Trip to California!

I just got back today from California, which was one of the most exciting and amazing trips I have ever been on. Me and my friend, Nick Fensterman from LeTourneau University, drove out there and instead of staying in hotels, we decided to Couch Surf (http://www.couchsurfing.com) with different people along the way, so our first stop was in Tucumcari, NM and we stayed with a guy named Zac, who was awesome. We had a big BBQ with his neighbors, family and friends and just had a good time- such a good first CS experience! Our next stop was in Vegas, so Nick could see it, because he had never been- so we walked the main strip and walked into Caesars Palace and I admit, I gambled...I put a whole $2 into a slot machine and lost ever bit of it...it was tough, but I survived. Haha, now I can officially say I gambled in Vegas...yeah, whatever, probably won't ever happen again. We didn't have a CS host for that night, so we stayed in a cheapish hotel and then made our way to San Fransisco and the Bay area the next morning. Once we got there, we walked across the SF Bridge and did your typical touristy things around the city...it was my first time to ever be there, so we visited all the main hot spots such as the Fisherman's Wharf and walked around the different piers. I learned the hard way that Northern, CA is very cold...unlike in Texas where it is over 100 degrees right now, it was in the 50's there, and I showed up in shorts and a short sleeve polo shirt...not the best dress for the weather, so I had to fix that and get a jacket! I was shaking like a leaf...seriously, I could see my breath...it was COLD. To me anyways, I'm from Texas, I don't like cold. :) While we were in the Bay area, we Couch Surfed with a guy named Greg who was such an awesome host! He owned his own incredible travel company which I could say tons about because it's really that awesome, so we a lot to talk about, and he even gave us a tour around Berkley, where he lives.

Ok, so here is where the really exciting stuff comes in! Are you ready for it? Hold on because this is good stuff! The second day in the Bay area, we drove to Emeryville and visited Pixar Animation Studios and was given a private tour by Pixar animator, Aaron Hartline. It was so nice of him to take the time out of his hectic day to do this for us, and I am so glad and thankful that he did! By the way, Aaron has animated on both Pixar films, UP and Toy Story 3...remember the scene in TS3 where Trixie the Triceratops jumped on they keyboard and said she was talking to some dinosaur down the street? Yeah, Aaron animated that scene, among many others. We started off by getting our official Pixar name tag that had the aliens from Toy Story on it and said "Visitors from the outside!" on it. We then went on inside the gates of the studio and made our first stop by the giant Luxo lamp and ball, which is right outside the Pixar studio, to take pictures!

We then went on inside the studio to meet up with Aaron to start our tour!  Let me start off by saying that the studio looks absolutely amazing...and it's huge! You wouldn't believe how incredible large this studio is...you walk through the front door into a huge, open atrium, and all around the room are different things such as the mail room, a cereal bar for the employees in case the get the mid-day urge for cereal, a game room, the restroom, a official Pixar store only open to employees and visitors of the studio (it didn't open until 11, and we started the tour at 9, so unfortunately, we didn't get to shop in the store.) and a few other things, and I will show some pictures of what I'm talking about below. As soon as you walk into the studio, you are greeted by Sulley and Mike Wazowski from Monsters, Inc., Luigi and Guido from Cars and a Lego version of Buzz and Woody from Toy Story!

Aaron then walked us around the atrium explaining what everything was and allowing us to take pictures. While we were walking through, I bumped into Pixar animator, Victor Navone, who I have had quite a bit of correspondence with over the last few years, so that was neat to finally meet him in person. He has quit a history at Pixar and has worked on just about every one of their films to date!

Check out all those awards!!! Pixar has all of their awards on display in this cabinet to the right as you walk into the studio...pretty cool!

 And then we walked past the store...but since it was closed, I completely forgot to take a picture of it. Sorry! So we will move on through the atrium...next we walked past the mail room, which I think is kinda cool to know that quit a few of my handwritten letters have been in there. :)

We then walked past the game room where the animators and other employees have a little fun, and then onto the breakfast room with the cereal bar- which I am pretty sure has me sold. Who wouldn't want unlimited cereal to eat throughout the day, whenever you get the urge...and better yet, at work?

Take a guess how many people work at Pixar? I could let you count, but that would be cruel...try around 1100 people! Crazy, huh?

After we walked past the Cereal room, Aaron took us to the screening room, where Pixar screens their films! My camera didn't take a very good picture, so sorry about that, but it was pretty impressive! Aaron told us that stars would cover the ceiling and you could see shooting stars shoot across. Oh, and did I mention that we were greeted by two of the green aliens from Toy Story?

From here, we were taken upstairs where we weren't allowed to take any photos. During this part of the tour, we got to see a lot of the pre-production art from a few of the films, such as Toy Story and Up. There were lots of drawings and character designs of characters like Buzz and Woody and I saw what they originally looked like before they changed them to how they look now. I have seen a lot of these drawings in the "Art of" books that Pixar publishes for each one of their films, but it was still awesome to see the originals in person. We also saw the storyboard art for Toy Story 3, which was really neat! The coolest thing we sw up there though, was he took us into the animation department and we got to see where all the animators work! It was so cool, because each animator has their own space and they are allowed and encouraged to decorate it in a certain creative scene...such as one animator had his looking like a tiki room with an actual tiki poles and another had it decorated in a western setting...really incredible! I really wish I could have taken a picture or two in there for you to see because it's hard to explain! Although we weren't allowed to take photos of any of that, Aaron did allow us to take pictures with two things upstairs: Finding Nemo and The Incredibles!

