alexiss dawn

Alright, let’s see if I can do this. I’ve slowly been composing my thoughts/feelings/everything about all of last week! It was an incredible experience and has been dubbed the best week ever by me.

(Warning: It is impossible to sum up this much awesomeness. What follows is only a smidgin of a look into what has happened over the last week and a half!)

So I flew out after work on a Friday with another AMer/Blue Sky-er, headed off to San Francisco for graduation. After a crazy delayed flight, we made it into SF and met up with a bunch of friends downtown! Despite being totally exhausted, we stayed up late and I went on 25 hours without sleep the first night!!

The next day was graduation from Animation Mentor. It totally was one of those experiences that words just can’t do justice for. It was incredible to be a part of it. AM really knows how to make an event amazing. It was SO great to see my classmates from the last 18 months from all over the world! And then to get to hang out with them!! And no, I didn’t trip walking across the stage!

At grad with Spilly, laughing it up on stage!

That night after we finally left grad (we all like to talk!) about 50 of us met up at Boudin for dinner (and convinced them to stay open late for us!!) and then headed to Medjools to party. It was an amazing night with amazing friends. The great Chris Derochie was hanging out with us (QUACK, QUACK!!) and noticed how people were dancing. So long story short, a group of us got a bunch of people doing the macarena randomly. SO COOL and hilarious!!

The next day I took off to LA with a friend of mine where we met up with a zillion more friends for Siggraph. We stayed at an amazing hotel (part of The Shining was filmed there!! FREAKY!) and had awesome company. Staying with good friends is a must!

Animation Mentor Party!

The week is impossible to sum up. Spending the day talking and laughing with friends, with studios, with random people! And then at night partying! AM through an awesome party for students, alumni, mentors, industry people…it was great!! Blur also through one heck of a party I got to go to with a good friend. I have not laughed so hard in a LONG time!!

Blur Party!

Blur party much later!!

Top 10 Grad/Siggraph moments (In no particular order!):

1. Walking a “straight” line at the AM party!
2. Lame fishing line dance moves!
3. Mel’s Diner, meat earrings, My Girl, pancakes!
4. “Shhhhhhhh!!”
5. Seeing people I haven’t seen in SOOOOO long, laughing with people from different studios!
6. Crowd surfing Shawn!
7. The Biltmore and it’s many crazy sleepless nights!
8. Frank and Ollie tribute!!
9. Randomly yelling FJORG! down every possible hallway!
10. Being with AMers for 9 straight days!!

(Man! There are so many more!!!)

AM party with AMAZING people!

I did not get the chance to participate in FJORG as I wasn’t sure if I would be able to make it out because of Blue Sky, and so I had chosen to drop out instead of keeping my team waiting. But they did some awesome work and it was a blast to get to know so many of the FJORGers and see what they turned out in 32 hours!!!

As a close to our week, we decided to take a bunch of us to Disneyland!! It was such an amazing way to end the week! It took forever to get there (shuttles! shuttles!) but it was hilarious all along the way. 12 of us went, rode plenty of rides, double bounce walked down Main Street to the Wall-E soundtrack, analyzed duck walks, ran around like a bunch of goons, and generally enjoyed ourselves. Disneyland is so much more enjoyable when surrounded by insane animators!

Crazy 3d animators in their lovely 3d glasses!

Still excited after a long day of craziness!

We also had the chance to watch the fireworks above the castle and to see the Fantasmic show. It was such a brilliant time. There’s nothing better than being with amazing people you care about, that you fit in with, and that are just as goofy as you are.

The song from the parade at Disneyland right now totally fits with us and AM right now. Cheesy or not, I love it and it makes me smile!! Play it, I’m sure it will for you. I know for us that went to Disneyland, it means a lot!! Our AM family, our close bonds, our dreams totally coming true!

All of us crazy animators at Disneyland with Walt Disney!

Well, I’m realizing that this post doesn’t even begin to convey the week. It was honestly one of the most overwhelming experiences and the best week ever so far! It was so great to be surrounded by such genuine, loving, amazing people for 9 whole days! A huge thank you to everyone that made the week that incredible! It showed me just how lucky I am to be a part of Animation Mentor!

