【Aniwow! 2026】Announcement of Masterclasses

 Topic:

 Ethical Uses of GenAI for Animated Adaptations

 Time:

October 24 (Sat) 15:30-16:30

 Location:

CUC Anima 302

 Guest Speaker

 Hans-Martin Hannes Rall

Hans-Martin Rall is  Chair of the School of Art, Design and Media and President’s Chair Professor in Animation Studies at Nanyang Technological University Singapore. He is also a decorated director. His 16 books and book-chapters were published by prestigious presses—including Harvard University Press, Routledge, Bloomsbury, Springer, and Brill— held in over 160 libraries worldwide. Supported by 31 competitive grants, his research pioneers ethical AI and adaptation theory alongside a globally acclaimed filmography.    

 Topic:

The Evolution and Future of Non-Live-Action Content Based on AI World Models — Focusing on Comics, Animation, and Games

 Time:

October 24 (Sat) 16:40-17:40

 Location:

CUC Anima 302

 Guest Speaker

 이정민 Lee Jung-Min

Lee Jung-Min is a professor in the Department of Animation at the Korea National University of Arts, where he has taught since 2002. He has served as head of the Industry-Academic Cooperation Group and as vice dean, and has also been a visiting professor at Korea University, chair of the Samir Cultural Foundation, and principal professor of the CAMPUS Asia+ (AAEN) project. He was a visiting professor at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States and served as executive committee chair of the PISAF Bucheon International Student Animation Festival. He has long served as a visiting professor at institutions including Communication University of China, Shanghai University and Jilin Animation Institute, and as a jury member for international events such as Beijing Animation Week. He was executive producer of the first season of the SBS animated TV series Hello, Cherry Boy, authored Conversations with Animation, and has spoken at forums including SIGGRAPH Asia and the Busan International Film Festival.    

Topic:

 Where Does Animation Happen?—— From Motion on the Screen to a World That Moves with Us.

Time:

October 25 (Sun) 15:30-16:30

 Location:

CUC Anima 302

 Guest Speaker

 Baoying Bilgeri

Baoying Bilgeri earned her undergraduate degree from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in China before pursuing further studies in Germany. She graduated in animation from the Kunsthochschule Kassel and received the distinction of Meisterschülerin, one of the highest honors awarded by German art academies. She currently teaches in the Animation Department at the renowned Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. She has extensive international experience as an animation director and cross-media artist. Her independent animated shorts have been selected for major international festivals, including Annecy, the Berlinale, Zagreb and Stuttgart, and have received awards such as the Hessian Film Award for Best Short Film and the German Film and Media Review (FBW) rating “Especially Valuable.” In addition to animation, she has worked in serious games and interactive storytelling for 12 years, with projects that have won the German Computer Game Award multiple times. Films made by students she has mentored have also received awards at events including the Student Academy Awards, Venice Film Festival and Cannes Film Festival.

Time:

October 26 (Mon) 13:30-15:00

Location:

CUC Anima 302

Guest Speaker

Tina Schwizgebel-Wang

Tina Schwizgebel-Wang is a Swiss multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses printmaking, painting, fashion design, ceramics, and graphic design.She has won First Prize twice at the Fumetto International Comics Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland. For her fashion creations, she received the Chloé Award at the International Festival of Fashion, Photography and Accessories in Hyères, France. Her work has been featured in Vogue France and covered by numerous Swiss, German, Italian, and international media outlets.Her engravings are regularly exhibited in Switzerland, France, and China. Several of her copper engravings have been acquired by the Musée de Carouge in Switzerland, and her work is featured in Sillages, a publication dedicated to the ocean. In 2025, the Swiss publishing house Art & Fiction published her book Novembre, which was presented through events and book signings in several Swiss cities.Her artistic journey has taken her to various residencies and exhibitions, notably in Shanghai. She has also served on the juries of Animatou in Geneva and Fantoche in Baden, two international animation film festivals.Trained as a cellist, she performed a piece for piano and cello by Rachmaninoff with her brother in the animated film Romance, directed by her father, filmmaker Georges Schwizgebel. In 2026, she also collaborated with musician Mickaël Halley on the soundtrack for the trailer of the Hiroshima International Animation Festival, directed by her father.Working across disciplines, she brings an open and distinctive perspective to different forms of artistic creation and visual storytelling.    

Time:

October 26 (Mon) 15:30-17:00

Location:

CUC Anima 302

Guest Speaker

Joseph DeLappe

Joseph DeLappe is an internationally recognized media artist, he has been with electronic and new media since 1983. He is Professor of Games and Tactical Media at Abertay University. Works in online gaming performance, video games, activist/political art, drawing, painting, participatory and social practice, sculpture, and electromechanical installation have been shown extensively throughout the world. He has developed works for venues such as Eyebeam Art and Technology in New York, The Guangdong Museum of Art, China and Transitio MX, Mexico City, among many others. Creative works and actions have been featured widely in scholarly journals, books and in the popular media. In 2016 he collaborated with the Biome Collective in Dundee to create “Killbox”, a game about drone warfare that was nominated in 2017 for a BAFTA Scotland in the “Best Computer Game” category. In 2017 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Fine Arts.  

