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...

Last week, the 4th year students at Sheridan had a screening of their story reels. I mentor 10 of those students, out of 108 this year. I've been looking at my students' reels as they developed since September, but it's always different seeing work with an audience. It struck me that there are three stages the students have to tackle in order to make a successful film, and various films were already at different stages. The first is clarity. Can an audience understand what's happening on screen? I've asked students to explain something I don't understand about their films and their explanations make sense, but what's in their heads hasn't been communicated on the screen. Things, often important things, get left out. Clarity is pretty easy to achieve once a storyboard or story reel is shown to a few people, as they inevitably ask questions about things they don't understand. Logic is a bit tougher. Getting the events of a film and the character...

"At the heart of creativity is a willingness to take risks, a willingness to experiment, a willingness to explore avenues that don't go anywhere and a willingness to be wrong. And if you're living in a culture of standardized testing, high-stakes funding, where mistakes are not tolerated and seen as a sign of mental infirmity, then you're breeding a contradiction right at the heart of the system." "The real innovation and creativity always comes from people crossing borders, crossing boundaries, thinking differently and very often through the interaction of disciplines through applying ideas from one field into another field. The real vitality of intelligence and creative thinking is in making connections, not from keeping everything separate." The above quotes come from an interview with Sir Ken Robinson in The Globe and Mail . I first became aware of Sir Ken Robinson from the TED video that is embedded below. The Globe and Mail has a pair of videos...

This is shaping up to be a banner year for animation instruction. Hot on the heels of the announcement of the Dick Williams DVD set , comes word that Eric Goldberg 's instructional book will be published this summer. Goldberg has been working in animation since the 1970s and is the animator of the Genii in Disney's Aladdin as well as the director of the "Rhapsody in Blue" sequence of Fantasia 2000 and the animation director of Looney Tunes: Back in Action . Copies of animation notes by Goldberg have been circulating for years. Those notes leave no doubt that this will be a major contribution to the animation instruction bookshelf. Here's the link at Amazon.com and at Amazon.ca . ( info via Cooked Art )

You have probably seen the pencil test for the opening for Richard Williams DVD set of The Animator's Survival Kit over at Cartoon Brew . The website for this set has been updated with a promo that shows a more finished version interspersed with shots of Williams lecturing at Blue Sky. There are additional clips of Williams explaining things here and on succeeding pages (click on the images for motion). The set, consisting of 16 DVDs, is not cheap. Price information can be found here . At today's conversion rates, the set will cost $990.70 in the U.S. and $1,011.88 in Canada. After November 17, the price is 20% higher. ( link via The Thief )