CW 51: Disney Research Papers
"All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them." - Walt Disney
By now whoever is reading this blog, it should be clear that I am very much interested in the movie and tv industry. My goal is to make my own movies one day. If that doesn't work out, I want to work at Disney and my last resort in case the other plans fail is to work in the gaming industry.
When I started studying all I wanted, was studies that would take me to my goal and studies where I could still have a back-up and would not end up unemployed in case that one single path wouldn't work out. I decided to study Mediainformatics and Visual Computing at the University of Technology Vienna, which at first was just a battle for survival to not fail every single course. During the first two terms, I couldn't really see how any of what I was studying would eventually lead me to be working at Disney. Let me be specific: when I say working at Disney, I want to be part of the amazing teams that create the stories we grew to love and relate to. The movies, that can convey so many emotions and make just a few pixels so loveable - I want to work on those. And I will.
Anyhow, throughout my Bachelors I would only rarely learn stuff, that I could see an application for in VFX or animation, so when these things came along I tried to put as much effort into it as I could and especially when studying at KTH, where they had endless opportunities and where they are actually supporting individuals and want people to learn and create a portfolio which will help them in their professional life, I finally started to learn skills that would be useful for a career in VFX or animation. Now, back at TU Wien, I'm doing a seminar, where I have to write a state-of-the-art report on "The technology behind Disney movies" and in the course of writing I had to read several scientific papers on things like how they rigged the ocean in Moana, or how they simulated the snow in Frozen or on the hair simulation in Zootopia. I am not that big into reading but these papers, didn't let me go. They were captivating! The more papers I read the more I was looking forward to my career and the more secure I got, that I chose the right studies. I knew what the words and techniques meant they mentioned in these papers and since I obviously watched all the movies it was just sooo cool to see how much work and thoughts go into a single shot.
So reading all these papers and actually understanding what they were about, made me visualize my career and it gave me hopes again, that I'm studying the right thing and am actually able to fulfill my dream, to work at Disney one day. Seeing how much love and commitment flows into every single technology and the fact that I could actually do this myself in the future is simply...
...magical.
In case you're intersted to read these papers. Here are my favorite ones so far: