I had the pleasure of arranging and setting up a panel talk at the Art Institute of Colorado which took place last night, Nov. 10th. The Alumni coordinator and I have had this in the works for over 2 months now!
A few months back we received a demo reel at work from a current graduate and unfortunately it wasn't very polished and looked very "stock" - meaning it had every class assignment in it and lacked any extra ..... pep.
And I got to thinking, so many of us up at NetDevil graduated around the same time as one another that we were fortunate enough to get an awesome gig soon after graduating. I was wondering why that was, why were we different. Then I thought we should give a talk!!!
Now I've had my problems with the school in the past and I'm still upset to see how things are running at the school, but they have been making BIG improvements!! I know for myself, while I attended I was ALWAYS seeking out mentor-ship and knowledge when I couldn't gain it in the classroom.
And I know for myself if someone from the industry hosted a talk about what to do to get your foot in the door I would have soaked that up!! And that's exactly what I wanted to give to the current students and other Alumni still seeking a gig.
The idea was to host a no holds-barred type of forum and let it be a free for all letting the students ask questions and at the end to receive feedback on their work. I was able to round up some colleagues and had a total of 10 speakers from work to speak. It was fantastic because we an array of experience from Seniors, Leads and jr. artists who have moved on up. And it went extremely well!
I really hope lots of students took away nuggets of good information from us all. And I want to thank Shandra and AiC for hosting us. If I get the opportunity to do another talk I would be more than grateful too.
Remember to keep the dream alive and never let anything get in your way from achieving your dreams!
