Siggraph 2006 in Boston
After spending July in Israel on vacation with the family I had to return to Cali and join the workforce again. At this time of year, for the VFX industry, the best way to find work is to go to Siggraph. In the last post I showed you my latest reel. I burned it 50 times on DVD, made 75 copies of my resume, packed my bags and set out for Boston.
My child hood friend Alon, got me in touch with his parents, who live in Boston and let me stay at their place for duration of my stay. Alon still lives in Israel and during my stay at his parents place he got called up for reserve duty up in Lebanon. I hope he's okay. His mom, wants me to bring him to the States, permanently. I'll try Eda!
The first day was to visit their beautiful house and drop my bags off. Caught up with Alon's parents, and reminisced about mine and Alon's childhoods. After a short power nap (I arrived at 5am with barely any sleep), I set out for the Boston Expo Center. I spent over 3 hours at the job fair.
My first scheduled interview was with Crystal Dynamics from Menlo Park which is in the SF bay area, makers of the latest Tomb Raider game. It went well. In fact every company that chose to look at my reel then and there on my PSP or view my DVD was impressed and most game companies said I would be considered for lead animator or Technical positions. High Voltage's Art Director asked me for a spontaneous interview.
After giving out most of the 20 reels I brought with me that day I went out to the main expo floor and visited the film post houses I could find. First on the list was ILM since they are in the bay area. They moved into their new complex in the SF Presidio together with the other Lucas companies: Lucasfilm and Lucas Arts. That night I already had a voice mail message asking me to stop by the next day for an interview with ILM for a Creature TD (Technical Director) position. My first ILM interview, yay.
I love Siggraph because every expo night their are numerous infustry parties. Where you drink and eat for free, while shmoozing with friends and aquaintances from the industry. You meet long lost co-workers, past bosses and supervisors, recruiters, clients, 3rd party vendors and even future supervisors and colleagues. You meet all of those and party together, hopefully making friends in the process.
So the first party of this year's convention that I went to was the Vicon party. They are makers of motion capture hardware and software. I ran a mocap studio at my first job, back at Midway Games West - RIP. Vicon baught House of Moves, a top notch mocap studio and makers of Diva, not too long ago, and relocted it's staff from the UK to LA to share a complex together. You can read about the merger here, and see a pic of Hale's stunt double working on Catwoman, my second film credit. The good news this year is that Vicon is going to merge Diva in with their iQ software and create the best mocap software to date. The party was fun. Got to show my reel to 3 people who all had a say in hiring, each from a different division of THQ. Also got to hang out with Dman, the mocap supervisor at Imageworks, also my ex-boss from Polar Express. He's always fun.
Siggraph day 2:
Hit the job fair again, unloaded reels. ILM interview was a little scary but I handled myself well. Scary because I was interviewed by 6 people at once. Later I talked to a girl from Laika who liked my reel and told me I have to talk to the lead TD, Mike C. He really like what he saw and admited that my hair cloth experience is money in the bank. He would love to have me on his team, though they wouldn't be ready to hire me until Sep or Oct.
Towards the end of the day I found the Syflex booth, the makers of the cloth plugin I used on Superman Returns. I sweet talked my way into getting a free personal liscense to use at home. It also turned out that one of their emplyees is an Israeli lady who works from home on their marketing. She was the first VFX female professional I have ever met.
As the expo floor was closing I got ready to hit up that night's parties with Dave F. a friend from ESC and his buddy Mat, founder of Entity FX. First on the list of like 5 parties was the ILM mixer. Which I left early to see a free screeing of Monster House 3D with tix Dman gave me. After the movie I headed for the Framestore party, a London VFX house I applied at. It wasn't so much as a party but another mixer in the bar's basement lounge. There I met a trio of ILM big wigs, one of which was the my FVX Supervisor on Catwoman. He remembered my work fondly and told me to shoot him an email when I get back. Also there were several ex-ESC folks. From their our group which by now grew to about 6 heads, headed to the Cafe FX party. This party was packed. There were half naked go-go girls dancing on the bar. Their show was almost canceled becuase guys were tipping them as if they were strippers. Here I met a cute EA games recruiter who took my reel and continued to hold it for the rest of the night. This time I stayed out late and had to take a 40$ cab ride back home.
