The Annecy International Animation Film Festival is the world's premier celebration of animation, bringing together around 12,000 industry professionals each year in the picturesque French alpine town of Annecy. SideFX was proud to host a series of HIVE talks covering various animation professionals.
Houdini HIVE TALKS
Magnus Møller | Tumblehead
Alex Caballer Williams & Valerio Tarricone | Skydance
Guy Schuleman | Framestore
TumbleRig | Cartoony Rigging in Houdini
Magnus will show in detail how a cartoony frog character was created in Houdini 22. He will go over the new rigging toolkit and show how the different techniques were created, from setting up the bendy limbs, a custom cartoony mouth rig and a custom eye rig (and a lot more fun effects).
"TumbleRig" is a package with 30+ new rigging nodes, built on Apex, but with a more "sops focused" interface. Fans of the original version of KineFX will hopefully feel at home, and new Houdini artists will hopefully find it intuitive.
Magnus Møller loves quirky, cartoony characters with an existential crisis — and he’s built a studio around making them. As co-founder of Tumblehead Animation Studio in Viborg, Denmark, he works across look development, rigging, and art direction. With a foot in both the artistic and technical sides of production — from painting moods to writing code — Houdini is his ultimate playground for creating characters and worlds.
The Animation Workshop in Viborg holds a special place in his heart — a school where the craft of drawing and animation comes first. Magnus studied there and keeps coming back as a guest teacher, sharing everything from life drawing to rigging to game development.
At Tumblehead, Magnus has co-directed and art directed several short films that have won prizes at festivals all around the flat earth. In 2025, he was nominated for Best Short Film at the Annie Awards for “The Swineherd,” co-directed with Peter Smith.
Swapped: Bringing the Four Elements to Life with Houdini
A behind-the-scenes look at how the FX team at Skydance Animation brought Swapped to life — seamlessly blending fire, water, and destruction into a single, cohesive cinematic moment.
Alex Caballer Williams is an FX Artist at Skydance Animation Madrid. Born in Barcelona, joined Skydance early 2021 after graduating - and since, has worked on several feature animated films including Luck, Spellbound and Swapped. Loves to work and explore on all sorts of FX and procedural setups.
Valerio Tarricone is an Italian visual effects artist and FX Lead at Skydance Animation with over a decade of experience in film, television, music videos and animation. Specialising in advanced simulations such as fire, smoke, water, destruction and large-scale physics-based effects, he primarily works with Houdini by SideFX to build scalable, production-ready procedural systems for high-end projects. He has contributed to major films including Blade Runner 2049, Wonder Woman, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Godzilla vs. Kong and Star Trek Beyond, and was part of the DNEG team that won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for Blade Runner 2049. Known for combining strong technical expertise with artistic sensibility, he continues to push the boundaries of simulation-driven visual storytelling.
PRESENTATION COMING SOON
Breaking the Ice - FX of Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age
Learn how visual effects for Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age prioritised realism to support a natural, documentary style. The focus was on seamlessly integrating CG creatures into real-world environments, allowing the story and behavior of the animals to take center stage. A major emphasis is placed on the use of Houdini as the core tool for FX development. From simulating snow, sand, dust, vegetation, and breath to handling complex character-environment interactions, Houdini enabled the team to build highly tailored, physically grounded simulations. The presentation explores how different environments required unique approaches—showing how even similar setups, like snow and sand, demanded entirely different parameters and behaviors to achieve believable results.
It also dives into the creative and technical process behind building realistic interactions for extinct creatures. With no direct references available, the team relied on real-world animal studies and on-set puppetry plates to guide simulation work and ensure accuracy in motion and environmental response.
A central theme is the close collaboration between departments—animation, FX, CFX, groom, and lighting—to create cohesive and convincing imagery. From wet hair and fur simulations to environmental effects like footprints, breath, and particle movement, each element was refined through an iterative, cross-department “round trip” workflow that helped bridge the gap between CG and live-action.
Guy Schuleman began his career in South Africa, where he earned a BA in Graphic Design and an Advanced Certificate in 3D Animation from the Midrand Graduate Institute. He initially worked in advertising, serving as the lead 3D artist, before making the move into feature film visual effects.
Since joining Framestore in 2016 as an FX TD, Guy has climbed the ranks to become an FX Supervisor. In this role, he oversees specialised teams to deliver complex FX for some of cinema's most prominent franchises. His extensive portfolio includes work on Avengers: Endgame, Wonka and How to Train Your Dragon.
A career standout for Guy was working as an FX Lead on Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age, where he worked across multiple sites and collaborated with a global team of artists to push the boundaries of natural history effects. His exceptional work on the series earned him both an Annie and a VES Award for Outstanding Effects Simulations In An Episode in 2026.