Internship with Nickelodeon Begins

Thank you for taking the time to read my latest blog entry. In this chapter of my professional life, we discuss Phase I of The Nickelodeon Internship. Keep in mind this entry is a summation of events in early January when things got rollin. I am reflecting!! Ya that's the ticket.

As some of you may know, in order to get to Nick I had to submit to the world of virtual pets, but my focus at neopets was clearly not in creating cartoons, so as you may have guessed I was overly excited to arrive and be at Nick, where Tak and the Power of Ju Ju was created.

My boss, Eric Swanborg is the Technology Manager at Nickelodeon, and his understanding of how things come down the pipeline is nothing but outstanding. He always has just enough work to keep me busy, yet of course he always gave me enough spare time to harass the lead artists with questions on how they did things.

The building I work in is called the Annex. The picture you see with Han Solo is a still, of what I like to think of as an evolving office. One week my desk would be in one place, and then the next week it would be in another place. This would often happen to everyone in the CG department, not just to me.

Oh that reminds me, one of the great things about being at Nickelodeon is they don't every have me run errands for coffee and food, which I really don't mind, but at least I don't have to do all these things.

After updating the corporate Wiki page I found myself helping Sponge Bog Artists migrate from paper to Wacom Cintiq tablets. The Cintiq tablets will ensure a paperless pipeline for the studio in the future. All prints will be made as needed. This is good for both the environment and the big cities that already have enough paper waste.

So lets not bore you to death, but rather talk about what a typical day is like at Nick. :)

First of all you have to come in and have a nice hot cup of tea or an espresso, perhaps along with that you need a toasted bagel or a donut, (maybe two) to get your stomach going.

I always liked to come in early, around 8:30 a.m. or so, and chat with the early birds like Sergio, see how they were doing, and go hit my email up to make sure there are no pressing issues. For the most part things are pretty mellow in the mornings. If it is busy, my tasks usually include helping Eric Swanborg with meeting setups or adding things to the Corporate Wiki. The rest of the day is spent working on mock-up shots using in house Effects to test out possible situations.

More to come in the next following exciting issues of Nickelodeon life....