A recent email update that I sent out - thought I would share with the rest of you:
Hello Everyone!
Its been a long time since I sent out an update and I've had a lot of requests from people lately, so I thought I'd send a little something out to let you all know what I've been up to.
I guess I'll begin from this last semester. This last semester I finished my second year of grad school and I am now moving on to my third and final year of school. During my second year I had the opportunity to create even more great work to add to my portfolio and was even involved in producing my own animation installation in the Zemeckis Media Labs multiple projector lab space.
All of my projects and shows went well during the year and now I have the task of updating my portfolio with them, which I'm trying to get to. During my upcoming final year I will be working on producing and finishing my final thesis film and this film has to be finished by May of next year. As of now I have a general idea of what I'm going to be doing for my film, which is mainly in the form of the visual structure, however I'm working out the story structure right now and trying to get a jump on the style frames for the overall look of the film. As of right now I'd like it to consist mainly of 2.5 D elements composited with some 3D elements and will be in the form of a more motion graphics film rather then a 3D narrative. We only have the year to complete it and if after that it isn't finished we will be done and will not be allowed to continue work on it (many of our previous classmates were allotted more time to finish, but they have stopped that starting with our class) so I have to work really hard to get it finished by the end of the year. Wish me luck!
As far as big events happening lately my most recent happening was my vacation to Hawaii! This was my first real vacation ever! Hawaii was AmAzInG and I absolutely want to go back again. I ended up going on a group trip with a few friends and we all rented a condo together and stayed on the big island of Hawaii. While there I got to go to the beaches, snorkel, hike, swim with sea turtles, see the volcano and much, much more. While there I also got to visit some of my family who live on the island and who I haven't seen in many years so that was a great experience as well. My friends and I all had a great time and I hope to make it out again soon, hopefully next time to a different island.
For the rest of my summer I've basically been busy working up at Dreamworks Animation again full time as their digital training intern. My position is much the same as last summer when I was there, but this time I've got a lot more responsibility and our department has grown quite a bit. We now have 3 major films in production with the 4th ramping up. Our Kung Fu Panda film did quite well in the box office when it was released at the beginning of June and I recommend it to all to see! I'll be working at Dreamworks until the end of August and then I hope to apply for a full time position when I graduate and see if I can get hired on in one of their artistic positions. I'm working on getting my portfolio together and prepped and I'll have to include my thesis too as I get more work done on it, so I still have a long road ahead.
Other then work this summer I've been busy going to the beach on the weekends with friends and visiting my parents. For those of you who are interested in an update on my parents, they are both retired now and traveling the country in a BIG RV. They sold our old farm in Orion about a year or so ago and have been traveling around from place to place, mostly in the southwest and western sections of the US.
They ended up getting a RV hosting job at the end of May up at the Malibu RV park, which is unbelieveable and amazing, so now they work during the day or night helping set up appointments and run the RV park during the week and on the weekends they usually have a little time off so I've been able to go up and visit mom and dad almost every weekend, which has been great. They will be stationed there til at least october, and if they want they can renew their contract and stay there for longer, which they may or may not do. If they do they might be around then until I graduate which would be great, but they may have the itch to get back out on the road again, so we'll see in time what they decide to do.
Well thats about it for me. I just wanted to send out a little update on how things are going and I hope you enjoyed it. I hope that all is well with you and as always, I love to hear updates from all of you whenever you get a chance to send one out. Have a great summer and keep in touch,
~Renae