I’ve been waking up with a smile on my face every morning, especially since getting home to New York. Work is tough! I love it, but it’s tough! And so far this week as I start to struggle all I have to do is think of last week and I’m immediately laughing to myself like a geek! It means so much to me and I am SO grateful to have been there with everyone! For all the events not talked about, thank you! AM knows what they’re doing and it’s such an incredible place. Again, HUGE thank you to everyone that made last week what it was. Inside jokes to laugh at for a lifetime, eh? LOVE IT!!

Just wanted to pass on a bit of good news! My team has been selected to compete in the second annual FJORG! Iron Animator Marathon at SIGGRAPH 2008! I’ll be partnering up with Jon Wondrusch and Ian Weyna, both AM alumni, for the event.

FJORG is a competition where 16 teams each work to create an animated sequence of at least 15 seconds in length to a maximum length of 45 seconds based on a theme to be provided at the main event, during 32 straight hours, using only those assets supplied at the event and their own talent and skills. 32 hours! Whoa!

And here’s some EVEN BETTER news: We’re not the only team made up of Animation Mentor students/alumni!! Out of 16 teams competing at FJORG, we have 4 AM teams!! How cool is that?! We’re all so incredibly excited to be there together and work to represent AM well! It’ll be a blast to just participate with so many AMers and the other no doubt talented animators!

Again, congrats to the other AM teams!

Crappy and Happy
Philip Rudolph
Remi Tjon Ajong
John Coomey

Studio TeAM
Chris Schloemp
Mark DeRidder
JJ Pastore

Digital Shamans
Natascha Evans
Sheldon Kruger
Francine Mangin

EDIT: With an email out I found out we have even more AMers participating — so a congrats to them as well!

Bill Buckley
Jay Grenier
Ken Robkin
Henry Sanchez
Brad Bradbury
Valerie Morrison
Hunter Brown

Siggraph has now come and gone - what a week it was! It exceeded any expectations I had in every possible way. It was incredible to meet so many people - from AnimationMentor students I have talked to for months but hadn’t met to people working in studios. It was a great week. It was an incredible experience to be surrounded by people so passionate about what they do and so genuine in who they are. I didn’t get much sleep and have managed to come back with a bit of a cold but it was well worth it. All of it - the AnimationMentor graduation party, lunch with friends, Siggraph booths, meetings and symposiums, incredible people, amazing parties, and little sleep - it left me amazed. My only regret is that I didn’t have more time to sit and chat with the amazing people who are AM students. It was great to meet so many face to face though! I couldn’t have asked for a better week. So thank you to everyone who made it happen! Definitely shoot me an email if we met up there - it’s great to keep in touch!

After last week I feel truly privileged to be a part of AnimationMentor. I knew it was an amazing school before, but last week showed so much more. So many great things are happening because of the school and the amazing people behind it.

Now it’s back to work. I’m starting my first dialogue shot this week! We got the new Bishop rig and I can’t wait to dig into it. I’m completely in awe of how fast AM is helping us to learn - 8 months ago I couldn’t even animate a ball! First blocking pass up next week!

Siggraph is still going strong and it’s only Wednesday. The last couple of days have been amazing. It’s been overload of amazing.

Monday was amazing. I spent all day Monday doing Animation Mentor graduation related things. I met up with a bunch of people in the morning to run down to the convention center to start getting ready for graduation. Lots of random tasks but we were snapping pictures all through out it. Ninja fights in the hall. Awesome. Grads came for rehearsals and there was a lot of pointing at name tags and people saying “Hey! I know you!” We helped them run through everything, got a break to sit and chit chat, and then it was time for the actual ceremonies.

The graduation ceremonies were amazing. Full of great work, awesome students, and man, that room was swelling with passion. It was awesome to watch Bobby, Shawn, and Carlos read the names and be quite emotional about it. But hey, look at these guys and what they’ve created - I think you’d be emotional too.

