Way to go OHIO!

I'm sure many of you have heard about FJORG at siggraph this year. An Iron Animator event in which 16 competing teams from around the world had 32 hours to create the most impressive character-driven animation of at least 15 seconds in length adhering to at least one of two themes and using at least one of 16 sound bites. A couple months ago, I went to teach animation for a few days in Ohio. The guy who invited me to BGSU was head of the computer animation department at BGSU, or so I thought. His name was Jim Levasseur. We corresponded for a few months to actually set this thing up. When I got their, he picked me up in an old beater car with two other guys, Tomas Jech and Jacob Gardner. They looked really young to be faculty. Turns out they were not faculty, but students. Jim and the other guys were part of a computer animation club. They totally orchestrated the process of getting me out to BGSU. These three guys were totally driven. They really wanted to learn animation. At the very end of the class, they showed me a short film they were working on to get into the Fjorg thing. I thought it looked great.

Anyhow, they went on to win the FJORG competition! Three guys from Bowling Green State University. A true Cinderella story. Competing against professionals from places like Polygon Pictures and Tippet Studios. I did an email interview with them.

Interview

Great jobs guys. Any studio would be more than lucky to have you working with them. Especially, now that you proved that you will work long hours... :)
-Andrew

other links:

FJORG documentary
The film the submitted to get in
The Film that won