IDM Workshops
Earl Cabuhat
Bio: Earl Cabuhat is a Canadian nation graphic design who works for the CBC producing motion graphics for the news. He is currently aspiring to learn 2D animation.
Question:
1. What project was the most difficult for you to complete and why?
2. Did you have a place of employment in mind when you were trying to get into the creative industry if so what was it?
3. Do you have any dream projects that you'd like to complete in the future?
Reflection: This workshop was enlightening, it taught us about how to use our time well and showed us what it's worth. It's nice to have somebody which can reassure us that it's alright to not know what we will be doing in the future. I think that this is something which is not said enough, since there are many people that believe by the time they are done high school they should know what career path they should be going done already. Also learning about how these news station get their motion graphics for the day was pretty interesting. Earl's presentation, to me, was extremely helpful in reassuring the fact that there is still plenty of time to choose a career path and that there is no need to worry too much about it just yet.
Pictures:
Earl Cabuhat's Work: https://www.behance.net/ecabs
Phyllis Laing
Bio: Phyillis Laing is the one of the founder of Buffalo Gal Pictures and is the current CEO of the company. Today it is one of the largest independent film and movie studios in Canada.
Question:
1. What do you look for in a movie or TV when it is being pitch to you in order to consider making it?
2. As a business owner what are things that you should never do if you want to keep you company going under?
3. Since you used Blender to make Ozzy, do you believe that Blender may become a more accepted 3D software for making movies and TV shows in the future?
Reflections: It was nice to hear about Phyllis' story about how she manage to create her company and how it's succeeded till today. Out of all the thing that she spoke of though I found the most interesting to be about the Buffalo Gal movie Ozzy specifically because they used Blender to make it. I feel that this is big step in the right direction for the future use of Blender in the creative industry as it is currently looked at as being inferior to other 3D modeling software such as Maya even though it is capable of doing the same thing at pretty much the same quality and its open source.
Pictures: (Need to find some)
Phyllis Laing's work: nm0481923
Doug Morrow
Bio: Doug Morrow is a makeup and special effects artist who was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He has worked on many movies in his over 20 years of working in his field, some of these movies are Godzilla(2014), Cult of Chucky, The Haunting in Connecticut and more.
Questions:
1. When creating the makeup for a movie or TV show how do you plan out how you want the makeup to look?
2. Do you think that it is currently a good choice to go into the makeup or special effect industry?
3. How different of an experience is it to go from just working as a regular artist on set to being the lead artist?
Reflections: Doug's workshop was honestly one of the best we have had here at Sisler so far. He showed us some basics makeup stuff about making wounds and we all got to create our own fake wounds by using the materials he brought for the workshop. Everyones work turned out surprisingly well considering most of us were doing this for the first time ever. Doug was very encouraging to everyone and gave people tips on how they could make some simple improvements to their makeup. It would be great of we could have him come back in the future and continue teaching us more about movie makeup.
Pictures:
Doug Morrow's work: nm0607486
Kim Burn
Bio: Kim Burns is a concept artist whom use to work in real estate but left that career to pursue her love of drawing resulting in her becoming a concept artist. She is currently employed at Vancouver Film School.
Questions:
1: How long have you been working as a concept artist?
2: How many design concepts do you think you go through when working on a project?
3: What inspired you to pursue concept art?
Reflection: This workshop was very informative of how much attention to detail there is when creating concept art. The most impressive one to me was the picture of the Hogwarts model they created for the movies in order to keep track of what the building looked like. Kim showed off the project she had recently been working on about a young girl who is at first struggling to play the piano but later overcomes her obstacle and does an entire show where she plays the piano. There were also concepts for side character which she had created for her story as well.
Pictures:
Hesham Hammoud
Bio: Hesham, a Lebanese-Canadian, was born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and is the youngest of 5 siblings. As a child, his favourite past time was watching movies which would later develop his interest in the film industry. After attending Hillcrest High School, Hesham attended Carleton University, where he received an Honours Degree in Information Technology – Interactive Multimedia and Design. In 2011, to further pursue his love for film, Hesham moved to Vancouver, British Columbia to attend the Vancouver Film School for 3D Animation & Visual Effects. Throughout that time, he became very familiar with the VFX industry but also discovered his passion for acting.
Questions:
1. Why did you become an actor but also learn how to do visual effects?
2. Did you struggle to figure out what you wanted to do for a career?
3. Whats your favourite song by 2pac?
Reflection: During this workshop Hesham spoke about how he went from working on visual effects to occasionally doing acting along side that and in a few months he will begin to fully pursue his passion for acting. Hesham gave us excellent examples of how to work your way up in a company, he started by managing the rendering at the company he currently works at, Zoic Studios. What allowed him to work his way up in the company was that he found a way to make himself valuable by doing thing that other people wouldn't like looking for more efficient ways to render out scene and calling the head of IT to come and help when something went wrong. By doing these thing he managed to build a friendly relationship with the people in higher positions in the company. Today he is still employed at Zoic and works as the manager for render wrangling at the company.
Pictures: (Need to find some)
Hesham Hammoud's work: http://www.heshamhammoud.com/demoreel/
Melissa Best
Bio: Melissa Best is a VFX instructor at Vancouver Film school who has been teaching for twelve plus years. she teaches compositing for TV and film, how to establish a pipeline, project management and more.
Questions:
1. On average how many students are unable to complete the programs at VFS because they believe they're to difficult.
2. At what point in a students year at VFS do they struggle the most?
3. What was the first project you ever worked on?
Reflection: During this workshop Melissa spoke about her pathway into VFX and we even got to watch the project of one of her students Kara who is also a former sisler student. We got to see the process of how an instructor at Vancouver Film School actually assess' a students work. Later on Best taught us some basic stuff on how to use Nuke for an hour. We edited a short video to only display colour around the actor which was interesting to say the least. While it did appreciate Melissa coming out to do the work shop I felt like I didn't really enjoy it as much I possibly could have due to the subject matter being something I'm not very interested in.
Pictures:
Melissa Best's work: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/melissabest
Lawrence Levy
Bio: Lawrence Levy was born in London, England, and moved to the United States as a teenager. In 1994 he received a call from Steve Jobs asking if he would like a to handle business at Pixar, Lawrence accepted this offer and worked at Pixar from 1994 to 2006. During his time working there he set Pixar on track to becoming one of the largest animation companies in the world. He released a book in 2016 titled, To Pixar and Beyond: My Unlikely Journey With Steve Jobs To Make Entertainment History. He is currently focused on teaching meditation and going around doing public speeches.
Questions:
1. What did it take to convince you, when someone was pitching a movie idea, that the movie would be worth the risk making?
2. What was it that made Pixar appear special to you when you decided to join?
3. Did you ever expect Pixar to become what it is today?
Reflection: During this workshop Lawrence Levy spoke about how he ended working at Pixar and with Steve Jobs. Levy chose to go and work with this small graphics company called Pixar which was barely staying afloat.
Pictures:
