Reel-ality

In case you're wondering what exactly the reel looked like when Disney commented on it, here she is. I'm making refinements to it before I send it along to Imageworks.


Rich Ferrando - August 2008 Demo Reel from Richard Ferrando on Vimeo.

Vectors to the Initial 2: Revenge of the Siggraph

OK - To clarify yesterday's odd post.

All this week I was at Siggraph, which, to those of you who don't know, it's an international conference of computer graphics, animation, and other nerd stuff (for instance, they had one presentation that was a Technical Paper on using "Differential Equations and Parallel Algorithms for Approximation of Distance Maps on Parametric Surfaces," whatever that means. :-) Where else in the world will 1,000 people show up to hear a speech by a robotics engineer working on a driverless car?

Anyway - I was there for the Exhibition, Career Fair, and classes on animation and getting jobs in the CG industry.

In an effort to save money (for students to attend the full conference is about $350), I became a Student Volunteer, which meant I could go to the conference for free in exchange for working, helping people find booths, passing out flyers, etc.

The Student Volunteer program was, indeed, a great experience. It is an essential part of the whole conference, the work was easy, and I had fun and met a lot of great people.

I did get quite a lot of insight into where I currently stand in the job market. On Tuesday I had my demo reel reviewed at the Disney Animation booth. And what I posted was, in essence, what the recruiter told me. She said that my work is good - I know how to animate, but I'm lacking in entertainment value. There's nothing special about my reel that makes it stand out from the crowd. I've got a good, basic reel. Unfortunately, they get hundreds of good, basic reels every month. If I want to get a job in this business, I need a way to make my work special, and most importantly, I need to emphasize Emotion over Motion.

Regardless, I still submitted my reel and resume to several studios that are getting ready to hire junior animators toward the end of the year. I doubt that I'll get in at any of them, but I figure it's good to get my work out there and just keep sending updates until they either hire me or send me Cease and Desist notices.

Part of the conference is this competition called FJORG (pronounced "Forge") which is an "iron animator" competition. Teams compete to create a 45-second animated short in only 32 hours. And this year there were 7 teams out of a total of 16 that were from Animation Mentor. 2 AM teams tied for second place, too. I don't know how they did it, but somehow all the teams competing managed to stay up 32 hours straight without going insane, AND finish an animated short in the process. Amazing stuff.

I also got some cool stuff. Like a deck of playing cards featuring storyboard and development art for Disney's upcoming Bolt, a Wall-E poster, and a free copy of the academic version of Softimage XSI (a 3D modeling and animation program.) And the opportunity to have my reel reviewed, even though it wasn't quite the response I hoped for, has a value that's beyond estimation.

And I got to attend the Computer Animation festival, which was extremely cool. One I must recommend for people, and which I hope will become available soon, and which I hope will win an Oscar, is called My Happy End. Click here to watch the trailer.

Eat My Shorts

And speaking of short films, remember a while back I mentioned that Project 21 thing? Well, we finished the short film last week. I hope to incorporate my shots into my reel at some point in the next few weeks, and I'll post it here when I do, but if you want to see the whole short you'll have to wait until after it premieres at the Project 21 festival in October. (The festival's in Philadelphia, so I won't be in attendance, but hopefully the director will post the short on his website after it screens at the festival.)

All-in-all I'm fairly happy with the way my shots turned out. For having to animate as much footage as we did on a two-week deadline (my shots amounted to a total of 12 seconds in two weeks, which is actually approximately how much I'll have to do when I get a real job), I think that all of us working on the film did some pretty great stuff.

A Little Bit Sketchy

My current mentor has also demanded that I draw something every day to try to get better at it. And I agree. I want to get better, so I'm gonna be doing a sketch every day (hopefully) and posting it on my Facebook space. If you have a Facebook account, look me up so you can laugh at my Nick, Jr. style. :-)

Vectors to the Initial

Disney says I'm not Unique or Entertaining.