Spike, AM’s mascot actually was there at the end. So we danced with him and took plenty of pictures. Then it was time to head to the W Hotel, for the after party. The party was on the roof AND it was a beach. So we stood in the sand all night. A beach…on the roof. How awesome is that. Fire pit over there, trees over here…gah, so amazing. I ended up talking with an AM staff person for an hour about randomness and then I started talking around. I actually ended up talking to Robert Russ, an animator at Pixar for about half an hour, Kim, a recruiter from Dreamworks for half an hour, and tEric and Alfonso from Pixar for another hour. Really cool that they sat and chatted though, giving advice, talking animation, talking randomness.

After a little bit of sleep it was time to start again. Each night so far is even more amazing which I don’t think is possible. Last night was the parties. A friend form AM and I first swung by the Pixar party that I got an invite to earlier in the day. They had rented out an entire bar and inside they were playing Pixar movies - I bet you that was a first. We actually ran and got food when we first got there as the night before at the AM party we started talking first instead and never got food. So we sat across on the empty side of the bar and within a few minutes two of the Pixar recruiters we met earlier came over and started chatting with us and then the two TD guys came up and joined us. So we ended up chatting with them until about 10 when we took off. Lots of good tips and it was pretty cool to chat with them.

So we took off to the Dreamworks party, up to the roof for the party. Awesome. There were a ton of people and a lot of AM students there. I spent the night with them and then talked with Jason Schleiffer, an animator, Darcie, the animation director over all of DW, and then Jason Reisig, animation supervisor on Kung Fu Panda and Simon Otto, another animation supervisor for another movie, for the rest of the night. Those guys are hilarious and we chatted forever. It was a LOT of fun.

Oh, and earlier yesterday we met up with some A< people to invade the exhibits hall as it opened up for the first time. It was nuts. People rushed for the Pixar booth which was funny. My group and I wandered over there and ended up still getting the free poster of Ratatouille. Lol. Later on we got a teapot - a Siggraph-Pixar thing I guess. Wandered around the booths and talked to people at all the big studios as well as some little ones. I got cards from a few people here and there to keep in touch which will be cool.

We also had our Birds of a Feather meeting - group meeting for like people. So in our case, AM. they announced a bunch of AWESOME new features coming to the site and they also had recruiters from studios around that we chatted with. Again, a really inspiring time

So far it’s been a blast. Being around this huge group of passionate people has been excellent. They’re genuine people who like to have a good time - pretty amazing stuff.

I’m down in San Diego for Siggraph! I got in on Saturday and it already seems like I’ve been here a long time! It has been a ton of fun so far. I’m completely amazed again at people from Animation Mentor. To go to a place you really haven’t been, share a hotel with people you barely know and spend your day with people you’ve never really met face to face, and to have a blast throughout it all - that’s pretty amazing stuff. As soon as AM people find each other, they’re completely enthralled with one another, joking around and chatting like really good friends. Oh wait, we are really good friends. Excellent.

So yesterday I met up with Jeff which was awesome in itself and made my way down to where AM graduation is going to be today. I think we’re going to be blown away by everything going on. There we “met” a few more AM people - Aja, Christoph, Henry, Richard, Ryan…a lot of people! It was SO good to see a lot of AnimationMentor staff there again as well. I believe they are some of the most amazing people on this planet. It was a blast to sit and chat with them and joke around as we did a few things. Can’t wait for today.

The rest of the day was spent running into other AM people and chatting with them, watching some work in the animation theater, and then grabbing dinner together. We actually ran into even more AM people on the way there, I had a lot of people call to meet up with us, and we filled up the patio area of a pub and grill in the Gaslamp area. It was a lot of fun to sit around and chat, make jokes, do impressions of Bobby, Shawn and Carlos, and of course have some good food.

The rest of the night we split up, and a bunch of people came over to my hotel where we hung out in the lobby. This is no ordinary lobby - tons of couches and huge window seats with lots of pillows. We chatted the night away about animation, tips for demo reels and resumes, and various banter about all sorts of things. Again, I’m amazed by how close AM people are. This school is amazing!

If you’re here for Siggraph, make sure you stop by the AM booth starting on Tuesday! Chances are I’ll be around that area a lot!