Short break

I'm in the middle of grading and working on a project/presentation for the New Media Conference in Monterey (mid-June). I've got a project going about how the emergence of depth and time as abstract concepts is changing the way we look at design, both as a process and an end product. I'll try to post a link to the earliest version of part 1 today.

The most important news relates to the presentation by Oren Jacob at West Valley College a couple of weeks ago. Oren is a fascinating character who worked his way into Pixar in the early nineties and moved into a leadership role over the next few years. I think he mentioned that his highest profile credit is being responsible for all the particle effects in "Finding Nemo," and with all the water shots, the particle effects are an impressive effort. I think he was listed as Chief Technical Officer, or something like that.

What I really liked about his presentation is that he reinforced a number of things I've been saying over the years, not that I'm all that brilliant, but the key concept is to create work that has a look and feel that moves beyond just technical competency. He said, in some many words, that he can teach most anyone to use Maya (which is what they use), but he can't teach the creativity and the sense of new ideas that make for memorable content. What I really like about that philosophy is that it ties in so seamlessly with what the university experience is all about. We aren't a trade school and you can learn to use the software through all sorts of ways, both cheap and/or expensive. What makes your work memorable is the ability to bring all sorts of new ideas together in a creative and challenging way to get the audience to see and feel things they might not have experienced before.

To do that, you need experiences in other cultures and other ways of thinking, taught to you by university classes and classmates. That's why it's important to know the culture and mythology of a place outside your comfort zone. For those of you who do the research, you'll find out that a major part of the storyline for Shane Acker's new film, "9" comes from aboriginal culture and their belief that the soul is not complete in the afterlife unless all the souls it's a part of (in physical life) are accounted for. That all gets pretty deep and heavy but it's what makes the story resonate.

So, Oren reinforced my viewpoint that says you need to develop a personal statement that connects deeply through cultural networks and personal experience to really get ahold of the audience's attention. Beyond that, he had lots of great tips for getting noticed and one of the things I most appreciated was his suggestion that doing work, putting it on there on YouTube and waiting for things to happen is a pretty good idea. If it's got staying power, word of mouth will get you some notice. Word of mouth can get you from YouTube to the big leagues if you handle it right.

While up there, I met Don Shields, who teaches animation at Mission College and he and I compared notes about teaching Maya, the game industry and other nuggets that I'll forward in the near future.