A film I was working on at my internship is in the middle of being shot. We got some scenes back this week for post viz. Post viz is when we make a rough version of the special effects the shot will have. It makes farming out the effects easier. Seeing the shots with actors makes me feel that the random shots I've been working on are part of a bigger movie.

Had my second to last internship class Monday. Passed in a paper and discussed our companies decisions. Someone in my class is interning at Mirimax and apparently they are making their own TV channel.

Sometime over the weekend The Third Floor got a big contract. They took this contract from another previz company so I was going through the work from the old company all day trying to see if it compatible with our system. It mostly is. They have an odd file naming system though.

Busy two days. Thursday the demonstration of the new Mocap system happened. It didn't go according to plan. We had a bunch of new technology that we were trying out. The new things did not work too well. Sensors were off, computer errors occurred and random stuff just happened. This is frustrating when trying to figure it out but when a client is there watching it all happen...

Friday I had a variety of tasks like archiving, sending videos to clients and changing file types for future work. It was all tedious but not too difficult. I've been listening to books on tape the last few weeks so I'm never really bored. I finished Heart of Darkness today and got through most of the Invisible Man. There's a whole society of people recording public domain books for free on the internet called librivox.org

Yesterday at the Third Floor I spent most of the time archiving old files.

Today I was supposed to help out on a mocap shoot for a demonstration for a new client. I arrived around eleven for it but the client ended up not showing up. I'm a little upset about this but I only ended up staying a couple hours. I spent that time reading Heart of Darkness. I got home around two and worked on a paper for school.

I got a call from my boss later tonight. Everything is set for a shoot tomorrow afternoon. I'm coming in tomorrow anyways.

Had my internship class today. I only have two more classes. The final paper is due next week though.

I have work for the next four days. I'm not sure how long I'll be there on Wednesday though.

More archiving today. Next week will be better though. I'll have more relevant work to do.

A friend and co-worker is going to do the modeling for my thesis project. I've spoken to him for a couple weeks about him being a modeler. I showed him my concept art and today he said he could do it. Said he'd do it for free but I'll most likely throw him some money from my production budget.

A big presentation of one of The Third Floor's newest big project was due today. This resulted in me not having a lot of work to do. I ended up just working on some archiving.

Next Wednesday a new client is coming by and the higher ups have asked me to help demonstrate the Moven mocap system. Its pretty flattering that they trust me as an intern to help them out. I'm not too thrilled about coming in on my day off though. Overall I'm happy about it though.

Worked on the new Spielberg movie yesterday. It was really cool to look at the storyboards and think, "That's going to be a Spielberg film in a few years." I remember two months ago when they got the contract for this show. I was coming in for an interview and heard them reviewing the style tape (a collection of clips of other movies to describe what the film will be like.)

I can't talk about the film but it looks really cool and it was fun working on it yesterday. We were using Mocap to capture some animation for the movies first big action scene.

Worked on four shots today. Four! Of course the first one was just finishing up the one I started yesterday and the others were alternate versions of other peoples shots. I'm still counting this as a victory for Ian. So far there is almost a minute of this film that I have worked on.

Two of the companies founders know my name. Only three actually hang out at the office so this is a good percentage. The other still calls me "Hey" but I think he knows who I am, just not my name. I'm learning the company has a pretty high turnover but everyone who leaves, leaves for a better job. This is giving me a lot of hope at the Third Floor.

Busy day today.

Tuesday I had finished archiving all the old models and sets from previous jobs. My supervisor informed me that he would give me some basic modeling to do. Today I modeled two swords for one of the newer projects. With only a couple revisions I was able to make them. Andrew was impressed.

After lunch, I worked on a Mocap shoot. It quickly turned into a photo shoot. Apparently, the studio is being featured in Animation Magazine and they were taking some photos of it for the article. I'm in a couple of them but from the back only.

After that I worked on another shot. I didn't get to finish it due to some technical problems but its looking good. I'm not sure I will actually finish it though.

A lot more archiving today. On a side note, it was the last day for the woman who hired me at The Third Floor. She is moving to Oregon for a couple years to teach. She lived in LA for ten years and decided she needs a break from it. It seems pretty common from what I hear.

The game I worked on last year had a wrap up party. It is coming soon to PS3. I had a lot of fun working on it.

Worked on two shots today... and... AND... finished them! Every other shot I've worked on was touched up by another artist. This is the first time I've ever had a shot been reviewed and deemed suitable for final product. The shots were started by another animator but I ended up replacing a good chunk of the character animation and most of the camera movements.

I'm beginning to soak in some knowledge about cinematography from this internship. I've been going over some of my old storyboards and my reactions are "No... wrong... move this... center that..." I'm about a third of the way into my internship and I already feel that I've gotten my money's worth out of it.

Bought my first suit the other day. A tailor near my house is going out of business. Got an Italian made suit for $120. It was originally about $500. I'll probably wear it three times a year so I feel it was a good investment.