UMD News Releases

The University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) Visualization and Digital Imaging Lab will host Video+Animation+Games Symposium, on Friday, April 27, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the UMD Kirby Student Center Ballroom. The daylong event will showcase video, animation and gaming technologies with demonstrations, hands-on video production activities and presentations by industry professionals. The event is free and the public is cordially invited.

Lane Raichert, a TV animation and computer game production veteran, will be the symposium’s keynote speaker, at 12 noon in the Kirby Student Center Ballroom. In the past 26 years a Minnesota native Raichert has worked on hundreds of games and TV episodes, including Baby Scooby Doo. He is an accomplished artist, writer, director, producer and a Co-Founder of Raichert Media, Inc.

The symposium attendees will have a chance to meet representatives from multimedia production companies as well as university professors, specializing in video, game and animation. Groups of high school and college students from the area schools, with interest in game and video production, will also be involved in the event.

The symposium demonstrations and booths will include:

• Sound design experiment station
• Demos by Maya and 3D Studio Max trainers
• A game lounge
• Kirby Game Room demos of Dance Revolution, Halo, Fight Night and demos of student-made games
• Production demonstrations on creating family history films and effective videos
• Introduction to Ojibwe language learning and digital storytelling techniques
• Screening room featuring locally produced videos

The Video+Animation+Games Symposium is co-sponsored by UMD Visualization and Digital Imaging Lab, Multimedia Hub, ITSS and Youth Video Quest.