Back to being a student!

Holaaa! Long time nothing new on this blog, well… I’ve been quite busy and lazy at the same time to update this. But now, as a reward you will get a big one! As it’s supposed to be!!

Exactly one year ago (gosh I can’t believe how fast time goes) I started the Jedi Academy Internship program in Singapore. An incredible experience! We were a total of 14 interns carefully chosen for the different needs of the company. All of them exceptionally cool and crazy people that were ready for everything! We all came from different backgrounds but became friends amazingly quick. It was really a lot of fun to be and work with them! We were not together all the time, since we were in different departments, but had the chance to work two small Intern projects during the program. Unfortunately, you won’t get to see them… I’m sorry guys, I wish I could. But we made our recruiter Vincent Chua proud, that’s for sure. 

Jedi Academy 2011

My internship lasted a total of 6 months and I was assigned to be a rigging and animation support for the next Animated Feature being developed in Singapore. If I had expectations of how I would have wanted my internship semester to be, this experience actually blew them all away… There are no words to describe it, it was just incredible!

The Signature Building

I arrived at a growing division that detached from ILM in order to realize a very cool new Lucasfilm IP. Surrounded by amazingly friendly people with incredible talent that contributed to a really awesome working atmosphere, it was an incredible field to learn and have fun! University only taught me the basics, then it was up to me to become better and get more knowledge, but once I got this working experience, it all grew exponentially. I have never learnt so much in such a short time. Having that amazing team of colleagues willing to help you out and answer all questions on one’s heart desire, every challenge could be taken and accomplished. Thanks guys!

The new Lucasfilm Boyband! Created after a night singing Karaoke!

(thanks Helen for the awesome pic)

I started helping out the riggers translating some tools from MEL to Python (getting my hands at Python for the first time). Once I kind of got comfortable with it I started scripting animation tools, and a lot of them! Since it was a forming division, there was a lot still to do! It was really fun and I felt really productive, having a whole team of animators using the tools I created on a daily basis. Since I was specializing entirely on animation tools I slowly got into helping out animating some characters as well. It was awesome! While animating, new ideas came to my mind for animation tools to improve the workflow and I started scripting and animating at the same time. And that’s when I saw what I was really made for. I loved to work like that, scripting and animating was the perfect balance for me and gave my days a lot of diversity, which I really liked.

Lucasfilm lunch times!!!

Being at Lucasfilm brought me a lot of happiness. I met incredible people and made very awesome friends, learnt a freaking lots about scripting and animating while having an incredible time, as well. They really treated me like family and I felt really comfortable working with them. I was able to take part in a lot of In-House talks and courses to deepen our knowledge on different topics and the Lucasfilm Singapore partys… That’s something really unforgettable! But what happens in Lucasfilm stays in Lucasfilm ;)

Lucasfilm Halloween party (Interns have to shave of their hair, let their selves a braid and dress like the padawans they are... naaah just kidding, though some crazy ones do... ;)

It was an incredible experience in and outside of the company and I’m really thankful to have had the opportunity to be part of this amazing team, I’m sure the feature is gonna rock and that you guys are gonna love it!

What happened after that? Well I had to go back to school! I would have loved to stay, but my mom would have literally killed me if I would have dropped university! But I have a good feeling that I might be seeing them again very soon. ;)

After one and a half years in Singapore, I finally flew off back to Stuttgart for a couple of days, were I could meet for the last time with all my University friends together(now a lot of them have graduated and moved to different parts of the world) I even got a surprise welcome party! =D It was only for 10 days, but it was as awesome as in the old times!

Then I went home to Ecuador, after a two year absence, it was about time to see my family and my high school friends again. Many things had changed, but I suppose it’s just like that in life, things won’t stay always the same. It got me a little hard… But it reminded me to enjoy the moments I currently live the most, while I still have them… It was a very chilled time, but necessary since I had not had even a month off since I started Arthur.

Meanwhile, gotita. got a Daily Deviation award at deviantArt.com. It’s my first independent animated film, so it made me really happy to be recognized with it. It makes all the work even more worthwhile.

Arthur also won as the best animated short film in the “Festival de Adrenalina Audiovisual” in Guayaquil. We really should have sent Arthur to more festivals, no one of us Arthurians really took the time to do that since we were too busy making something out of ourselves. Mark already graduated and is currently working full time as a Game Artist at Deck13 in Frankfurt, Hannes is working as an FX Trainee at Pixomondo in Stuttgart while writing his Thesis and Steffi is also writing her Thesis about Ikinema with another friend of ours.

And what about me? I’m just enjoying the last student life I probably got… Without really knowing it all the credits I did in Singapore were accepted at my home University, that meant that I was suddenly over the limit and I don’t have any more classes to attend to. I only had to write my internship report and a small research that had to be done during the internship semester. Until those were revised, I could not officially start my thesis in order to graduate. I wrote them as soon as I got back to Stuttgart and then took the advice of all my friends at work seriously. They told me to travel and enjoy the time I had left as a student the most! There would be enough time for the working life afterwards. So after being almost 3 months in Ecuador with my family I came back to Stuttgart, wrote all pending things and did a little Eurotrip with a childhood friend of mine, visited another childhood friend in New Orleans and then traveled with my parents for three weeks through the national Parks in Utah. Probably the last time I can dedicate them so much time to travel, since things might change once work starts… So yes, I’m trying to take out the most of my time, as usual ;) It’s just that this time it’s in a slightly different way.

I came back just in time for the FMX! Which was of course really cool as always! Lots of incredible talks, screenings and party! And since it’s not so crowded you really get to know a lot of people. It was really great to see Heather and Chris again from the Lucasfilm times! =D They reminded me of a really awesome place where I want to go back.

Time to finish my studies and write my Thesis, which I wont go on about right now, unless you want to spend another half an hour reading n_n But I'm really excited about it!

Until next time, may the force be with you!

Prost,

santy.