A day after I got home from Gobelins Summer School and a few days holiday in Paris I started an internship for over the summer. I have to do an internship for my school next year, from May untill September, but I thought I could use some more practice. Plus the fact that I'll be able to use the skills from the summerschool right away.
So when I saw that NMtrix Animation Studio in Alkmaar (about 15 minutes by train from the place I live) were hiring I asked them if they could use someone for over the summer and they offered me an internship.
Eventhough it's been for only a short time I do have the feeling I learned a lot. For example; I've never worked in 3Ds Max before, but now I can work with it (at least for animating). And I think I did progress during the time I worked there (I've now got only one week left). It was a good experience too, to just see what it's like to work at a studio who mostly work (at the time) for a children's serie and sort of commercial work. They work so fast! The Tumblies (the children's serie) are about 90 seconds, and usually make one episode in just a few days.
I worked on some commercial things, the Tumblies and an "Olympic Art"-thing. Art is the mascotte of NMtrix. We made some short animations to celebrate the Olympics.
The past two weeks I followed Gobelins Summer School. It was the best experience ever! Awesome masterclasses, epic teachers, and great classmates!
Most days we had masterclasses from 10 in the morning 'till 1, lunch and after that workshop with the teachers untill 5. You were allowed to start at 8 in the morning and stay untill 8 in the evening to practice some more, so that's what I did. Get as much time in Gobelins as possible! I would certainly recommand this Summer School to everyone who is interested in animation.
We got masterclasses from Fred Nagorny, who is the only permanent teacher at Gobelins. He is just brilliant. He has a really mathimatical way of approaching animation, but even though I don't really like math, it was so interesting! Not to mention how useful it was. It's a whole different way of approaching stuff, at least it is for me, but it works just great.
We had three days of masterclasses with him, which was the most time we had with one teacher, but I couldn't get enough of listening to him.
After him we would have gotten masterclasses from Kyle Balda, but because of his thight production schedule, he unfortunately was only able to do the opening. We got Mike L. Murphy instead. His lessons were really intersting. Mike explained a lot about characters, comedy, acting and marketing yourself. I got some great tips. We had Mike's masterclasses for two days.
Then we got Alexandre Heboyan for two days. He explained some more about acting and emotions, and a lot of things about the filmindustry itself, using camera's, film in general. Most of the film-stuff he told was recognizable from the lessons I got at the Filmacademy where I do my current study. He gave really good feedback during the workshops.
The last masterclass was give by Yoshi Tamura. Oh, I was so looking forward to it! But the biggest part of the lesson we got to see his work and he told a lot about his expierence, which were both really great to hear about too.
During the workshops the teachers of the masterclasses helped and there were about four other teachers who didn't give masterclasses, but helped out at the workshops. One of them was Vincent Garcia. He helped me a lot during the workshops and I learned so much of him.
It were two really intense weeks. Everything about it was just wow!
I will miss it a lot, but I'm really happy I got to experience this.
Walkcycle for Fred's assignment:
Unfinished blocking for Mike's acting / lipsync assignment (I will finish this later on):
March 25th I sent my application, with portfolio (showreel), motivation letter and some personal information to Gobelins, l'ecole de l'image Summer School in Character Animation. Click here for more information about the whole Summer School and application information and everything.
This was my personal showreel at the time when I applied:
At March 30th I got an e-mail from Gobelins which included the following text: "We are pleased to inform you that you are admissible to our International Summer School program in character animation that runs from July 2nd through July 13th 2012. Because of your previous animation experience, you will also have access to the workshops that will take place most afternoons. We wish to emphasize that the master classes and workshops are devoted to the performance aspect of character animation; they are not beginner courses or software courses."
