Meet Our Studio Interns: John Vargas

Another great intern this summer was from City College of New York - John Vargas. I really liked his attitude - no task was too hard or too boring for him. Scanning drawings in 450 dpi can make one feel like bleeding from injuries of boredom, but John always saw scanning as an opportunity to learn more about animation. That's the right approach to work!

I asked John a few questions about this internship. You can watch the 3 minute interview here:

THANK YOU, John!

Please check out John's work on Behance:

https://www.behance.net/vargas394ldb85

And follow John on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/vargas394leo/?hl=en

Meet Our Studio Interns: Max Tunney

Max worked at my studio from May 10th until last Friday. I was impressed with his persistence – when a task was a bit out of his field of expertise, he did whatever it took to see the task through to its successful completion. Showing up and doing the work is Max's strength. 

I asked him a couple of questions about the internship and here are his answers:

What were your tasks during the internship?

During my internship, Signe was working on her animated feature film, “My Love Affair with Marriage”. My responsibilities included coloring Signe’s drawings in Photoshop, compositing them in After Effects, creating exposure sheets and scanning drawings. I was also involved with paper mache-ing and painting 3-D sets and props that will be used in “My Love Affair with Marriage”. I also had the occasional opportunity to create graphics in Photoshop for the film.

How did you get this internship?

Last semester, my Animation Studio professor screened a few segments of Signe’s films in class - I enjoyed her style, humor and the subject matters she tackled on film. Soon after, when I was looking for a summer internship, I saw on Pratt’s website that Signe was hiring interns. I applied right away, and was called the following week for an interview. I was thrilled when Signe offered me the position!

(Signe's note on this: I interviewed about 12 students over the course of 3 months for three summer internship slots and Max was the only one (only one!!!) who sent a thank you note after the interview. When presented with a choice to pick from 12 equally qualified candidates (and considering my personal agenda to help young women animators) that lone thank you note made a strong impact on my choice).

What school are you from?

I am currently a rising junior at Pratt Institute, majoring in 2-D Animation.

Can you say one good thing about this internship?

There are many good things to be said about this internship – I enjoyed working in such a creative environment and was happy to have the opportunity to enhance my technical skills. I really learned a lot from Signe. She has a very interesting way of thinking and a unique process for making films. She inspires those around her to be creative. Additionally, Signe provided valuable insight on what it is like to be a working artist.  She often spoke about the business and politics of the industry and what it takes to be an artist /animator today. Working with Signe, you get a complete picture of what is involved in creating an animated film, and putting it out for the world to see.

One bad thing about this internship?

The only bad thing is that the internship came to an end.

Check out Max's work here:

https://mtunney1.wixsite.com/maxtunneyportfolio

THANK YOU, Max!

Research II

When they tell you children are like angels - blank pages in books of purity and innocence that Life and Devil start to write on their dark messages in black ink around teen age - please do not believe them. Every fool who has held a newborn baby knows children scream when they want something. They scream for food, love, affection and toys. When they grow up they learn to push aside their competitors - other babies, small dogs and a-month-old kittens - to get to the desired goods.

One important thing about children you should really know -  scientists confirmed recently that besides being cry-babies babies are also racists. If you read that article you'll find out the reason why:

“The idea of in-group bias is well established in behavioral science, and it has its roots long ago, in humanity’s tribal era.”

From the moment they are born, children learn to distinguish between the people in their group and the outsiders. It only gets worse as children grow (until their Prefrontal Cortex develops and as adults they become aware of their bias and learn to correct it). Which brings me back to my story about school uniforms.

In Russia a school uniform for girls looked like this:

While in Latvia it looked like this, a whole class:

- Ah, - you'd say. - I see no big difference! Its just a uniform!

Well, it's easy for you to say. The eyes of 8-year olds are like those of an eagle, discerning the smallest difference from the furthest distance, anything that would give them clues to start an abuse of The Other. Have you ever tried to enter a classroom, full of 8-year-olds, dressed in the wrong uniform? On September 1st, after my return from Sakhalin to Latvia, I did just that and instantly was tagged as The Other. When the teacher asked me to introduce myself to the class, and I said ... :

- Hi, my name is Signe Baumane. My family recently moved to this town from Sakhalin...

... the 35 of my future classmates detected Russian accent in my Latvian speech which gave them permission to hate me. After 1941 Latvians considered Russians as representatives of occupying powers and harbored quiet but bitter resentments towards the privileges and entitlements the newly arrived Russians enjoyed. Of course, being a second class citizens in his/her own country no Latvian could express openly their hostility towards any Russian. But I was a perfect target - a Latvian speaking with a Russian accent. And so the bottled up resentment was unleashed on me.

Or, perhaps I am giving political overtures to something that was more simple: I was awkward, ugly, quiet, not very bright and my Mom was a teacher at the same school (kids of teachers were also hated - they were perceived as having unfair advantage).

Whatever happened on that first day, I was not able to shake off the tag of The Other for the next 10 years, however I tried. Observing my sufferings stemming from social exclusion my Prefrontal Cortex grew to develop bias against populars. 

But wait, I just watched Blank on Blank interview with Kurt Cobain (animated by Pat Smith) and he said: " i felt so different so crazy" in school. Curt Cobain? You'd think in high school he was an incarnate of the populars, no?

Most of my friends felt different and crazy in school, excluded from the popular circles. But WHERE are those populars? Perhaps the people we perceived as populars also felt miserable and excluded? Have they lived to tell their tale?

Research on Sakhalin I

When I started to work on visual aspects of my new project I had to make sure I get visual details right. For example, what was the standard school uniform in the USSR on September 1st when I went to school for the first time? Of course, I could fake it, after all, my story is of the fantastical sort, and who cares about old school uniforms anyway, but I wanted to see if the old times could inspire me. The matter of school uniforms is not that simple in my case. 

I was born in Latvia (it was part of Soviet Union at that time) and when I was 5 my family went for work to Sakhalin, the Russian island next to Japan. Age 5 is the time when a person finally emerges from the mysterious glob of subconscious flesh that is a baby. My first solid memories are from Sakhalin. Like the first love, this island is unforgettable.

Read about Sakhalin on Wikipedia

If you have been to Far East you'd know how amazing the Nature is there: overwhelming with its beauty and overpowering with its forces. The amount of snow alone could kill you.

Check out Sakhalin photos on Flickr

But back to school uniforms. Despite the dangers of unsupervised childhood (my parents had to leave me and my sister alone when they went to work, because kindergartens were full and no one's ever heard of babysitters in the good old USSR) I survived and reached the mature age of 7 when by the law of the land I was required to go to school. I put on the uniform and went with my older sister.

Upon my arrival the school immediately pointed out at everything that was odd and irregular about me: I didn't know which hand was right or left, my cotton tights weren't so tight and kept sliding down in folds of an accordion and I didn't have any books nor bag with me. After all, I have spent 2 previous years in wild, like this:

But I believed in education, so I persisted. Every morning I would put the uniform on and would go to the school on a makeshift sidewalk that was supposed to keep the Forces of Nature at bay. The school eventually grew to like me. A couple of fellow classmates thought there was something special about me being a Latvian in their Russian speaking class, although by then I barely spoke any Latvian.

Then the Disaster struck: one day when I was 8 my parents packed to go back to Latvia. 
(to be continued)