CGA: The First Regional Conference on Computer Graphics and Digital Arts
Computer Graphics and Arts Conference (CGA Belgrade) is an international gathering of like-minded professionals who share a love for digital art, visual innovations, and technology.
The very idea of launching the conference was born right here in Crater, thanks to Miljana Jovović (the longtime director of our center and producer at Crater Studio) and Milica Božanić (executive manager of the Serbia Film Association). When Miloš Milošević (former editor of VFX Serbia) joined the team, things started heating up.
Today, CGA is the event of the year for the local artistic community. Over time, the initiative has started growing through various program tracks, accompanying events, and guest appearances, many organized by our team members.
Continue below to read what this experience looks like from our point of view.
CGA TIMELINE
The inception of the conference
The initial events at Crater kicked off as soon as we started school in 2012. First, there were the Open Door Days, thanks to which we realized that people were highly interested in professional gatherings. Our first two-day event that combined lectures and workshops brought around 100 artists, and this experience only confirmed that the local audience was hungry for such programs. In 2015, the Open Door Days turned into Meetups at Crater, and they eventually graduated into a conference.
The adventure called CGA Belgrade officially started in 2017 when the conference’s first edition was held in the Museum of Science and Technology in Belgrade. For us, this was a logical continuation of the events for which Crater was (and remains) famous on the local VFX scene.
“We were stunned at how well it all went. At the time, we didn’t have any big plans about what we were going to do with it, but the positive reactions, the fact that people were happy to finally have an event where they could hang out and meet other artists, is what motivated us to keep pushing”, Miljana Jovović
2018 / 2019
Next year, CGA moved to the Yugoslav Film Archive (Jugoslovenska Kinoteka), where “our little family gathering” officially became a large-scale event. Here we held the most attended editions of the conference, with up to 700 attendees in one day. Here we also divided the entire experience into two program tracks so that each visitor can attend the most desired session.
“CGA was born out of our love for knowledge-sharing that encompasses not only hard skills, but also inspiring stories and experiences of artists from big-name companies working on top projects. The audience at CGA was eager to hear what it’s like to work in studios around the world or, for example, on Spider-Man, or even success stories from artists who started from scratch,”, says Miljana Jovović
Brand New CGA: 2020 – today
The year 2020 started with our first guest appearance outside the country, in Banja Luka, but then it threw us a challenge since holding a big live event was no longer not possible. We somehow managed to overcome the situation by organizing the very first online conference, which turned out to be an excellent move because it spread our wings to try new formats and design new program tracks with our partners:
CGAcademy – provides educational content to help students and entry-level artists work their way up in the VFX, gaming, animation, and CG industry.
CGAlliance – offers solutions and opportunity perspectives regarding the growing CG industry in Serbia. The track is curated by Serbia Film Commission.
CGArts – rovides a dedicated space for artistic discussion and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Since 2021 and our guest event in Novi Sad, CGA switched to a hybrid format with a part of the content broadcasted on the conference website and the main program held live in front of the audience
We perfected this arrangement by the sixth annual CGA conference. CAG 2022 was preceded by a summer-long program of creating original 3D environments in which we filmed the online conference program. Virtual Environments Lab was held in the summer of 2022 in this school, with 12 young creators and the same number of mentors joining in. Today, we are proud to say that it presents one of our most ambitious initiatives.
CGA SIDE EVENTS
The conference side events are usually held at Crater. These are workshops and masterclasses by top artists, such as the one by the acclaimed VFX Supervisor Victor Perez, who shared the well-kept secrets of compositing right here in our classroom. This practice of selfless sharing of knowledge through Crater and CGA has been supported since the very beginning by our partner companies, including 3Lateral, Epic Games, SideFX, Nordeus, Autodesk, Foundry, and others.
In September 2022, just before the kick-off of our sixth annual conference, the first regional Houdini User Group (HUG Belgrade) was held in Crater’s cinema room.
It is also important to note that Crater is the physical home of all the CGA online events since most of the program is streamed from our rooms.
CGACADEMY EDUCATION
With CGAcademy, we support the new generation of digital artists through the development of software and other relevant skills. The program targets young creators working in the fields of visual effects, game art, animation, interactive media, digital design, and other related fields.
For us, designing such a platform was a logical step, as we have been committed to strengthening the CG ecosystem for many years, either through the popularization of deficient occupations, or by designing study programs, and free training for university teachers, professors, and associates. We are committed to strengthening the talent base in Serbia, and CGAcademy is one way to succeed in this mission. Learn more about CGA’s education initiatives and events HERE.
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CGA PARTNERS
