Every now and again one has to do something really unlikely and terribly exhilarating. In my case, while talking over the fact that my goals seem to need a bit of renewing I came to the half-buried dream that it would be amazing to work for Pixar Animation in the States.
This had roared into focus again while looking at the ‘extras’ on my Cars dvd recently; it’s just so obvious that whoever works on those storyboards or in the character design department – they have such a whale of a good time… the laughs that team must have had, just coming up with ‘Mater’… there is such ebullience there that they churned out a few extra animations apparently just for the sheer joy of it.
Also the extra little touches are amazing, making the female lead a sexy little blue Porsche – she’s a lawyer, so there’s a pun on Portia the lawyer from The Merchant of Venice. And so it goes on… anyway I stopped wishing and yearning and decided to do something. Haven’t you found…everything begins with a phonecall or (now) with a Google.
So – went to visit Pixar’s website and looked at their career listings and sure’nuff (sorry been watching Cars way too often) there was a position available for a story artist. So uploaded all the necessary gumph online and have spent today compiling the hard copy version of my animation-related life. This comprises the doings during a brilliant 2D course at CityVarsity (Thanks again Archie!) and a 9 year repeated stab at 3D Max which never really happened because my heart wasn’t really in it but that took years and a short course in 3DS MAX9 to realise. Knowing what’s involved though, is hugely useful in the job I’m gunning for.
As a story artist, one spends time drawing and that’s what I’ve done for twenty-five years professionally and as an enthusiastic amateur since I was five, drawing on my mom’s dress pattern scraps. Even the margins of newspapers didn’t escape the presence of staring portraits with eyes like wagon wheels, not a single spoke missing.
So – who knows. Working with the Pixar team may come about and it may not. But just reaching out for something so unlikely, so far away, so apparently unattainable is hugely exciting. It’s put an extra bounce to my every ounce, so that a friend commented last night on how glowy I was looking.
Surely nothing is sadder than giving up before you’ve even tried?
Meanwhile other work has come in, unlike anything else I’ve ever done.. I’ll tell you all about it when I start it, in a few days I hope. Perhaps I can even post a pic or two here, once the mysteries of WordPress have been conquered.
