30th June 2009

Art Institute Grads Strut Their Stuff

Art Institute of VancouverBurnaby – We attended the AI Grad Presentation last Friday night, and once again we were reminded first hand just how many talented young people are ready for careers in game design, animation, audio design, film and VFX. We spent so much time talking to students and viewing projects that we weren’t able to make it around to everyone – which brings to the forefront the one challenge many of the students said they had problems with during their tenure at AI  – time management. This seems to be a problem wherever we go – perhaps there needs to be a study done about the phenomena and why so many people have difficulty with the issue.

Pritika Prasad

Pritika Prasad

We were pleased to meet the team behind TikiWiki, the 2009 PopVox Award winner for Best Student Project. The tribal sports game was developed on the Unreal Engine and uses team play to collect stone tablets and score points.

All of the students present were well spoken about their projects, and quick to acknowledge any assistance they received from others, as well as to recognize members of their teams on class projects. It was also promising to see so many talented female students in this graduating class, in particular Environment and Prop Modeler Pritika Prasad (right), whose work is very impressive and very professional.

Every student had a demo reel to show, as well as a professional package to hand out, which included resumes, business card, portfolio URL and a copy of their reel. Instructor Jason Lee Elliott did a very good job of preparing these students for the presentations, although a few need to work on their conversational skills, in particular showing confidence in their talent and directing their focus at the person talking with them about their projects and the type of work they are looking for. While all of the students show talent which will only grow with experience, here are a few whose work really stood out:

Jevon Tsen – VFX Artist

Em Guiry – Character Animator

Isabella Cheng – 3D Animator

Jacob Joice – 3D Animator

Chenxi Zhou – 3D Generalist

Haley Oatway – 2D and 3D Artist

Randy Ui – VFX Artist

Jeff Bartzis – Model Texture Artist

Congratulations to all of the students in this graduating class, and we wish you the best of luck as you embark on your creative futures.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 10:28 am and is filed under Careers, Education, Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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