the jury Arnaud Miquel, Coordinator of the XR program at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. After graduating, he worked as Head of Digital Business Development at animation studio Millimages before being appointed Head of the Film and Digital Media Department at the French Embassy in Indonesia. He was part of Google's marketing teams in charge of YouTube B2B strategy, and moved to Annecy in early 2018.

This jury also forms Carmen Cordoba, one of the participants in the last edition of the Next Lab and creator of the short film Roberto. Since its premiere in 2020, this debut film has won more than 140 national and international awards and more than 320 selections. He currently directs and produces Tied, the project with which he participated in Next Lab in 2021. A traditional animated short film that has the support of the ICAA and the Community of Madrid, and which received the Movistar+ Award for the best short film project at Weird Market 2021. At the same time he directs the traditional animated feature film A world of our own, in development and produced by Nico Matji from La fiesta P.C.

He will also be part of the jury Manuel Gonzalez, program director Zoom Net (TVE) since 2006, a weekly format that brings the world of technology, culture and digital art closer to viewers. Graduated in Audiovisual Communication from the University of Seville, his career has been linked to the audiovisual world and digital and technological content. In addition, he has carried out VR projects related to art and fashion.

Finally, the jury is formed Ursula Garcia, director, executive producer and co-founder of the production company The Frank Barton Company, one of the leading studios in the direction and production of animated works for advertising. Previously she worked as a Visual Effects Producer at El Ranchito. Some credits from this period were Alatriste con Viggo Mortensen, Goya's Ghosts, directed by Milos Forman, or That El Argentino y Guerrilla the Steven Soderbergh.

Conferences and networking

The event will begin on February 25 with a day of conferences and space for networking, and Nick Ladd will be precisely one of the speakers of this edition with Masters of VR Animation: Nick Ladd, a conference in which we will learn about his most recent work in addition to the Virtual Animation collective.

Another of the most notable activities will be the masterclass New technologies for storyboard and animatics. There are new tools that make the storyboarding and animatics process much richer, creative and efficient and better connected to the rest of the production phases. This demo talk shows this workflow in action. Daniel M. Lara will do a live demo and then will be accompanied by greats like Enrique Gato y Daniel Martínez Peixe, among others, to tell us about their experiences.

On Saturday morning it will be the turn of the pitch of finalist projects where they will show the piece made and all the work and progress experienced in the workshop. More details of the programming will be announced soon and the deadline will open to obtain accreditation for this reference event in the field of animation production, which focuses on the use of disruptive technologies in the virtual environment.