CTNX 2011 Wrap Up

Not only was the convention a success, but the entire trip to Burbank was awesome!
One of the happiest most exhausting trips ever.

Quick highlights:
Getting drunk at the Oakland airport at 9 in the morning. Trevor and I sampled California Kings at the vino volo kiosk.
Taking a tour of Disney Animation for the first time ever and not turning into a puddle.(Thanks Bobby!)
Hitting up the Princess Brunch at Disneyland with some of the best people I know!
I'm torn between Enchanted Tiki Room and Toy Story Midway Mania for my favorite attraction of ALL TIME.
Wearing shorts! (It's been cold Seattle.)
Chickening out of saying hi to James Gurney.
Hanging out by the fire pits at the pool after midnight.
Meeting tons of new people and making new best friends.
Watching my rental car's keys fly to Seattle without me.

CTN this year was even better than CTN last year, and I loved last year. The main difference is I had a table this time around, shared with my friend Trevor. While that meant a lot of chaos pre show, and the inability to go to all the awesome talks during most of it, it also meant just hanging out and talking to all kinds of neat people and loads of doodling all day for three days.

I'm not sure I can express the concentration of art at CTN correctly. It overwhelms me. I'm a big dork for animation, and everybody is there! Showing off the latest and greatest, often work you'll never see anywhere else. I saw so many personal sketchbooks and portfolios, wonderful work all around. I only saw one demo and one talk, but they were perfect and exciting and energetic. Florian Satzinger was out in the Atrium drawing, and after the floor closed I saw Michael Defeo talk about sculpting with traditional and computerized processes, staying on model etc, the good stuff. Hopefully some of the other talks will go online, because I would love to see them.

On the conventioneer side, I really packed my half of the table with stuff. While I only brought down the two sketchbooks I've made, I also talked a couple of friends into giving me some of their work to sell. One of the things I enjoyed most was selling their works. I get gleeful when I see people getting excited about art. One of my favorites was selling a sketchbook of Matt's to Jake Parker. I'm so familiar with Matt's stuff, that when I saw Jake's I had this moment of familiarity that was hard to put into words. His stuff is way different, but way similar if that makes any sense.

There were a number of people I ended up being too shy to talk to. Mostly I wasn't shy, but it gets the best of me still! I was really happy Trevor was my table buddy, it made being chatty easier. Strength in numbers? A few of the people I chickened out on were James Gurney, Terryl Whitlatch, Andreas Deja, and Pascal Campion(Pascal is possibly the most wonderful person on earth).


After the show each day there would be the chaos of herding friends and new acquaintances into finding food and hangout time. Which always managed to sort itself out. Inevitably turning into a late night indeed. I loved walking through the hotel at any time, day or night, and seeing all the people mingling and having a great time. The animation students in the lounge working away constantly were awesome. I love their drive!

I think the thing that surprises me is how many people from games are at CTN considering there is almost zero games presence. Almost everything is film, tv, and commercial animation industry. Which I think is fine, but I'm still surprised. I mean, games are about 1/3 animation, more in some. I wonder if there would ever be a similar game arts convention? :) I'd go!