Independent Study overseen by Brett Rutland
Over the past 15 weeks, I have developed my professional materials such as my resume, demo reel, website, and social media pages, as well as worked on personal projects and job applications and attended career events such as LightBox Expo and SIGGRAPH Asia.
Resume
This current resume reflects my recent positions as an instructor at LYNX Camp, working as a lab monitor at the DAC, my volunteer experience at SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia, and my mentorship through Women in Animation. Other updates and tweaks were made to best reflect my current branding and online presence including title and links to my work.
Demo Reel
In preparation for showing my demo reel LightBox and applying for positions post-grad, I created a new pass of my surfacing demo reel with characters and props. This variation includes the characters from my thesis that I finished in May, but has cleaner renders of each,
Website
I worked to make tangible and directed improvements to my website to create a more direct experience with minimal clicks to get to my most important work such as my demo reel and 3d assets. I also built out my 3d assets page with detailed breakdowns of my demo reel models with in-progress work views, my thought process, and the challenges I overcame when creating each project.
In conjunction with my Business of Art class with Josh Blair I also developed consistent branding for colors, fonts, icons, logos, etc. to match my business cards
Social Media Pages
I also worked on developing my Art Station profile further and will continue to refine it and my Rookies profile post-grad to put my best foot forward on all platforms to present myself as a skilled and capable individual who can not only create successful projects but also showcase them in an interesting and appealing way.
Personal Project
I worked briefly with Bianca Rawlings on a personal project developing assets for a 3d scene based on concept art. While this eventually fell through due to our busy schedules, it was refreshing to work on a project and collaborate on something 3D that isn't the same demo reel pieces I've been looking at for many months.
Preproduction
Production
After boarding out a short story to pair with the concept art we decided to create a hero asset fish for the character on the boat to interact with to give an emotional heart to the short story. We picked a golden arowana fish because we liked the colors and how the texture matched with the overall mood and shape motifs in the concept art.
I created some brief water and lighting tests to see if I could recreate waves in Maya/Arnold and get the lighting to look similar to the concept art. I think eventually I was pretty successful, however, we still had to tackle how to get the water to move in a believable fashion and how we would stylize the effect.
Job Applications
From mid-October to mid-November, I focused on applying to various roles. I wasn't seeing many entry-level postings for positions matching my specialties, but I did want to get some applications out there so I started filling out expression of interest postings that I started seeing popping up.
DreamWorks (Glendale, CA) Look Development Intern
Sony Pictures Animation (Vancouver)
Texture Artist Expression of Interest
Sony Pictures Animation (Culver City, CA)
Modeling & Surfacing Artist Expression of Interest
DNEG Surfacing Artist Expression of Interest
Animal Logic (Vancouver) Surfacing Artist Expression of Interest
MassFX (Denver) Freelance Expression of Interest
I was most excited about the DreamWorks Look Development Internship as I knew I would be speaking to the recruiting team at LightBox Expo at the end of October. I previously met with Sarah Park at LightBox Expo 2023 and after meeting her again this year at LightBox Expo she forwarded my portfolio directly to the Look Development department. While my application was not selected by the look development team for this applicatiom, I have high hopes for future applications and will continue to keep putting my best foot forward.
LightBox Expo 2024
The weekend of October 25th-27th I was able to travel to Pasadena, California with multiple fellow DAC grads and current students including Jay Ramirez, Logan Schwartz, Channing Han, Isaiah Heath, Piper Combs, and Haley Barrington to attend LightBox Expo. This is my second year attending the convention and I had a blast. This convention is certainly the current place to be in the industry. While it is mainly geared towards illustrators and 2D animation, there is still so much to see and so many people to meet in terms of 3D opportunities.
Before leaving for LightBox, I was sure to post several times on LinkedIn in different groups to drum up some attention on my page and my connected socials. My most numerically successful post was a breakdown of my Mary the Toymaker project which I posted to the 3D Texture Artists group which recieved nearly 700 likes. The post that got the most useful engagement though was my (now outdated) demo reel which I posted for #PortfolioDay which got 26 comments and 6 reposts from within my network of peers and mentors.
Getting to travel to LightBox with a group of peers this year was super fun as we got to explore Pasadena together and continue to build bonds post-grad. The hotel room that we operated out of was directly in the convention center so it was super easy to meet up and then walk 2 minutes to whatever talk or building we wanted to go to. I look forward to going again next year and being able to meet up with other DAC students I likely won't have seen for a while and catch up.