Topic:

Time:

October 27 (Tue) 10:00-11:00

Location:

CUC Anima 302

Guest Speaker

Zhao Ji

Zhao Ji is an animation director who studied at the Communication University of China and the University of California, Los Angeles, and has more than ten years of experience in film production. His notable directorial works include White Snake: The Origin, New Gods: Nezha Reborn, and New Gods: Yang Jian. White Snake: The Origin was nominated for Best Art Film at the 32nd Golden Rooster Awards and won the Silver Award for Best Animated Feature at the 16th China Animation Golden Dragon Awards. New Gods: Nezha Reborn was selected for the Work in Progress (WIP) section of the 2020 Annecy International Animation Film Festival. New Gods: Yang Jian won the Gold Award for Best Animated Feature and the Best Animation Director Award at the 19th China Animation Golden Dragon Awards.    

Time:

October 27 (Tue) 14:00-15:30

Location:

CUC Anima 302

Guest Speaker

Marie-Pauline Mollaret

Marie-Pauline Mollaret is a French film critic and curator based in Paris. She’s part of the selection committee of the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes and works for different festivals including the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma in Montreal, and the Paris International Animation Film Festival. She also writes about cinema, and teaches Film criticism and Film programming at the La Sorbonne Nouvelle university. She previously served on the selection committee of the Cannes Critics’ Week for eight years.    

Topic:

Thibaut Delahaye - A Journey in Animation

Time:

October 27 (Tue) 16:00-17:30

Location:

CUC Anima 302

Guest Speaker

Thibaut Delahaye

Animation Supervisor & Lead Animator with 26 years of experience in feature films, TV series, and video games. Most recently Animation Supervisor on Flow (Academy Award, César, Golden Globe, Annie Award — Best Animated Feature 2025), leading a team of 12–16 animators on quadruped and creature performance.     

Topic:

Avoiding Pitfalls: Practical Lessons from Indie Game Concept to Release

Time:

October 28 (Wed) 9:30-10:30

Location:

CUC Anima 302

Guest Speaker

Guigu Zhangsan

Guigu Zhangsan is the producer of Tale of Immortal, an open-world sandbox game centered on cultivation and the pursuit of immortality. Released in 2021, the game sold 1.8 million copies in its first month and reached over 180,000 concurrent players on Steam. With total sales exceeding 6.8 million copies, it ranks as the second best-selling Chinese-developed single-player game.    

Topic:

Games, Interactivity, and Value

Time:

October28 (Wed) 10:40-12:00

Location:

CUC Anima 302

Guest Speaker

Matteo Ravasio

Matteo Ravasio  is Assistant Professor at the School of Arts, Peking University. He received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Auckland, where he studied under the renowned philosopher of music Stephen Davies. His main research interests lie in analytic aesthetics and the philosophy of art, especially the philosophy of music and the history of music aesthetics. He has published a number of articles in international philosophy and aesthetics journals, including the Australasian Journal of Philosophy, the British Journal of Aesthetics, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, and Analysis, and has written two entries on the history of Western music aesthetics for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.    

 Introduction 

Topic:

The Korean Webtoon Industry: Current Landscape and Content Planning Strategy in a Shifting Market    

Time:

October 27 (Tue) 13:30-15:30

Location:

CUC Anima 324

Guest Speaker

이순기 Lee Soon-Ki

Lee Soon-Ki is a Professor and Head of the Department of Cartoon & Animation Technology at Sejong University, where he also serves as Head of the Division of Creative Software. He currently serves as Deputy Director of Sejong University's Seoul Anchor Project and as Deputy General Director of KOCCA's Elite Webtoon Creator Development Program. As a creator, he is serializing Marriage Blues on Naver Webtoon for the North American market, following Love Roasting (2024–25), Another Love (2022–23) and It Was All You (2021–23), which were released simultaneously in the United States, Japan, Spain, France and Taiwan. As Executive Director of SECAN STUDIO he produced God's Butler and Does God Play Dice? for Naver Webtoon, with God's Butler optioned for drama adaptation. He sits on the boards of the Korean Society of Cartoon and Animation Studies and the Korean Society of Character Studies, and his research addresses webtoon storytelling structure and AI-integrated production.    

Topic:

Are Comics Outdated? 

— Yes, Indeed! Just as You Might Think

Time:

October 27 (Tue)13:30-15:30

Location:

CUC Anima 324

Guest Speaker

Sun Heng

Passionate about animation since childhood, he previously served as Lead Artist on Tencent Games’ Monster Hunter Online, later transferring to its Aurora Studio to develop an original in-house project. He has worked in the comics and animation industry since 2011, creating and developing projects including B.E.E, Soul Buster, Doomsday Raven, Genius J , Azure Wars , and The Fifth Era. He has also participated in the development of animated and live-action productions, including B.E.E., Soul Buster, Genius J, Show Your Code, Dad! , and Ascension Through Likes , alongside pre-production and downstream product development for games and animation projects of various scales.Soul Buster was Youku’s first original anime-style Chinese–Japanese co-production to be subsequently distributed in Japan. B.E.E. was China’s first fully fledged anime-style science-fiction animation and gave rise to the country’s first collectible figure with an internationally competitive finish, followed by model kits, statues, and other merchandise. Its source comic is one of China’s longest-running comic series, with 16 years of serialization to date.His accolades include a Gold Award at the Asian Youth Film and Video Competition, the Golden Dragon Award for Best Long-Form Story, the Best Skills Award in the Film and Television category of the Beijing Vocational Skills Competition, and the Golden Monkey Award for Best Director. His work has also been shortlisted for Best Animated Short at the China Science Fiction Competition. He currently serves as a director in Bilibili’s Animation Department.