Media Design student’s internship in Tokyo
Four Victoria University Media Design students spent the summer in Tokyo doing an internship at the animation studio OLM. OLM produces computer graphics for animated films and television they’re behind the well-known Pokemon series.
Four Victoria University Media Design students spent the summer in Tokyo doing an internship at the animation studio OLM. OLM produces computer graphics for animated films and television they’re behind the well-known Pokemon series.
Lecturer Rhazes Spell from Victoria’s School of Design said OLM were looking for creative digital students to coordinate between their research team and the artists in their studio.
‘Initially they were after one student but they were so impressed with our student’s work they asked for four’.
Joe Dixon, Julie Drake, Scott Brebner and Chris Scott spent eight weeks in Japan working in the Research and Development team. They were the interpreters between the artists and the programmers.
‘Our study background was perfect for the task because we could think like artists but knew the programming side too’ Joe says. ‘We were creating tools the animators could use to produce the desired graphics, tools we wish we’d had whilst studying’.
Two of the four worked on shaders, making the 3D simulation look 2D in the Japanese ‘Anime’ style. While the other two worked on particle simulation – lots of small objects moving on the screen, for example when hearts pop up behind a character or dust particles fly up as a character runs.
The four spent the eight weeks in shared flats working Japanese office hours of 10am to 6pm and discovering the delicacies of the Japanese supermarkets. As for language difficulties their boss spoke English. Communicating with some of their colleagues however involved stunted English and Mathematical symbols!
The four have now finished their Bachelors of Design Innovation, Julie has secured a job at Weta Digital, Scott is going on to a Masters of Design Innovation and Chris and Joe are freelancers.