sometimes interesting

I hit a huge milestone in my career last month, one that I don't think I'll ever forget: I got my first (real) feature film credit. Why am I prefacing it with (real)? Well, technically I have an intern credit in  Spies In Disguise , Blue Sky's last film to release before it was closed. That one was definitely cool, and it was really fun to go see the film in theaters with friends while in college and have them get excited to see my name. However, I actually didn't work on that film - Blue Sky simply gives their interns a credit on whatever film comes out next after their internship. I spent that summer working on  Nimona , which as you may already know, was re-done by DNEG after Blue Sky's closure. They gave credits to all the full-time Blue Sky employees on the film, so I missed out on that. So, when  Elemental  came out in theaters on June 16th, 2023 - that was my true "real" first film credit, in the sense that I actually worked on the film! It felt ext...

  Pictured: Me on Pixar's campus in November 2020, aka before the pandemic          When I heard I would be flown out to San Francisco for a final round of interviews at Facebook, I immediately thought -- maybe I can finally visit Pixar while I'm there! For context, most of my college friends had been able to see the campus in previous years, so I felt a little left out. Of course, I also generally wanted to see the campus for myself, catch up with some good friends, and get some goodies from the merch store! So, after my interviews wrapped up, I took a ~40 minute Uber ride to Emeryville. When I was there, I talked to a recruiter a little bit about future openings, as at the time I was set to graduate soon. While I flew back to Texas, I felt like there wasn't much chance I'd be working at Pixar anytime soon, but I was glad I finally got a tour of the campus and hung out with my friends.     Little did I know! Just two months later, I'd be offered ...

A couple of days ago, I wrapped up my first internship at a feature animation studio, and I learned a ridiculous amount. Before too much time passes, I want to try to write down as much as I can for future reference, and for anyone else interested. - Don't be afraid to ask questions. As an intern, it's not expected that you'll know everything. In fact, it's expected that you'll have questions and that's totally okay. The first couple of weeks of my internship, I struggled to find the right amount of time to spend wrestling with an issue before asking a coworker. The more experienced I got through the summer, the better and more comfortable I became with asking people for help - only after attempting several solutions myself as well as having put in a good amount of research online. At that point, it's a waste of time for both you and the studio to keep struggling. - Get to know your colleagues. There were so many amazing people at Blue Sky, and on the last d...

Back when I was a freshman in college, I stumbled upon a LinkedIn profile, which led me to a blog, which led me to  this post , which this one here is paying homage to. When I first read Danny's blogs, I didn't know much about the animation industry, or anything at all. It was so eye-opening and wondrous for me to experience his experiences vicariously, and it inspired me a thousand times more than I already was to work as hard as I can to get in. I emailed him promptly afterwards with a plethora of naive questions, to which he kindly replied. We emailed back and forth every now and then for the past couple years, and now here I am, preparing for my first day at a studio tomorrow (the one he's at, no less), and I felt like it would be fitting to write this post about how I feel right now. If you read my blog post from when I first got offered this internship, you know that I've wanted to work in animation for several years now. I'm a fanboy of the industry; I love a...

I recently got an offer to intern as a technical director at Blue Sky Studios this summer, and I accepted. Working at an animation studio has been my main goal for four years now, and to finally take such a huge step in that direction is an unbelievable feeling. I can only hope this will eventually lead to a full time job in the industry, but for now I'm happy to have reached this milestone. Along the way I had so many people help me and I'm writing this to describe my journey - how I got into this position, and the things I thought helped me the most. Minor disclaimer: this is from the perspective of someone on the technical side of animation - I'm a computer science major. Some of this may still apply to the artist side but definitely not entirely. Let's start all the way back. When I was in eighth grade, getting ready to start high school, they told us we'd get the chance to take courses centered around certain career paths. We all got a brochure that listed th...