Jeroen the travel agentI've been in Belgium for a blitz week-end, invited by my old Animation College (Media & Design Academy, Genk) to give a talk about my work and the animation industry in London.
I had 4 hrs to fill. Quite a bit, but then, I occasionally hear I tend to talk a bit too much, so what's 4 hrs. really? I used the time to show my work chronologically, from graduation films and LAS reel, to first animation jobs, inevitable flash jobs, and recent directing work. I actually enjoyed putting a reel together for this, something I haven't done in ages. It's good to see, where you come from and how crap things tend to look (even if you were proud of them at the moment) with the hindsight of a few years.
The school hadn't changed a bit: Same teachers, same nice cafeteria ladies (I got a free apple pie and an egg-mayonnaise sandwich, even if they didn't recognize me any more, unforgiveable, but then, I used to sport a hideous long pony tail), same smell in the corridors, and drawing exercises on the walls. The only difference was the obvious invasion of computers (Macs!!!!), edit suites etc..., and the feeling the teaching staff were working close together in friendly way.
I sounded a bit like Steve Roberts from LAS I guess, promoting life drawing, rough animation tests instead of wasting your learning time with clean-up, a short showreel is better than a long epic no-one wants to sit through, and the necessity of respecting deadlines. I did promote the LAS course a fair bit actually, so I'm waiting for my comission from Steve now :)
I finished of the day with a good old Gueuze in my old student pub (had to go there, its the only one in Genk, haha)
This is something I definitely would love to do again, so animation schools out there, my presentation reel is ready, I'm just waiting for the invitation, if you can afford an apple pie and an egg-mayonnaise sandwich of course :)
Jeroen the Hobbit