This year my school decided not to put in funding for a bus transportation system to Ottawa, leaving the animation students and I on our own to scramble up some funding. I was able to acquire a few freshmen and sophomore students along with me, get a hotel room, ticket, all that goodness. We drove 10 hours there, and prepared for the festival over night.
Boy what a festival it was! Richard Williams, Eric Goldberg, Doug Sweetland, and many other animation guru's, film makers, company executives, and overall cool people were there. I heard Seth Green was there, sadly I never met him. Tho I did get to meet my all time idol Richard Williams! I even got to sketch him and have him sign my sketchbook.
I got to meet and greet Eric Goldberg for a short while. He is an extremely nice and funny man. He was also kind enough to let me draw him, then sign my sketchbook. I was unable to attend his 'Putting Character in your Characters' seminar, due to bad festival planning, but even still I had a great time.
Doug Sweetland, who you may remember as the creator of 'Presto' Pixar's short before the film 'Wall-e', was there and I was able to talk with him at the Parties and after the show. He had some really great advice and stories on his experience with trying to tell a good story, and the advice he got from the Pixar Dream Team. He was very polite and kind with me, and we got to have quite a few fun chats about pixar, and his work. In the end I colored him and promised to send him a copy of the Caricature he so kindly signed for me.
After all that, I visited a few showings on short films, international films, and the like. Almost all were well done and very inspirational with only a few exceptions. I even got a chance to sit down with Richard Williams family and friends while he signed books and look through old high school artwork and post cards he had sent while he was over in London. They were all very nice, and we shared quite a few laughs looking at some of the things he would send people. I never in my life expected to have an experience quite like this, I always thought he'd be dead by the time I got to meet him. I am practically speechless about it, and boy has it fueled my creativity.
