The KAIST-produced CG animated film, “Captain Banana”, has been selected for the SIGGRAPH Asia 2010 animated film festival, the biggest computer graphic exhibition in Asia, which will be held in COEX, Seoul on December 15 through 18. “Captain Banana” was produced with exclusive technologies of Professor Junyong Noh’s team from KAIST Graduate School of Culture Technology. With “Captain Banana’s” selection for SIGGRAPH Asia 2010, Professor Noh’s team now has the honor of having been selected for international animated film festivals two years in a row, after their film entry “Taming the Cat” from last year.

SIGGRAPH is an international annual conference on computer graphics convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization since 1974 from which time it has been influencing the industry of world computer graphics and its interactive technologies. Following SIGGRAPH’s purposes, SIGGRAPH Asia is held in the Asian region annually, having taken place in Singapore and Yokohama, Japan, in 2008 and 2009 respectively.

“Captain Banana” is a five-minute animated film in which Captain Banana and 10 different kids called “littles” deal with social issues such as unwanted pregnancy, abortion, and the importance of AIDS prevention through humorous situations with the purpose of easy understanding. The film, which is rated PG-13, was produced by five researchers including Hoopyung Shin and 20 master’s and Ph.D. students in Professor Noh’s Visual Media Lab. The film was completed after going through five months of production, beginning in March and ending in August.

Professor Noh emphasized, “It is not only significant to notice that our films have been selected for international CG animated film festivals for two years in a row, but also that we have applied our own technologies that are invented by the Visual Media Lab, raising the efficiency of manufacturing processes in the production.” Professor Noh’s Visual Media Lab was founded in 2006 with the aim of developing fundamental computer graphics technology and software applications for special effects and contents creation. The emphasis of the Visual Media Lab is to balance technology and production to pursue practical research for VFX and the computer animation industry.