There's so much going over here that it's hard to consume it all. It's kinda overwhelming. Early Wednesday morning we took a cab out to Sea World and watched an awesome show with the killer whale Shamu. Then we spent the day walking around the park looking at all the animals. It was pretty cool. In the afternoon there was a ReelFX/Animation Mentor Reception where a bunch of AM students and industry professional got together to chat and have fun. I got the chance to thank Bobby, Shawn and Carlos personally for starting the school and totally changing sooo many peoples life, including mine. I also met my Class 2 mentor Robert Russ and had a really nice chat with him. The rest of the evening we hung out with some awesome AM'ers and had a really great time.
Thursday we went to the convention center to catch a talk by my class 3 mentor, Michelle Meeker and she recognized me right away, which was really cool. She was really busy and everybody wanted to talk to her but I was able to have a small chat with her before she started her talk. She talked about the making of her short "When I grow up" and it was really inspiring to see how she'd done it. It made me wanna make another short :) After the talk we left San Diego, had a nice stop at La Jolla, and went back to LA and relaxed at our hotel for the rest of the evening.
On Friday we had an appointment with Elaine's Class 5 mentor, Dean Wellins at Disney Feature Animation. Kari, Elaine, another of Deans students, Ryan and me headed out to Burbank, superexcited to get a tour at the historic ground where it all started more than 80 years ago (not exactly the same building tho, but still). Dean is co-directing Rapunzel with Glen Keane and guess what, we met him too. Yep! Shaking hand with one of the greatest animators on the planet was totally awesome! After lunch, Dean showed us around the studio and walking around there, watching all the amazing concept art from upcoming Disney movies, was totally mindblowing and super inspiring. It was really amazing of Dean to take the time off to spend time with us. What a fantastic guy!
We spent the rest of the day at Disneyland. It was okay, but way too many people and too long waiting times to get a superfun experience out of it. But it was a nice ending to a fantastic going-to-remember-for-the-rest-of-my-life-day :)
We had a quick flight from SF to LA on Saturday, met with Elaine in LA and drove down to San Diego, way too early Sunday morning to catch a Siggraph course about how they dealt with the food in Ratatouille. It's amazing how much detail they've put into that movie.
Sunday night, we met with a bunch of awesome AM'ers and had a very nice dinner with drinks after. It's amazing how fast you get along with fellow animators without even knowing them in advance. All we share is the passion for animation and the AM experience, but thats totally enough to get the connection immediately. Fantastic! Everything is set for an awesome week in San Diego.
Today, Monday, is the big day: Animation Mentor Graduation Day! A little bit nervous, but mostly excited. There's gonna be a big ceremony at the Convention Center followed by a party with all the graduates and their guests. They've also invited recruiters and industry professionals. It's going to be great!
For our last day in LA, we decided to go to Century City. Earlier we've taken a cab everywhere we went, but this time, we wanted to try out the LA public transportation. We was going to take a bus! I gotta admit, I never take a bus, not in Norway and certainly not in LA. But as I remember it as a kid, it worked like this: enter the bus, tell the driver where you are going, pay what he ask for and sit down til the destination is reached. Right? Nhahaa. Not quite how it works.
The bus arrived, we went on. At first the driver didn't even looked at us, so I said "Century City..?". He said "yeah?", still not looking. After a very awkward pause, he added "1.50". I held the money up. Then the guy looked at me with a very strange, but kinda cool facial expression: "dude, what are you trying to do??" and I was like "well...I'm trying to pay you..." Suddenly I guess the driver realized that he had to deal with stupid foreigners on a LA bus for the first time in their life's, so he showed us that we had to put the money into a money automate thingy (which of course spitted out the paper money three times, just to make the situation even more painful than it already was). We finally sat down and believe me, payed very very close attention to how the people that got on the bus did it.
