15 September 2006
If you are involved with animation, know people who are, or like a good story... read on.A few summers ago I received an email from a young lady looking for a work placement. I guess she had seen our name on one of the theme park sites... moved onto our web site and decided working at Semantic looked like fun. Poor thing.
Obviously I tried everything to put her off, including a face to face meeting... but in the end, for the last two weeks of the summer term, Laura came to work with us.
Although 'work' is a pretty broad term. Laura clearly wasn't going to learn web development skills overnight, and anyway we wanted her to have some fun... so after some discussion we set her up with Bryce, an animation programme. "Muck around", we said, "we're here when you need us... and how would you like your tea?".
And muck around she did. A lot.
Very soon Bryce wasn't flexible enough for what she wanted, so she moved on to Carrara... she was story-boarding and animating and yes, having fun at work.
By the end of the second week Laura had an animated character playing out a little scene. We helped her set it to music and made her a DVD. Thank-you and goodbye. Have a great life.
But then something extraordinary and rather surprising happened.
I got a note from Laura to say she had talked her Dad into buying her Carrara, and a computer capable of running it.
A year later I got another note, saying that she was going to study animation at University.
Two years later, last week in fact, I got a note saying that Laura has just finished her second year at Bournemouth, with distinction.
And here's where the "help" part comes in. Laura has come full circle, and now needs to find another placement... something much much better than ours... somewhere she can continue to learn about, and practice, animation.
If someone out there can help Laura I would love to hear from them... and I can tell you that it feels pretty great to know that a small thing like a work placement can make such a difference to someone's life.
Way to go Laura!
Posted by Nick Warren at 5:07 PM
