Dr. Johanna Pirker is a computer scientist focusing on games. She is an active supporter of the indie dev community and organizes the annual conference “Game Dev Days”. She has lengthy experience in developing games and VR experiences. She started in the industry at EA and still consults studios in the \eld of games user research. In 2011/12 she started researching VR experiences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At the moment she teaches game development at TU Graz and researches with a focus on AI, data analysis, and VR. Johanna was listed on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list of science professionals.

Shahin Toosi started his career in VFX for feature film in 2005 on X-Men 3 and has since worked at Framestore, Moving Picture Company, Industrial Light & Magic and Double Negative as a Senior Compositor and Look Development then progressing on to Visual Development Artist at Dneg, Marvel Studios, Walt Disney.
Shahin’s work can be found in such films as “The Dark Knight”, “The Dark Knight Rises”,“Scott Pilgrim vs the World”, “Captain America: The First Avenger”, “Thor: The DarkWorld”, “Exodus: Gods and Kings”, “Godzilla”, “Captain Marvel”, to name but a few.

Born in Belgrade in 1977, Ivan graduated industrial design at the Polytechnic University of Turin in Italy. After graduation, he worked as an industrial designer for six years in Northern Italy. This experience introduced him to the CG industry, in which he has now been professionally engaged for over 12 years. He is currently working at Primer studio in Belgrade as a CG artist (lighting/shading). During his time at Primer, he has worked on numerous projects in both advertising and film, and his biggest and most important project to date, as a VFX supervisor, is Ederlezi Rising.

Josip is the owner and creative director of studio Fried. He was awarded as an art director and animator, with 20 years of experience in the advertising industry. He worked a lot in Serbia and abroad, for clients from MTV and Coca-Cola to the SBB.

Lazar Bodroža is director, visual artist, founder and creative director of the independent design studio METAKLINIKA. He was born on August 19th 1983. in Belgrade, Serbia. He graduated from the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade. In 2011 Lazar Bodroža won the award TOP 20 under 30 given by PRINT magazine. He was selected as one of the world’s top 20 visual artists under the age of 30. He is the author of the interactive film UBER LIFE (2010) and the short film THE MOUNTAIN WREATH (2006). Ederlezi Rising is his debut feature film.

By founding studio Fried, Vuk became one of the pioneers of the new wave of Serbian motion graphics. He has been awarded for his work, working as a director on many projects, both animated and featured.
Beside many commercials, he did two movies, one short movie “E-pigs”, for which he wrote script and was also VFX director, and feature films “About bugs and heroes” (VFX director and executive producer) and “Ederlezi rising” (VFX supervisor).

I consider myself a versatile artist. Currently, I am focusing on 3D animation, most recently in a role of a Head of Creative Services. I am a CGI generalist applying the state-of-the art digital techniques while building on my years of fine art experience. In my work, I usually blend traditional analogue techniques with the digital ones tofulfill the creative vision. What sets me apart, I guess, is that I don’t specialize: I trulyenjoy all the facets of a production and so I constantly keep mastering them all: from creative to technical aspects. I am currently based in Vienna. My recent work includes numerous commercials, variety of motion graphics and several documentaries for Discovery World, Discovery US, History US and Canada and BBC. In my previous life, I worked as an Art Director in advertising leveraging my classical art training. I also taught at colleges in Canada and Mexico and my work was published in several magazines worldwide and in a book about Maya.

Hristo Velev is a founding partner at Bottleship VFX, a boutique specializing in big dynamic effects like water, destruction, fire, etc for motion pictures, TV, game cinematic and advertising. Starting up in Pixomondo, Screen Scene and Scanline as a FX artist, he moved up through several blockbuster productions building up skills in all types of simulation work, before establishing Bottleship. Currently spending time on both the business and artist sides of the company, he has interesting stories to tell from both the hardcore technical animation and postproduction business worlds.

I have been at Escape Studios for 6 years and developed a number of courses and run a series of University mentoring projects. Prior to that I worked as part of a directing team making music videos.