We had a great time in Century City and when we were going back home, we went onto the bus, put the money (which this time were coins) onto the automate, nodded kindly to the driver, he nodded back and we sat down. We knew how to do this by now - we're professional LA bus passengers :)
On Thursday we went on the public studio tour at Sony Pictures, which is just a block away from our hotel in Culver City. It was kinda cool to check out the sound stage where one of my favorite movies, the Wizard of Oz, was shot. We also went to see Ratatouille. It was outstanding! Beautiful animation!
On Friday, we went out to Universal Studios and spent the whole day having fun in the theme park. We also took the public Universal Studio Tour which was okay.
We paid a bunch of extra money for a "First in Line"-pass and it was totally worth it. We never had to wait any longer than max 5 min for any ride :) and we also got reserved seats at all the shows. "First in Line" rocks!
After a pretty intensive first day, we were going to take it bit easier the second day. Elaine picked us up around lunch time and we drove out to Santa Monica and had lunch at a very nice restaurant.
After lunch we walked along the beach and out to Santa Monica Pier. We hung out there for a while and just relaxed. Next we headed for Beverly Hills and a nice walk on Rodeo Drive.
Elaine had arranged a wedding present for Kari and me this evening: Concert at Hollywood Bowl! We picked up a picnic-basket at a restaurant, all pre-ordered and set, took a shuttle up to the bowl where the concert was - "Jazz at the Movies"! It was a fantastic experience!
After almost 24 hours of traveling (lots of waiting for transferring flights in Amsterdam and Minneapolis), we got a short, but well needed, night sleep at our hotel in Culver City. A very nice hotel, haunted, but cool :)
After a quick breakfast and a couple of coffees, Elaine (a very good friend since AM class 1) picket us up and we headed out to Glendale and Dreamworks Feature Animation! We had an appointment with my class 4 mentor, Sean Sexton and he offered to give us a tour at the studio. Elaine's mentor, Morgan Kelly, was also joining us.
First we had a super Dreamworks-lunch (means there was A LOT of food) with Sean and Morgan. After lunch they showed us around the studio. It was really cool to see all they stuff they are working on. Super-inspiring!! Seems like an awesome place to work. They even have their own game room. Fantastic!
Next we went up to Griffith Park where we got a great view over LA. We had to walk up though. We were told it was suppose to be a 20 min. walk. I think we spent an hour walking up...at least it felt like that :)
After spending some time at the observatory at the top, we headed down to Hollywood Blvd and Walk of Fame.
We ended the evening with a very nice dinner at Palm Thai restaurant in Hollywood with a group of other students from Animation Mentor.
Elaine, which is totally awesome, spending all the day with us and showing us around, dropped us off at our hotel at around 11. We were exhausted after a really long, but supercool and exciting first day in LA :)
Sooo...tomorrow night we're leaving for our honeymoon, the Animation Mentor Graduation Ceremony and Siggraph! We're going to America for three weeks. It's gonna be crazy awesome and I'm superexcited! It will be my first time in the US ever and through 18 months at Animation Mentor I've met some really fantastic people that I'm looking forward to meet in person.
We're flying out from Torp (Sandefjord Airport, Norway) to Amsterdam and from there to Minneapolis and then straight to LA. Gonna stay in LA for about a week, then head up north to San Francisco and after a week in the bay area, down south again for San Diego, Siggraph and Animation Mentor Graduation.
This is going to be so coooool!!
On Friday we had an appointment with Elaine's Class 5 mentor, Dean Wellins at Disney Feature Animation. Kari, Elaine, another of Deans students, Ryan and me headed out to Burbank, superexcited to get a tour at the historic ground where it all started more than 80 years ago (not exactly the same building tho, but still). Dean is co-directing Rapunzel with Glen Keane and guess what, we met him too. Yep! Shaking hand with one of the greatest animators on the planet was totally awesome! After lunch, Dean showed us around the studio and walking around there, watching all the amazing concept art from upcoming Disney movies, was totally mindblowing and super inspiring. It was really amazing of Dean to take the time off to spend time with us. What a fantastic guy!
