Meeting Overview, 9/23/11

Hey guys! Hope everyone enjoyed our "Welcome to the Labs" meeting last night! It was a little chaotic, but we all had a ton of fun. Lion King 3D was SUPERB! We were so excited to have such a large group there, and the cheer that went up when the movie started was the best sound in the world. Thanks for being so awesome, everyone. :)

In case you couldn't make it last night, here's what happened:

- We discussed our "statistics" from last week and found that most of the people in the group are interested in visual development, character design, storyboarding, and feature length movies. We're going to put a focus on these things in the future, but will definitely have content related to all facets of animation at our meetings as well.

- At our next meeting, Friday, September 30, we're going to have a guest speaker! Alex Alvarado will be in town and has awesomely agreed to come speak to the Animation Student Collective. Alex is a CCAD 2011 grad, who has interned at Disney Feature Animation and Laika. Disney Feature Animation just recently hired him! This will be a really neat talk, so we highly recommend you come prepared with questions and even some portfolio work!

- The weekend after that, October 7, CCAD Alum Nathan Greno is going to be here! Nathan was co-director of Tangled and will be on campus receiving an Award for Excellence at CCAD over the weekend. We're going to see if it's possible to have him come talk to us during our meeting time, but if not, he will be the Visiting Artist, Monday, October 10th. Stay tuned for more information about Nathan!!

- This summer (in July) CCAD will again be hosting Animation on Location. "Animation On Location is a two week course where students from CCAD, live, breathe, and eat the CG, 2D, and Stop-motion Animation scene in and around the Greater Los Angeles community. This includes, but is not limited to, Graduate Schools, Industry Houses, Research Facilities, and Museums. The second week focuses on the ACM international conference: SIGGRAPH" (source). It's still a ways off, but we wanted to give a pretty decent heads up, because the cost is a little hefty: upwards of $3500. But this is a stunning opportunity, and we just wanted to make sure everyone was aware!! We'll keep you guys updated with any further developments as it gets closer.

- Another upcoming CCAD event is the Internship Fair. This will happen on Tuesday, November 8th, and the deadline to sign up (at the Careers office) is Monday, October 17th. It's only open to Juniors and Seniors, but it's a FANTASTIC networking opportunity, so take advantage of it if you can! Get your work out there and be proactive! :)

- Then we proceeded to the labs! For the most part, we messed around in the programs (see our post below for a detailed list and some valuable resources!), toured the soundbooth, and shared our collective knowledge! We handed out a sheet that had a pretty valuable list of all of the Maya 2011 Hotkeys -- if you're interested in this list, let us know on the Facebook page, and we'll make sure you get one! :)

- Then it was time for Lion King!! We all trooped down to the Arena Grand and had a fabulous time. Bekah took some silly pictures of the evening, so tag yourself on the Facebook page if you feel so inclined. ;)


We hope everyone had fun, and we'll see you next week! Come prepared with questions for Alex Alvarado!