Siggraph day 3:
By now I only had about 10 reels left but not much places where I haven't applied yet. I gave out 5 I think, and then strolled through the Emerging Technologies exhibit. Where cool new technologies that are just being developed are showcased. Me and Dman played table tennis with only a table and 2 cell phones. The ball was only visible to us on the phone screens, and it tracked the table using a pattern taped to it and it's built in camera.
Oh yeah that morning I got a message from the Blizzard recruiter inviting me to a drinks and appetizers get-together with the Blizzard cinematic team. Getting that message was the begining of my ascent to cloud 9. Blizzard is THE game company, my dream job comoany. They made the Diablo, Starcraft and Warcraft games, and most recently World of Warcraft - the ONLY game I have been playing since almost a year ago. Ever since picking up Diablo 1, 10 years ago, I have wanted to work for them.
For the rest of the afternoon I hung out at the Snowball booth and chatted in Hebrew with the Snowball folks. This is the first Israeli VFX house I ever saw at Siggraph. After the Expo ended me and their pipeline TD went to find a place to eat and sit down. We chatted for hours. Until it was time to make my way to meet the Blizzard folks.
At the Ruby Room in the Onyx hotel I met about 10 of the Blizzard cinematic department. Aparently they are ramping up to double the dept size from 45 to 85 heads. I was one of the more experienced perspective employees they invited that night. I chatted with most of them, especially the Technical Lead, the Animation Lead, the Director and the Producer. We drank and laughed, talked about the work, WoW and kids. At one point hours after I got there, while I was chatting with the Director of cinematics, the producer came to us and asked to borrow me for a minute. He took me accross the room to the recruiter and said, pointing at me, "Fast track this guy!". And then, "ok, you're done you can go back to your conversation." Later he even said "Welcome to Blizzard" and gave me a hug. After meeting all these great guys I wanted to work with them more then ever. I am not just going to get a sweet dream job, but friends for life, which is priceless. The time was already midnight and my last T tram was leaving in 30 minutes when the Director says "You know you're coming to a strip club with us now, right?" I said no at first, because of the tram thing. But then I thought, wtf?! How often will I get the chance to go to a strip club with all the Blizzard cinematic leads in Boston?! Needless to say that since that day I am both anxious and extatic about working there. Anxious because it's not final, and I sooo want to work there. Extatic because this would be a dream come true.
My child hood friend Alon, got me in touch with his parents, who live in Boston and let me stay at their place for duration of my stay. Alon still lives in Israel and during my stay at his parents place he got called up for reserve duty up in Lebanon. I hope he's okay. His mom, wants me to bring him to the States, permanently. I'll try Eda!
The first day was to visit their beautiful house and drop my bags off. Caught up with Alon's parents, and reminisced about mine and Alon's childhoods. After a short power nap (I arrived at 5am with barely any sleep), I set out for the Boston Expo Center. I spent over 3 hours at the job fair.
My first scheduled interview was with Crystal Dynamics from Menlo Park which is in the SF bay area, makers of the latest Tomb Raider game. It went well. In fact every company that chose to look at my reel then and there on my PSP or view my DVD was impressed and most game companies said I would be considered for lead animator or Technical positions. High Voltage's Art Director asked me for a spontaneous interview.
After giving out most of the 20 reels I brought with me that day I went out to the main expo floor and visited the film post houses I could find. First on the list was ILM since they are in the bay area. They moved into their new complex in the SF Presidio together with the other Lucas companies: Lucasfilm and Lucas Arts. That night I already had a voice mail message asking me to stop by the next day for an interview with ILM for a Creature TD (Technical Director) position. My first ILM interview, yay.
I love Siggraph because every expo night their are numerous infustry parties. Where you drink and eat for free, while shmoozing with friends and aquaintances from the industry. You meet long lost co-workers, past bosses and supervisors, recruiters, clients, 3rd party vendors and even future supervisors and colleagues. You meet all of those and party together, hopefully making friends in the process.
So the first party of this year's convention that I went to was the Vicon party. They are makers of motion capture hardware and software. I ran a mocap studio at my first job, back at Midway Games West - RIP. Vicon baught House of Moves, a top notch mocap studio and makers of Diva, not too long ago, and relocted it's staff from the UK to LA to share a complex together. You can read about the merger here, and see a pic of Hale's stunt double working on Catwoman, my second film credit. The good news this year is that Vicon is going to merge Diva in with their iQ software and create the best mocap software to date. The party was fun. Got to show my reel to 3 people who all had a say in hiring, each from a different division of THQ. Also got to hang out with Dman, the mocap supervisor at Imageworks, also my ex-boss from Polar Express. He's always fun.
