Day... I have no idea?

Today started off early, as usual, with ILM's "Transformers" presentation. All we learned from that is that Michael Bay sucks and they have giant, awesome, fricken' robots. Here are some stats they threw at us about ten times during the presentation:
1) Each transformer is made up of about 1 million + polygons. 2) They have over 10,000 pieces each with an average of over 2,500 texture maps per character. That's about it for that.

Afterwards, we wandered to the Exhibition Floor, as it had opened that morning. Our first stop was the Pixar booth, as seen below.



Here we received a bunch of free swag (shhhh-wag) that was quite amazing. I've picked some stuff up for the first event that I hope to give away as prizes- you should be very excited! Speaking of Pixar, I promised to talk about the exclusive party that the three members were invited to. There were about 50 people there, and the students got to talk to all the Technical Leads in the following departments: lighting, shading, and modeling. They took away that Pixar is everything you expect it to be: professional, courteous, and fun! They were also full of information and very helpful to our members. If you want to ask them questions about their meeting just drop me an email and I'll get a reply for you.




At the next booth, Disney Animation Studios, I met with Dawn Rivera-Ernster, the director of talent development for Walt Disney Animation. When I told her about the VisuaL Language program, she was very interested and has told us that she would love to come to Orlando to speak to us about the studio and opportunities that lie there. (More swag.)

The next booth was Lucas Arts, basically, ILM. There, we talked to some more industry professionals. Hopefully, we can get some of them to come and talk to us on campus. Swag, swag, swag.

The last stop was Sony Imageworks, who have worked on such movies as the Spider-man movies, Monster House, and the upcoming Beowulf. There we spoke with Dan Lobi who remembered us from the Orlando event this spring. He showed great interest in coming back and speaking with us about the new technology and art direction in Beowulf, which utilizes performance capture. Here's a link to the Beowulf trailer: http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/beowulf/

Swag galore!

At some point, we went to the Motion Capture studio, where I got to put on a motion capture suit and prance around. Check out the clip below. I look like an idiot- HOORAY!




Next up was Electronic Theater. The showcase this year was unbelievable. If you have the chance to check out "No Time for Nuts" by Blue Sky Studios- here's the link:
http://blueskystudios.com/content/shorts-notimefornuts.php

Also, if you've gone to Ratatouille, you've already seen the Pixar short film, "Lifted". If not, go see Ratatouille, because it is fabulous! My personal favorite short film we saw was by Blur Studios, typically a gaming company. Their short was entitled "A Gentleman's Duel", which you can find a trailer for here: http://www.blur.com/gentlemans_duel.html#

To see the film in its entirety, along with others, come to our first SIGGRAPH event, which will be sometime in September. We will also be giving out some swag to lucky winners!

Lastly, because I know this blog entry is the longest thing ever, I'll just mention that we attended the Adobe Maxon party that night, where we got to meet with Dave Bleich from Sony Imageworks, who was the Lead Matte Painting Supervisor. He was incredibly nice and gave us some good tips about the industry in general. Some members showed him their reels, and he also gave them positive input. Altogether, a great guy! To see his work, go check out "Surf's Up"!

More updates tomorrow, right now....I really really really need sleep.

- Alexis