October 2014 - The Needy Animator

INTERNS TALK Pt 1: What the Interns and Newly Hired at Blue Sky Studio and LAIKA HOUSE are saying

With the amount of competition today in the animation and film field, one of the great ways to break into established feature film companies or TV production studios is through internships. But even the competition for internships are extremely high, so how do you stand out from everyone that has applied? How do the few that do succeed get to where they are now? Here are a few words of wisdom from some of my animator friends that have interned and/or are newly hired addition to animation studios such as Blue Sky Studio, LAIKA HOUSE, MPC, and Adult Swim. Lastly, I’ve also included my own experience at Floyd County Productions working as an illustration/production intern with the illustration department of Archer.   Studio: Blue Sky Studio JEN HURLER Location: Greenwich, Connecticut Affiliations: School of Visual Arts (SVA) Position: Production Assistant (Full Time) Portfolio: www. jenhurler.com THE STUDIO Blue Sky Studio is best know for their 3D animation franchise features Ice Age and RIO. Other well-known animations produced include Epic, ROBOTS, and coming soon to the big screen is PEANUTS:The Movie, a remake of the classic Snoopy franchise comic in CG 3D. THE HOW Just to clarify–this isn’t an internship, but rather a full-time job that I was offered. In this position, I aid the fur department in the day-to-day grind. I schedule and help run everything from inter-departmental rounds, to art critiques with the film directors. There’s a lot to learn regarding the BSS pipeline and different software used, but it’s a learning curve I enjoy. The HOW I actually got this job thanks in large to SIGGRAPH and...

10 Short Animations to Watch of 2014 and 2015

WINNER OF THE FEAST POSTER ANNOUNCEMENT: Congratulations to Win Leerasanthanah for winning this official feast collectible lithograph poster. We will be contacting you soon.  Results are generated through the http://www.miniwebtool.com/random-name-picker * For a chance to win a collectible commemorative lithograph copy of The Feast Animated Short poster, scroll to the end of this article.   There are times I really love my school for all the extracurricular activities they bring that I feel help to broaden my scope as an animator. Every year, we are encouraged to go to the Animation’s Show of Show featuring a handful of amazing animated shorts selected from over thousands around the world curated by Ron Diamond and hosted at the new SCAD-Atlanta SCAD SHOW theatre. A quick brief for those that don’t know what the Animation Show of Show is, it’s a pretty big deal if you are in the animation field. Ron Diamond,founder and executive producer of Acme filmworks , has traveled across different states since 1998 to screen his top selected animation shorts (a lot of which has ended up as Oscar nominees or winners) at schools and major animation studios including PIXAR, Dreamworks, and more. The Show of Show is free and runs every year so catch it at your nearest location and book yourself a seat by going to their website and checking out the details. This year I found the particular selections to be a bit different from the past two years and there are three animated shorts from big name studios that the audiences were looking forward to including Disney’s Feast (Set to be out with Big Hero 6 Feature Animation), Pixar’s...