Rotary Career Symposium

personally see augmented reality as something I'm really excited about and I'm really hoping takes off because it would be a huge shift," said Nguyen, an Emmy award winning 3D animator and owner of Winnipeg based visual effects and animation studio Pixel Reborn. So, what exactly is augmented reality? Unlike virtual reality, which involves the creation of an entirely artificial environment, augmented reality is a technology that incorporates a computer-generated image such as a hologram into a user's real-world environment. "With virtual reality, you put on a headset with a screen and immerse yourself in a 3D world," said Nguyen, who will speak at the Rotary Career Symposium on Tuesday, April 17, and Wednesday, April 18, at 11:30 a.m. in the Pan Am Room in the second-floor Speakers' Hall. "With augmented reality you put on a headset, but there isn't a screen, there is glass. You can still see everything around you, but there are little projectors that project images onto those panes of glass." And while the objects viewed with augmented reality technology don't exist in space, users could interact with them as if they did, Nguyen said. "With this technology, the possibilities are endless," he said. "(Developers) are talking about eliminating desktop computers, for example. You could go into an office and all you need is a flat desk with nothing on it. You put on these glasses and it projects a monitor, it projects a keyboard, it projects a telephone, it projects everything, and you do your work on it as if it were really there." Augmented reality has the potential to make home computers, tablets, smartphones and other technologies obsolete, Nguyen predicts. "These glasses, in theory, could replace all those things," he said. "They would be the tools that you couldn't leave the house without." Augmented reality is just the latest cutting edge technology Nguyen has immersed himself in since he became transfixed by computer animation as a Kelvin High School student 20 years ago. "This was around the time Terminator 2 came out, Jurassic Park, and it was really an industry that was untested and unproven," Nguyen said. Nguyen did some research and discovered that many of the animators who worked on these pioneering films were graduates of Ontario's prestigious Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning. Nguyen, whose parents hoped he would pursue a career as a doctor or lawyer, focused all his efforts on developing his already burgeoning artistic and computer talents and was accepted at the college following his graduation from high school. "My parents were very supportive," he said. "They knew that this was my life and my career and it was what made me happy." Following his graduation from Sheridan, Nguyen worked for a Toronto animation studio, where he learned a lesson about office politics. "Every week you were responsible for producing a certain length of animation, whether it's five seconds or 10 seconds or 15, and you had to work as hard as you could to meet that quota to keep up," Nguyen said. "I was an eager beaver, a go-getter, so right away I wanted to prove myself and I just exceeded that quota. Of course, it didn't look good for everyone else who had been working there for years. I got a talking to and I slowed down a bit, focused on quality." Nguyen eventually returned to Winnipeg where he joined Frantic Films — a successful film and television production house then headed by several of Nguyen's Kelvin High School classmates — and helped the company expand operations to Vancouver, Toronto and Los Angeles. It was at Frantic that Nguyen worked on the visual effects of such films as Superman Returns, Matrix Reloaded and X-Men. Nguyen branched out on his own seven years ago with Pixel Reborn and has since opened a second office in Vietnam. Check out all the Speaker Sessions at careersymposium.ca. DIVE INTO AUGMENTED REALITY BY DEAN PRITCHARD 3D animation has transformed so many aspects of our lives, from entertainment to education and even medicine, but its latest application — augmented reality — is set to be a game-changer, Liem Nguyen believes. "I GET CONNECTED So how does a Winnipeg-based 3D animation studio become the go-to company for heavy hitter clients such as the Super Bowl, the NBA and major video game producers? It's all about maintaining relationships and connections, says Liem Nguyen. "When you work long enough, you realize the most important thing is relationships — wherever you go and whoever you work with," Nguyen said. "I remember my days at Sheridan, I was friendly to everybody, so when they graduated and moved on to places like Pixar, I kept in touch with them. Whenever a position opens up, they rarely advertise in papers, they ask internally, 'Hey, do you know anyone or have any recommendations?' Of course, if you are good to those people, your name pops up. The industry kind of works like that — it's very small and tightly-knit. If you have a good reputation, if you are well connected, you really shouldn't have a problem finding work. I've been fortunate in that sense." 11 | #Illbetherercs2k18 ROTARY 21ST CAREER SYMPOSIUM

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