Winter has begun!

Hi y'all got back from Texas, it was a blast, thanks Jim and Becky for having us over. Jimmy, you are the Guitar Hero! The CARC of the Guitars and the bowling alley! Becky was throwin down some mean licks too, I was impressed she even beat Jimmy on medium once.That was really fun!

So I woke up this morning and look what I found! SNOW! I dug under my bed for my skis and took a lap around the apartment and downhilled the sidewalk nearby and through the trees! People were cheering as they drove by! I'm ready for the ski season to start. This year's Warren Miller, best one in years, got me really pumped and I can't wait to go.

Some more GOOD NEWS!
I've been working pretty hard here on our films and trying to get demo reels together to send out. Unexpectedly The Head of Effects and Recruiting atDreamworks came out this week looking to hire. I made sure to get an interview spot this time. I got bumped from Pixar's due to not knowing about the signups. Pixar told me to send my reel out anyways and they would take a look at it so that's good. But the Dreamworks interview went really well. They were actually out here looking for "effects animators" (smoke,fire, water, magic,explosions, etc...) which I'm not, but I decided to interview anyway.






I told them I do textures but they agreed to take a look at my reel for the heck of it. Maybe I had something. I showed them my reel and they had me explain what i did. They were suprised, and they started asking me all kinds of questions about how I did my textures, my work process, how I approached each problem and whether i painted, or used the procedural capabilities of the software. I told them i used both, mostly procedural, and that I even hard coded a few of them. They were excited by that. They told me if i would have said i just painted the textures that they would have said thanks but no thanks, good luck elsewhere, but since I went further and actually used the more technical aspects of the software while still having a good artistic eye that they were interested. They gave me their cards and numbers and said we're taking your reel back to our texture and surfacing guys and you'll be hearing back from us in the next few weeks and if anyone esle was giving me offers to get a hold of them quickly.

...so i think it went well. :) I may be working on the next shrek, who knows. I've been wary about Dreamworks in the past but lately they've been pretty good. I've liked the shrek movies. Over the Hedge and Madagascar we're good. I thought Bee movie would be awful but I actually enjoyed it, I even learned something about bees. And Kung Fu Panda is going to be awesome! So I think it could be a really good thing.

My first choice would be Pixar or maybe Sony but like we say beggars can't be choosers especially when we really have no business even having these interviews and studios coming out here. We're just a bunch of amateur undergraduates at a non-art school out in the desert. Nobody hires out of college. There is no entrance into this field. These studios have policies of not hiring from colleges. You have to have at least 3 years production experience to be considered. But the studios are coming and saying we don't usually do this, with ANYONE, but we want your students. It's really amazing. I just heard my roomate Jared got signed on to a 1 year apprenticeship at pixar. We've never had anyone get longer than a 3-6 month internship. In the apprenticeship, your pretty much hired for good and they train you to become one of lead people, in his case a lead character rigger, one of the hardest jobs. So it's getting pretty exciting around here!



I updated my online portfolio up at www.DougRigbyArt.blogspot.com There's some new 3d renders and photography in there as well. Stuff from our "Kites" Project, I got to do the textures for one of the main characters, the grandpa in the story, It's my first real character texture and im pretty excited about that. There's also some work from EA, and some cool photography from my Geology class and random Photo trips. So have a look when you have some time. Later!

Rock Canyon

Cascade Springs

Zermott Grotto

Alta Hike

Littlest Petshop Turtle

Simpsons wall behind Kwike Mart



Grandpa Hand

Wedding Pictures Up!

Here are some before and after the wedding shennaningans, with a few videos as well! if you want a full res copy send me an email or let me know, enjoy!

Congratulations Mark and Amanda!

Slideshow View (best)

Mark's Wedding Photos

Mark's Wedding Movies

Beach Pictures Run For Your Lives!

Beach pictures are up! Here they are in four easy installments of 29.99, while supplies last!

Part 1Part 2

Part 3Part 4

Two other things I found really cool,
Make your own Simpsons Character



And Aerogel, also known as Frozen smoke, this stuff is magic and has a lot of really cool potential uses

When Work and Play are One!

So far things are going great at EA. I never knew how complicated it was to make a game, even after all the stuff we do to make our animations, this is a 100 times more in depth. It takes an army of engineers, programmers, artists and designers to make these things work. It's a little intimidating (i.e. if I turn in a bad file it could potentially break the game and throw a giant monkey wrench in production virtually grinding all work to a halt at EA studios around the world! the studio in Spain broke it recently and we couldn't do anything for a full day) but I'm starting to get the hang of things. We have a great team and everyone helps me out and shows me how to do things right. We play basketball at lunch break. They go golfing once a week too. Right now they have me working on the new Simpsons game! It looks amazing. It's almost exactly like the show. All the Simpsons characters are there, every corner of springfield is mapped out and playable. I walked into the Quik-E Mart the other day, said hi to Apu and then had a squishy, it was surreal. They have me building models and scenery around springfield and doing textures. I made a few things for Mayor Quimby's office and for principal Skinner. Next week were going to to work on that scientist guy's house, the one with the glasses and the gadgets and the "FROIN-LAVEN!!" It's a blast. Here's a just released demo of what it will look like, check it out!