Siggraph day 2:
Hit the job fair again, unloaded reels. ILM interview was a little scary but I handled myself well. Scary because I was interviewed by 6 people at once. Later I talked to a girl from Laika who liked my reel and told me I have to talk to the lead TD, Mike C. He really like what he saw and admited that my hair cloth experience is money in the bank. He would love to have me on his team, though they wouldn't be ready to hire me until Sep or Oct.
Towards the end of the day I found the Syflex booth, the makers of the cloth plugin I used on Superman Returns. I sweet talked my way into getting a free personal liscense to use at home. It also turned out that one of their emplyees is an Israeli lady who works from home on their marketing. She was the first VFX female professional I have ever met.
As the expo floor was closing I got ready to hit up that night's parties with Dave F. a friend from ESC and his buddy Mat, founder of Entity FX. First on the list of like 5 parties was the ILM mixer. Which I left early to see a free screeing of Monster House 3D with tix Dman gave me. After the movie I headed for the Framestore party, a London VFX house I applied at. It wasn't so much as a party but another mixer in the bar's basement lounge. There I met a trio of ILM big wigs, one of which was the my FVX Supervisor on Catwoman. He remembered my work fondly and told me to shoot him an email when I get back. Also there were several ex-ESC folks. From their our group which by now grew to about 6 heads, headed to the Cafe FX party. This party was packed. There were half naked go-go girls dancing on the bar. Their show was almost canceled becuase guys were tipping them as if they were strippers. Here I met a cute EA games recruiter who took my reel and continued to hold it for the rest of the night. This time I stayed out late and had to take a 40$ cab ride back home.
Siggraph day 3:
By now I only had about 10 reels left but not much places where I haven't applied yet. I gave out 5 I think, and then strolled through the Emerging Technologies exhibit. Where cool new technologies that are just being developed are showcased. Me and Dman played table tennis with only a table and 2 cell phones. The ball was only visible to us on the phone screens, and it tracked the table using a pattern taped to it and it's built in camera.
Oh yeah that morning I got a message from the Blizzard recruiter inviting me to a drinks and appetizers get-together with the Blizzard cinematic team. Getting that message was the begining of my ascent to cloud 9. Blizzard is THE game company, my dream job comoany. They made the Diablo, Starcraft and Warcraft games, and most recently World of Warcraft - the ONLY game I have been playing since almost a year ago. Ever since picking up Diablo 1, 10 years ago, I have wanted to work for them.
For the rest of the afternoon I hung out at the Snowball booth and chatted in Hebrew with the Snowball folks. This is the first Israeli VFX house I ever saw at Siggraph. After the Expo ended me and their pipeline TD went to find a place to eat and sit down. We chatted for hours. Until it was time to make my way to meet the Blizzard folks.
At the Ruby Room in the Onyx hotel I met about 10 of the Blizzard cinematic department. Aparently they are ramping up to double the dept size from 45 to 85 heads. I was one of the more experienced perspective employees they invited that night. I chatted with most of them, especially the Technical Lead, the Animation Lead, the Director and the Producer. We drank and laughed, talked about the work, WoW and kids. At one point hours after I got there, while I was chatting with the Director of cinematics, the producer came to us and asked to borrow me for a minute. He took me accross the room to the recruiter and said, pointing at me, "Fast track this guy!". And then, "ok, you're done you can go back to your conversation." Later he even said "Welcome to Blizzard" and gave me a hug. After meeting all these great guys I wanted to work with them more then ever. I am not just going to get a sweet dream job, but friends for life, which is priceless. The time was already midnight and my last T tram was leaving in 30 minutes when the Director says "You know you're coming to a strip club with us now, right?" I said no at first, because of the tram thing. But then I thought, wtf?! How often will I get the chance to go to a strip club with all the Blizzard cinematic leads in Boston?! Needless to say that since that day I am both anxious and extatic about working there. Anxious because it's not final, and I sooo want to work there. Extatic because this would be a dream come true.
Labels: work
posted by Za1 at 1:14 AM
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