And lastly, before I left the studio, I took a picture of this awesome painting from Toy Story which hangs on the back wall of the studio!

If you noticed, I wore my Animation Mentor t-shirt while on tour at Pixar, hoping it would start up a conversation about the school, and of coarse, it did. Aaron is a mentor at the school, and I wanted to show him just how excited I was to start, even though, as of the tour, I had not been accepted into the school yet...I had applied on August 5th and was still waiting to hear back from them about my acceptance. I told Aaron how nervous I was about getting in and how I wanted to go there so bad I couldn't think straight! He told me not to worry, that he was sure I would get in. He told me to send him a private message on the AM website once I got accepted and logged in to tell him. He asked me if I had already done a tour of the AM headquarters in Emeryville, and I told him no, that I didn't realize you could do a tour, and he told me if I called them then he was sure they could probably show me around, so as soon as I left the Pixar studio, I called up AM and asked told them where I was (sitting in the Pixar parking lot) and told them that I was hoping to go there and asked if their was any way I could get a tour and the lady told me that if I had called any other day, then I could go on a tour no problem, but all of their employees were leaving the building to do a service project in the Bay area for the day and weren't going to be there. The lady was very nice...we talked for a few minutes and she asked me how the Pixar tour went and then wished me the best of luck and apologized for me not being able to get a tour of their HQ. So, we decided to leave the studio and head out to Fisherman's Wharf one more time for lunch before we headed out of town to Los Angeles. Get this: maybe an HOUR after we left the Pixar studio, I got a email sent to my phone from Animation Mentor telling me that I had gotten accepted into the school!!!! :) I was so excited...seriously, I can't even tell you how excited I was about this! I couldn't believe that on the same day as visiting Pixar, I got accepted into the best animation school out there! I still can't believe that I got accepted into this school- I can't wait to start! If you want to see some more pictures of the inside of Pixar, check out this blog: http://pixarblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/visiting-pixar-inside-studio.html

Alright, so our day at Pixar and the Bay area is over with and we headed down to L.A. and that area for the night. While we were in L.A., we stayed with some family of Nick's, and they were really nice and it was great of them to let us stay with them for the time we were in town.

We started off our first day in the L.A. area (actually, Glendale) by going to DreamWorks Animation Studios! DreamWorks animator, Jim Vanderkeyl was awesome enough to take the time to give us a tour of the studio, which we kicked off about 12:30. Once we got our name badges, we walked into the studio...well, it was more like a big open area outside, in the middle of the studio where there is a waterfall and a river and a bunch of trees and it's where the employees can sit and eat breakfast and lunch outside...it was really beautiful out there too! Such an amazing studio, it looked more like a resort!

Once we walked in and met up with Jim, he showed us around outside and then took us inside the actual studio and into the animation department where all the animators work, which was amazing!

Jim then showed us around the studio through the different departments, such as pre-production and story boarding and whatnot. It was an amazing tour! I didn't ask if I could take any pictures, although I doubt I could have, but I was so zoned in on the tour and seeing everything around me, taking pictures was last on my mind at the time. We really got to see some cool stuff...lots of artwork from the different films and even a few character models that were made so the animators had a physical version of the character to visualize and hold. After we got done walking through the studio and seeing everything, we stopped by the cafeteria and got us some enchiladas to eat for lunch and we got our food and sat outside with him and ate and talked for a good hour and a half about everything from animation to my experience with the army. It was such an awesome experience and I can't thank Jim enough for giving us such a great tour and taking the time to do it, because it's something I won't ever forget!

Well, I am going to try and hurry up and tie this blog up...it's getting a bit long...sorry about that! But, after we left there, we spent the day running around Hollywood and L.A. just doing some sightseeing and walked up and down Rodeo Dr. where all the celebrities supposedly shop because it's so expensive there...seriously, I wouldn't have been able to buy a pair of socks on that street! We walked into a Ferrari shop looking for my next car and I saw the one I want. It had a reasonable price tag on it...only 1.3 million, penny change for me. (HA!)  I'm not a big car person, but it was a nice car...not gonna lie!

Our second to last day in CA, we spent the day at Laguna beach and as if I hadn't learned many, many times in the past from going to the beach and just being outside in general, I didn't wear sunscreen and got burn big time...I left that evening looking like a lobster, my best look.

The last day in LA, we went to Disneyland! I had really been looking forward to going out there- it was my first time to go and was a big thing for me! I had only been to Disney World once, and that was as a child a long time ago. Long story short, I had a BLAST, and really loved it there...my favorite ride was by far, the Indiana Jones ride, it was freaking incredible! Of coarse, I had to buy me a Mickey ears hat, which I wore all day around the park and while taking my picture in front of the famous magic castle and Walt and Mickey!

I hope you enjoyed my incredibly long blog post, A.K.A. my newest book, haha, but in case you didn't figure it out after reading all of that, I had an AMAZING time in California and I can't wait to go back! It was such an adventure and I got to do things I never imagined I would get to do. Now, I get to prepare for Animation Mentor to start and get reading to start animating!!! :) Thanks again for reading, you are awesome!