keyleedaud (REAL ESTATE)

Another school year gone. Another group of graduates stepping out into the world. Another industry day. What's below just scratches the surface of what went on. Second and Third year student volunteers prepare for the crowds. The graduates of the four year program get set up to meet the industry. Veteran story artists Jim Caswell and Warren Leonhardt . Left to right: Paul Teolis of Nelvana ; Michael Carter , President of CASO (Computer Animation Studios of Ontario) and Jim Caswell. Frank Falcone of Guru Studios . A view of the post-graduate computer animation program workspace. Steve Schnier of Vujade and John Lei of Noodleboy Studios . Kevin Parry with his characters from the stop motion film The Arctic Circle . Carla Veldman with her characters from her stop motion film The Scarf . Allesandro Piedemonte ( A Cut Above ) and King Mugabe ( Red Snow ). Andrew Murray ( Blind Date ) is interviewed by a reporter from CHCH TV.

This was a comment I contributed to a December, 2008 post called The Final Customer . As graduation time once again approaches, I'm giving it its own entry. Here's some basic advice I'd give to graduates from any year. Network aggressively. If you know people in the business, start talking to them now and keep talking to them. It's good to touch base with people when you're not looking for work, just so they don't think that the only time you get in touch is when you want something. If you're lucky, you'll learn what studios are busy and you can target them. Apply to any animation-related job you can find. Knock on studio doors and if you are lucky enough to talk to people, get their business cards and send them a thank you email. Stay in touch with them once a month. If there are any industry associations, join them. [ I would add that you should join business networking sites like LinkedIn . ] If there any industry events, attend the...

I know that business has dominated art on this blog lately. For reasons that I don't understand, this school year has been a lot busier for me than previous years and the business stuff is faster and easier to write about than the art. Things should slow down for me in the next few weeks and I hope to restore some balance over the summer. I'll be doing more mosaics and hope to take a close look at the work of specific animators like Bob Cannon.

Paul Graham is a software engineer and a venture capitalist. His latest essay talks about two approaches to creating software. "There are two types of startup ideas: those that grow organically out of your own life, and those that you decide, from afar, are going to be necessary to some class of users other than you. Apple was the first type. Apple happened because Steve Wozniak wanted a computer. Unlike most people who wanted computers, he could design one, so he did. And since lots of other people wanted the same thing, Apple was able to sell enough of them to get the company rolling. They still rely on this principle today, incidentally. The iPhone is the phone Steve Jobs wants. "Our own startup, Viaweb, was of the second type. We made software for building online stores. We didn't need this software ourselves. We weren't direct marketers. We didn't even know when we started that our users were called "direct marketers." But we were compa...

...according to this article in The Globe and Mail . UPDATE : This comment at Canadian Animation Resources lists dollar figures from the Ontario Superior Court as to C.O.R.E.'s assets and debts.

As the school year is drawing to a close and students will be heading out to summer placements or graduating and looking for jobs, it's a good time to read and remember these tips from Steve Hulett, business agent of The Animation Guild.

Clay Shirky is one of the most perceptive people I'm aware of when it comes to analyzing the changing media landscape. He doesn't blog often, but when he does, it's something that is widely linked to and discussed. His latest entry is about how complex systems are unable to react to changing environments in any way except to collapse. Basing his piece on The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter, Shirky says: "Tainter’s thesis is that when society’s elite members add one layer of bureaucracy or demand one tribute too many, they end up extracting all the value from their environment it is possible to extract and then some. "The ‘and them some’ is what causes the trouble. Complex societies collapse because, when some stress comes, those societies have become too inflexible to respond. In retrospect, this can seem mystifying. Why didn’t these societies just re-tool in less complex ways? The answer Tainter gives is the simplest one: When societi...

( Updated at the bottom.) If you are someone who wonders why movies are the way they are today, this book is essential reading. Edward Jay Epstein ( site and blog ), who has written about the economics of Hollywood for several years in various publications, explains in great detail where the money comes from and where it goes. It is common now for media to report the box office grosses after every weekend, and except for establishing the relative popularity of films currently in release, the information is completely lacking in context. For example, Gone in 60 Seconds cost $103.3 million to make and grossed $242 million. On the face of it, that looks like a success. However, the distributor (Buena Vista) only realized 40% of the world wide box office, amounting to $102.2 million. The rest of the money stayed with the movie theatres. From Buena Vista's gross, they deducted $67.4 million for advertising, $13 million for prints, and $10.2 million for insurance and other expen...