Women in Animation Hallo-WIA Networking Event
The day before LightBox Expo began, Women in Animation held a Halloween meetup event at the Lawless Brewing Co. near the convention. Fellow Class of 2024 DAC graduate Jay Ramirez and I who are both members of WIA decided to attend the evening with Channing Han and Logan Schwartz as our guests. The evening was a great warm-up for our networking skills for the convention as we all needed a bit of time to defrost our extrovert personalities. It was nice to connect with other animation folks from all walks of life doing animation and non-animation jobs throughout their career path. I often feel like as a student, it is difficult to break out of the collective echo chamber to network beyond fellow students from around the country and get to hear perspectives. It was very refreshing to talk to background artists, layout artists, and storyboard artists from different companies around the country. One thing I was surprised by was the amount of people at the event who weren't currently working in the animation industry but were still involved with WIA. As someone who has struggled with fears of the industry's current state, it was nice to see people who were optimistic about the return of the industry, or just taking time apart from their career path to focus on themselves and their wants and needs for their life.
PIXAR Win or Lose Screening Party
During LightBox, I was lucky enough that thanks to some professional connections through DAC Senior Instructor Paul Conner, I was able to attend a special preview screening of PIXAR's first-ever original animated series Win or Lose which premieres on Disney+ on December 6th. The event was held in a small private art gallery in old town Pasedena. The entire event was themed like softball practice, featuring fun foods like cucumber sandwiches and softball cake pops, with drinks in sports coolers and Win or Lose softballs in buckets around the room. So much thought was put into putting on this event and making it extra special for those attending. I had a great time chatting with everyone at the event. It was so special to be able to have a very normal casual conversation with the directors of the show while milling about eating tiny sandwiches and get to know them a bit more as people than just a name in the credits.
I really enjoyed getting to see two episodes of Win or Lose at the screening party and I was also able to attend a panel the next day during the official LightBox event where an additional episode was screened. I'm very invested in the way that PIXAR has pushed the representation of physical space and objects to represent the metaphorical or emotional obstacles of the narrative. It heightens the emotional impact of a scene to see impossible landscapes or character animations paired with punchlines or deeply emotional moments. It is something that previously I have only noticed in much more experimental animation, so I appreciate seeing it more in the mainstream. I was also really impressed by the color, lighting, and compositing work done in the show. I look forward to viewing the show in full and showing it to my family.
Win or Lose (2024)
Connecting With Recruiters
I met with many recruiters from PIXAR, Disney Feature Animation, ILM, Lucasfilm, Netflix, and Sony Pictures Animation, just to name a few. I also met with people from Adobe, Gnomon, SCAD, and many others. I am very happy with the contacts that I made and strengthened at LightBox this year and I am looking forward to continuing to keep up with my connections.
Portfolio Review from Michael Launder
I was able to snag a portfolio review slot with DAC grad Michael Launder who currently works as a CG Supervisor at Nickelodeon. I've previously met Michael back in 2019 when he led a tour of DAC students around Nickelodeon on a trip to LA organized by Paul. I also got to meet him again at SIGGRAPH this summer as he was doing a panel with my Women in Animation mentor Areeba Rikhan. He gave me a lot of good advice about how I can continue to make my textures more cohesive and have each individual texture flow together seamlessly in a stylized manner. He actually surprised me and I wasn't expecting some of his feedback that my textures were good but they needed more work to look like they belong together. It is something I agree with now that he has pointed it out but I wouldn't have originally thought of that critiquing my own work, so I am excited to see how focusing on that in future projects will elevate my texturing abilities. As a CG Sup who oversees many textures in his department, I trust his eye to point out when something clashes and doesn't quite fit together. Overall, he said my demo reel was looking strong and to keep creating and keep applying.
Arcane: The Alchemy of Animation Panel
My favorite panel that I attended at LightBox was a Fortiche/Riot Games panel discussing Season 2 of Arcane. The panel focused on breaking down the entire process of creating the intro music video to Episode 4 which features "Cagefighter Vi" struggling to cope with returning to life in Zaun. The entire process from the script to storyboards to a rough animatic and in-development music was shown. My favorite pieces that were shown were the visual development pages made for Vi's new look with callout pages for her outfits, hair, and makeup. This previously unseen concept art was really cool to see, as well as the full music video and unreleased demo versions of the soundtrack.
After the panel, I was able to meet Riot Games Production Designer/Senior Concept Artist Arnaud-Loris Baudry, Principal Artist Jason Chan, and Screenwriter/Producer Amanda Overton as well as a poster personally signed by all of them which is super cool.
Cool Swag & Art
After returning from LightBox I was sure to post again about my experiences and give thanks to my peers, new connections, and the companies that made my time worthwhile.
WIA Scholarship Application
After returning from LightBox Expo, I worked to apply to the WIA Scholarship, due November 1st. For this particular application, I had to submit the following:
Proof of WIA membership
Proof of enrollment in an educational institution
Two letters of recommendation from faculty
Letter of intent
Demo reel
Portfolio website
6-10 pieces of work
For the letter of intent written portion of the application this is what I ended up submitting in support of my application:
For the portfolio portion of the application, I decided to showcase my best demo reel pieces as breakdown pages showing the models, wireframes, textures, UVs, lookdev lighting, and original concept art. To create these compositions, I ended up rerendering every single image from my demo reels at 2K or 4K resolution in order to create large-scale images that hold up to zooming in on details. Previously, images on my demo reels were often created at 1920x1080 size and would not have been able to be scaled down this much without losing significant detail. I spent several days at the computer lab rerendering my projects and working on collecting all my final application materials.
SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 Tokyo, Japan
My biggest adventure and most exciting memory of the semester and my entire college career was traveling to work for SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 in Tokyo, Japan. I have never traveled outside of North America so this was my first trip abroad. I traveled with fellow CU Denver Class of 2024 DAC graduates Bianca Rawlings & Aelma Azad to work at the conference. We planned a two-week trip to visit Tokyo and have some time to go sightseeing before and after the conference. We stayed in Ginza, a 15-minute walk from the Tokyo International Forum. It was a nice quiet business-residential area close to the bustling hub near Tokyo Station.
SIGGRAPH Asia took place from December 3rd to December 6th at the Tokyo International Forum, with an additional day for Student Volunteer training on December 2nd. Upon arriving at the Forum, I was super happy to be greeted by lots of familiar faces from SIGGRAPH 2024 in Denver.
Official SV photos were taken in the SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 traditional Japanese happi uniforms.
While working at the conference, I got to see amazing panels showcasing the latest innovations in realistic and stylized animation, animation shorts from across the world, and thought-provoking tech creations and art exhibitions.
Ultraman: Rising How ILM brought this Iconic Hero to Screens Large and Small Panel
I loved seeing this panel from Hayden Jones, VFX Supervisor at ILM. I previously met Shannon Tindle, the director of Ultraman: Rising, and see the film this summer as an instructor during the CU Denver LYNX National Arts and Media Camp. During the LYNX Camp panel, I learned about the worldbuilding, story, and character design of the film. Additionally, I got to see a keynote presentation at the PIXAR Renderman Arts and Science Fair at SIGGRAPH 2024 in Denver on the contributions of the Renderman engine team to the stylized surfacing, rendering, and compositing techniques used in Ultraman: Rising. This SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 panel expanded upon my previous knowledge of the film and gave an extremely in-depth look at the art direction that went into the decisions behind the storytelling, character design, stylized surfacing, rendering, compositing, and innovative techniques used to push the animation in an authentically Japanese way reflecting traditional manga inking and modern anime aesthetics. Learning so much about one particular film in such a short period has given me a deep appreciation of all the hard work that goes into all aspects of the film. Hearing perspectives from different teams on various levels of the production was also very enlightening to the collaborative efforts of the film.
The most interesting thing shown at this panel for me was the exact production guides that were shown to the texture artists that outline directions given from the art directors and visual development artists to the texture artists to include tiny details on various pieces of each character or prop, or what not to do when shading a character. There were also specific instructions for how the stylized renders should be handled for Renderman with line weight and smoothing of the textures with a combination of Kuwahara blurring filters to create a manga copic marker colored look and compositing techniques to ensure a crisp final image.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Weta FX Panel (R)Evolutionary Facial Animation Panel
Despite being a 3D Generalist, I don't pretend to know much about specializing in character animation, particularly highly technical character animation, or motion capture VFX. However, this panel by Stuart Adcock and Allison Orr was a special treat to see in person. As someone deeply entrenched in my interest in all things art direction, surfacing, look dev, and lighting & compositing, I don't often go out of my way to learn about other sides of the industry that I don't interact with as much. While the Ultraman: Rising panel was right up my alley explaining the specific direction given to surfacing and compositing artists to create a highly stylized look, I don't know much about motion capture.
This presentation gave a highly detailed look at the history of motion capture, and the current cutting-edge technology being developed. I was particularly interested in the explanations given on how Weta is using traditional facial motion capture, full frame reference shots of all the actors, newly developed muscle systems to retarget animation onto very un-human-like creatures with "plausible anatomical systems", "deep blend shapes" to stress muscles in different ways for the same pose, and their own library of training data to create predictable and repeatable muscle actions which can be used to aid animators in making quick transitions between poses.
It really surprised me just how detailed every single rig was that was shown during the presentation and the great amount of work that went into translating the tiniest subtleties of the actors into the final creature animation. The fact that the entire movie was basically produced twice, once in live-action and once digitally, was really cool. The dedication to getting every shot just right was very apparent in the presentation.
Japan Travels
In addition to learning and connecting with animation students and professionals from around the globe, I had an amazing time exploring Tokyo and seeing sights, and eating incredible food. I was surprised by how easy it was to navigate and understand everything for sightseeing, food, travel, and shopping in the Tokyo area. I would love to return to Japan someday to see more of the culture of the countryside beyond Tokyo.
