Bassam will soon be reporting on the Blender Conference, and we have a number of cool announcements coming up — but first I want to congratulate our own Jarred de Beer for taking this year’s Suzanne Award for Character Animation!

Jarred was a visiting animator/TD on the Tube project for nearly a year, and is now part of our distributed team working from his native South Africa. During his time here, Jarred attended SIGGRAPH; participated in a 48 Hour Film Festival short organized by crewmate Jason Van Gumster; and with Pablo Lizardo, also did a mini-project for Sintel  (in honor of which we privately call the Durian movie, “Backpack”).

Though it would have been a nice personal touch, Bassam couldn’t accept on his behalf because, having pulled the usual all-nighter to Make Epic the awards presentation — this time with CG conceived by Andy Goralczyk — he had to be up in the projection room pressing the space key.

Check it out, yo: Grey Justice takes on the High Bar.