So it's day 2 and a start of a new week already!

Things are starting fast right off the bat, which is awesome in my book!  I arrived at 10:30 again (the time I'll most likely start at every day), and met up with Fred (my mentor.)  After seeing what I was capable of yesterday, he set me up with a project straight-away!  Being very busy today, he said he would give me a bit of a tutorial tomorrow, which I fully look forward to.  He had the technical guru set me up with a login and my own folder on the network which I can now access from any computer there!  He also had me read up on something he had written recently explaining the folder and file-naming workflow they have there, so that everyone can understand what is what, etc.  My project currently is modeling a toy car for a personal project of his own.  If he likes my work enough, he'll use it in the project!  He thought about giving me random work, but he felt that this, being something he cared about, would give me a great experience in making something for someone else, much like working for an actual client.

So, with breaks in-between to eat, talk to people, and find tutorials to figure out exactly what I was doing, I worked on the toy car until 6:45 (a bit later this time because I got very caught up in the work.)  Fred stopped by once or twice to check in on me and see how the work was doing, and I believe he was impressed.  David Daniels also stopped by a few times (as he did on monday.)  He is both a partner and director at Bent (you can find him on their website,) and also a family friend!  I hadn't realized he was a partner/director of the company until yesterday, when his wife came up to me when I first came in.  So I already have more connections than I had known about! (I went to elementary school with his kids, and we were good friends.)  When Fred came by, he looked at how things were going and gave me some criticism on the model, and he also gave me some good quick lessons on the color of images and their workflow which was interesting.

The social dynamics of the workspace is interesting as well.  The workspace is an open room with many computers.  It's an open environment (no cubicles) as people have to be able to easily interact.  No projects have only one person working on them, some people work on multiple jobs, but most of the employees specialize in one or a few different areas, so many people are used on each job in each stage of the process.  So, they have to be able to talk and interact.  For instance, my first day, I was observing two people next to each other working on the same project.  One was working on compositing different passes in After Effects, while the other worked on the hair of a character.  The compositor, in charge of the project, gave the other guy criticism and other jobs to do as he went.  The two gave criticism and discussed the project as they went.  Often people will yell across the workspace to others to get an answer about something they need to know.  There is also the occasional joking around, or showing each other funny clips on the internet (one today was of a baby dancing.)  I don't know much about project workflow, etc, but I'll be sure to find out tomorrow!

I also talked today to an animator at Bent who I sit next to.  His name is Eric Urban.  He went to SCAD (one of the schools I applied to) and has been working with Bent for about 2 years now.  It is his first job out of college aside from internships.  I talked to him a bit about college, the learning process, and he gave me some tips on how to work and what to do in school, which was mainly to treat every project, no matter how dumb it seemed, as if it were something that would go into my portfolio.  He had some great tips and was a fun guy to talk to!  He also showed me his own demo reel and his thesis project coming out of SCAD, which you can see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AedaQSmbjo

I didn't go out for lunch today, but brought it (I'm flat out BROKE right now!)  My dad's pulled pork sandwiches are BOSS!!

When I'm done with this project I'll see if I can put up the render, I might not be able to simply because of privacy concerns.