I think I saw more people at this Webster siggraph meeting than I think I’ve ever seen. We were packed to the walls and chairs took up just about every inch of floor space. It was an awesome meeting and thank you all for coming.

Ok, so first order of business. Amanda, our totally cool president, has found information on a job opportunity at the Botanical Gardens. It will probably be a graphic design job without pay, but if you’re interested keep an eye open, because this is all we have so far.

Next, we got our first Kinematifest submissions! Whoo! The deadline for the submissions are February 27th but if your submission is a little late, say a day or two, we should still be able to squeeze it in. If you want to know if we’ve sent them off yet or not just contact anybody in the staff. Also, get everyone you can to submit, we’re looking for quality and also we want to see as many submissions as possible.

Since Michele Narup is graduating this semester, we are going to need another person to run all the social networking sites that she has so gracefully done for Webster Siggraph. If you’re interested then contact Michele, Amanda, or pretty much anybody on the staff.

The ACM Siggraph is coming closer and sadly the deadline for student volunteer submissions are over. So, other ways to save some money is to apply for the dean’s fund. To fill out an application, go to www.webster.edu and the dropdown menu in the top right hand corner can take you to the school of communication’s site. Then go to “current students” and click on “student forms”. You’re looking for the student travel authorization form. Usually the dean’s fund is $250 per person. More information on the SGA traveler’s fund will be coming soon.

Amanda is going to be going to the school’s board to ask if we can get our hands on Zbrush. She wants to know if there’s any other programs you think there needs to be at Webster. If you can think of one just send her and e-mail.

You might want to check up www.thegnomonworkshop.com because we are going to be getting two tutorial disks from their site. Which ones are up to you, if you have a preference then go ahead and shoot any of us and e-mail with what subject you want to see. There also might be a poll on Facebook soon so don’t forget to vote on your favorite.

And lastly, Chris had his awesome announcement. Maya Yonesho, a well respected Japanese animator, is coming in this week to do multiple things. First, there’s going to a workshop on this Friday at 2:00pm in room 202. Maya is doing animation with flip books and using interesting backgrounds behind the hand drawn flip books. If you’re interested, and you should be, go to the workshop on Friday. There will probably be drawing all weekend and then on Monday meet up again at a time that hasn’t been set yet. Then on this next upcoming Wednesday Maya is going to be speaking about the commercial industry in room 202 at 9:30. I highly advise coming to this. And then that night she is going to be showing films in room 123. And Chris then wanted to give us a disclaimer that Maya Yonesho is from a different culture that is not near as “aggressive” as our culture. She is knowledgeable in our culture but please keep in mind hers, we’re representing Webster here. All in all, it will be awesome and I hope to see all of you at any of these awesome opportunities.

And then to finish off the night, Matt Sherry got to take the front stage and shared his secrets of animating to the present Webster Siggraphers. I have to say, it was quite fun doing a tutorial and then speaking about myself in third person in the last sentence. Hopefully you all learned something helpful.

Hope to see you all again soon.

Welcome fellow Webster Siggraphers to yet another exciting episode of… Webster Siggraph! If you missed the first episodes of this season you might want to go back and catch up on all the twists and turns in the world of Webster Siggraph.

In this belt buckling episode there was another appearance of Kinematifest as it’s website is officially declared up. It flashes off it’s new colors at www.kinematifest.com. And there’s a beautifully awesome kinematifest promo trailer that was created by the brilliant minds of the kinematifest committee. You should go see it.

And while Kinematifest was hogging the airtime, it reminded us all that submissions are due in by the 27th of February. We can be a little lenient with Webster’s entries but please try and get them in by the 27th. We need to mail them out to judges.

While we’re all on the topic of deadlines (and I control the topic, muhaha) the ACM SIGGRAPH convention’s student volunteer deadline is creeping up on us quickly. The deadline is 15 February 2010, 22:00 UTC/GMT, so roughly ten days left. We do have news that there will be a Dean’s fund and probably a SGA travel fund to help people with paying for the convention.

Shortly after Kinematifest left the spotlight, Matt Pierce was quick to pick up the limelight. He has announced to the public that there might be an opportunity to do a 3d/maybe after effects animation job with a film student from Webster’s own program. If you’re interested, e-mail him or keep checking here for updates (don’ t worry, there will be updates).

Then from stage left Chris Sagovac made quite the entrance, as always, and had his own announcements to make. A speaker (which I sadly forgot to grab her name…) is flying in from Japan to do some business in the states. While she is in the country, she is going to be swinging by Webster in the week of February 18th. On the 26th, she is going to be giving an awesome artist lecture at 12:00 noon in 123 Sverdrup, don’t miss it. Backtracking a little, on the 19th an animation workshop is going to start. She has her own style of animation using flip books and local backgrounds and she wants to make Webster one of those backgrounds. If you’re interested in working your butt off for the weekend and being a part of this workshop, check it out on the 19th in room 202. It’s going to be AWESOME!

Then to end the episode, Marie Enger gave some great tips, tricks, and tutorials on making facial expressions  and character sheets for animation. I personally learned a lot and I hope you all did you; very educational. And if you missed out, I have pity on you for you truly missed out.

And to end, there was much rejoicing.

Brought to you by the working of Matt Sherry and viewers like you.