And for all this hard "work/fun" i decided to treat myself to a new camera!
I've been wanting to get one for along time and after doing a lot of research I found just the right one for me.



I took it out on a photo hunt to a place I found on Google Earth. I love this camera. Check out the photos:

Joining The Revolution

Hi everybody,
You convinced me! After seeing all the fun you guys are having on these blogs I decided to sit down and make one myself. I've been meaning to make one for the longest time but just couldn't find the time. So here it is, it's a start at least, you'll have to give me some tips on how to work this thing, like how do I link to your blogs and everything so I can see your sites all at once in that side bar??
Googles great, they got all kinds of useful gadgets and applications. Ive been wondering how to get all my pictures up without having to do it one by one, and turns out google has a great album application called Picassa that just uploads all your stuff in one shot. Pretty cool. I'll have to brush up on my html and see what else I can do with these blogs.

These blogs seem to be a great way of keeping in touch with each other, and I know I can improve that area :) . I'll keep you posted on what I'm doing here in Provo and keep up the good job on your blogs, I love the pictures! Congratulations to all, I can't believe how many babies there are! I can't believe all the former babies who are now responsible older bwuddas and sistas! And then there's Moken! and Mokette!!!and Mom and Dad of Arabia all the while are crossing the desert on camels! Craziness! Thanks for the goodtimes!

-Doug

This Just In!

[for the short version read the last paragraph :) ]

Over the past couple months I've been slaving away like crazy trying get films done, put demo reels together and land jobs, occasionally catching glimpses of the sun and a few hours sleep... but it's all about to pay off. Part of this has to do with a small part time job I got on campus with the help of some friends who work there. I get to do 3d animation for The center for Instructional Design. They make educational software and animations for schools and professors at BYU and around the country. Anyway this was great opportunity for me to get some actual job experience in my field, and in general as this was my first job ever! With this job I'm able to put something other than landscaping over the summer and two year volunteer service in Argentina on my resume when the internships came around:)

and they did... It's the end of the semester now and everyone's sending out their demo reels and trying to land jobs at the big studios, and we're talking some really good people, I'm competing with Seniors and Super Seniors, not to mention the Juniors in my class and a few phenomenal sophomores. I tried with Pixar (Cars) but couldn't get an interview spot. Dreamworks (Shrek) only wanted one of our guys but Pixar made him a better offer. Digital Domain (iRobot, Titanic) took one guy. Sony Blue Sky (Ice Age, Happy Feet) took another. My roommate got picked up by EA Los Angeles (video games). I was pretty much resigning myself to staying on campus all summer working on projects when about two weeks ago I got a call....and then another!! The first was a video game company called Avalanche that just got bought by Disney to make all their movie related games. They invited me down to their studio in Salt Lake. It was pretty cool to see an actual game studio. I got to talk to their texture artists, see the software they use and some of their new projects their working on. They seemed pretty cool, but I haven't heard back from them. It was still pretty neat just to get a second look and see their studio though.

I had another chance though. My old roommate and good friend Mark Christensen ( you may have saw him during April conference, President Monson spoke about his family) He wrote me a letter urgently telling me to send my demo reel. He works at EA Games and he put in the good word for me, but they needed a demo reel quick because they we're about to fill up all the internship positions. EA (Electronic Arts) is the largest video game publisher in the world. It's been my dream to work at a video game company since I was 4 and breaking ricks commodore 64 trying to play skate or die and bard's tale, watching Jim and Chris beat Mario brothers and doing the turtle trick when the Nintendo first came out, Dave bringing home random video games throughout the year, playing mike round after round of Sega golf and fifa soccer, Susie beating me at Rad Racer (and nothing else;) and Mark always there to try out new games with me. This was my break! I frantically put together all my latest stuff and sent it off.

I received no word for several weeks. Then out of the blue I got an email from the head recruiter at EA. He was impressed and wanted to set up a phone interview with the Heads of their Salt Lake City branch! It went pretty well and last Friday they called back to let me they we're really excited and that wanted to know if I would accept an internship offer!!! I did a jig and then told them no...... hahaha yeah right!! I couldn't believe it! They said they really liked my reel and heard lots good things about me, I guess they even talked to my professors who told them how I wasn't really even in the animation program but I just kept coming and working hard so they couldn't make me leave haha! They heard I was getting offers from other studios also and they we're concerned about losing me. They really wanted me to come there so they said they're going to offer me 16 dollars an hour (I am only making 11 right now and could only hope to get 12 at the other place). They're going to pay for my gas and/or house me if I choose. They're going to let me work directly on real games and give me mentored training. Best of all (and if they had just said this and nothing else I would have said yes!) they're going to give me any 5 games i want! as well as an employee discount to buy any other games for $10-20 , for friends and family too, so if you need any games I can hook you up!
WHOOO HOOO!! I'm excited!! Prayers and hard work. I'll tell you what.

I'm going down this afternoon to their studio to check it out and seal the deal. Wish me luck!

Wow. That was a long post. I'm pretty quiet in person but when I start typing watch out... I guess I could have just said " I got an internship at EA!" and left it at that but that's no fun! Besides i need something to fill upthis blank page :) Later all!

-note I just got back from the studio and its a go, I start on May 21st! They also said California in July is not a problem, so save me a fun island on the porch and I'll see y'all at the beach!

-Doug