Lotte Marie Allen, Academic Advisor & Curriculum Coordinator, School of Visual Arts, MFA Computer Arts

Lotte Marie Allen is an educator, curator, and media-maker based in New York City. She is committed to supporting vibrant and creative communities, and to helping artists sustainably grow through writing and thinking. Her art and media projects use moving images and drawings to explore alternative histories, archaeology, and imagined futures. She has a background in art and exhibitions, and currently teaches and advises in the MFA Computer Arts program at School of Visual Arts.

Olia Lialina, Professor, Merz Akademie, University of Applied Arts, Design and Media, Stuttgart

Olia Lialina is among the best-known participants in the 1990s net.art scene – an early-days, network-based art pioneer. Her early work had a great impact on recognizing the Internet as a medium for artistic expression and storytelling. This century her continuous and close attention to Internet architecture, “net.language” and vernacular web has made her an important voice in contemporary art and new media theory. Lialina is credited with founding one of the earliest web galleries, Art Teleportacia. She is cofounder and keeper of One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age archive, author of Digital Folklore (2009) and Turing Complete User (2021), professor at Merz Akademie in Stuttgart, Germany; and an animated GIF model.

Harvey Goodall, Course Leader VFX, Arts University Bournemouth

Harvey came to Visual Effects late in career having previously worked internationally in oil and gas and various other engineering related fields.  "If I had known there was a topic that combined art and science in the way that visual effects does I would have made the switch much faster". After a conversation at a badminton game, Harvey was introduced to the topic of compositing. He quit his job in the city the next day to pursue an MA at Escape Studios. Harvey then went on to work at the Foundry and on VFX in advertising before finding his calling in education. Teaching at National Film and Television school, then Bournemouth University (to study for his PhD), before moving to the Arts University where he is currently redesigning and running the Visual Effects BA course. 

Harvey's PhD and further research has brought an almost zealous approach to understanding ground truth for purpose, especially when it comes to all things edges (alpha) in machine learning applications.  

Stefan Albertz, Professor for 3D Animation and Visual Effects, Hamm-Lippstadt University of Applied Sciences

Stefan worked as Lead 3D-Artist at RMH New Media and Pictorion Das Werk on visualisations, feature film and commercial productions. In the latter position he built and held national and international workshops on 3D movie production culminating in his role as stereoscopic consultant on Wim Wender´s Oscar nominated Documentary “Pina” as well as a professorship for stereoscopy at Karlsruhe University of Art and Design.

Stefan also worked as product manager for postproduction at Rohde & Schwarz, where he extended the DCI specifications for 3D HFR content for “The Hobbit” Trilogy and pioneered the Interoperable Master Format (SMPTE ST-2067 IMF) together with Disney and Sony Pictures Imageworks as well as Netflix.

In 2023 he was nominated and accepted for the Epic Games Fellowship program and his short film was chosen for the festival selection. Prof. Albertz is initiator and advisor of the SMPTE German Student Chapter and holds several Awards for his productions. He is member of the SMPTE Rapid Industry Solutions On-Set Virtual Production and currently plans and builds the Immersive Multipurpose LED-Stage at Hamm-Lippstadt University of Applied Sciences. His focus is on realtime computergraphics and AV technologies.

Saint Walker, Independent VFX Educationalist

Saint John Walker is an independent educationalist with over 25 years of experience of teaching and training in the games, animation and VFX industries. Most recently Saint was Dean and Director of Industry Engagement at the UK’s Escape Studios and previous to that he designed, initiated and ran the VFX degree course at Norwich University of the Arts for four years.Saint is also the convenor, designer and chair of the popular Industry panels at the London International Animation Festival each year, and features on panels about HE and Industry.

Saint is the author of the well-respected Core Skills of VFX Handbook and Student Primer, commissioned by Creative Skillset/ScreenSkills. He was Creative Director for Epic Games’ Summer of Unreal 2021, a four week pan-European course that trained over 800 animation professionals in Unreal Engine. In 2020, Saint became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). He is a member of Access:VFX. At FMX 2024 he is organising and moderating a live panel on the implications of AI for education.