The Flash festival FITC Tokyo 2009, was held in Japan for the first time last year.

One of the largest and longest running events of its kind in the world, FITC covers everything from Flash design, to motion design, creative inspiration, to other technologies like Flex, Air and processing. The festival, now in its’ eighth year, has toured through ten cities and five countries, with over 700 presentations and over 10,000 attendees annually.

Starting out in Canada during 2002, FITC showcases 18 exhibits and provides over 700 presentations. FITC has drawn high attention and inspired onlookers with presentations from well-known designers and creators to share their knowledge and experience. Participants range from professional Flash designers, developers, motion graphic artists, digital artists right down to students.

The previous FITC was held in Toronto, Canada on April 25 – 28, and there were two sessions entitled “Cool Japanese Flash” which introduced up-to-date Japanese Flash scene. This reflects their highly attention to Japan, as the session showcased presentations by the invited speakers such as Takahiro Abe, Takayuki Fukatsu, Masakazu Otsuka, Saqoosha and Yoshihiro Shindo.

FITC Tokyo 2009 featured presentations from five speakers. The event kicked off with a sneak preview of MAX 2009 presented by the Platform Evangelist with Adobe, Lee Brimelow. One of the leading Flash developers who manages the award winning personal experimetal web site, www.bit-101.com, Keith Peters did a presentation entitled as “Making Things Move” that introduced how to add dynamic motion and interactivity to Flash projects.

Mario Klingemann aka Quasimondo started his presentation with a question to the audience “Do you like Math?”. As many of the audience raised their hands, Mario was actually surprised because many people usually answer “no”.

Mario says that he started to read math books because math is necessary for his programming work. He also added he liked math, because he could find ultimate fact or beauty. He also said artists’ pursue painting pictures while mathematicians have a desire to prove. Finding beauty from mathematics, Mario did impressive presentation which must inspired many audience members.

After the recognized leading expert in the interactive field, Grant Skinner did a presentation “Quick as a Flash” that introduced the basic optimization theory and how to benchmark performance and the last presentation was provided by Joshua Hiersch from Big Spaceship.

Visited Japan for the first time for this event, Joshua Hiersch used to be a rock star once before and now works at Big Spaceship that holds more FWAs than any other firm. Known for their more cooler website work than the original movie, Big Spaceship launched their in-house projects such as “Visual Table Soccer” and “Perfect Monkey Tankpants”. Joshua introduced those experimental games.

Provided simultaneous translation (English/Japanese), the event had a bit of academic atmosphere with iPhone and PC on the desk at presentation room. The event was successful as most of the seats were booked. There held an after party where people could have an opportunity to meet speakers. The event became one of the significant and fruitful events, where I fully enjoyed Flash-related presentations showcased for the day. I’d like to expect to the next opportunity in Tokyo.

FITC Tokyo 2009
Date: November 28th, 2009
Place: Belle Salle Shiodome, Tokyo

http://www.fitc.ca

Text: Kayo Tamura / Translation: Mariko Takei

Tags: air, flash design, flex, FTIC, Masakazu Otsuka, Saqoosha, Takahiro Abe, Takayuki Fukatsu, technology festival, tokyo art, Yoshihiro Shindo. flash