By Katie Robinson
NewsLeader Staff
Apr 29 2005
A 22-year-old visual arts student could soon become $20,000 richer.
Burnaby resident Jordan Hilliard was just nine years old when Terminator 2: Judgement Day hit theatres, and 11 when Jurassic Park came on the scene. Yet, he was fascinated with Terminator’s shape-shifting cyborg terminating anything in site, and loved the then modern graphics of Jurassic Park’s Tyrannosaurus Rex.
All it took were those two films to direct the young boy into a career of computer animation.
Now years later, he’s just finished a four-year degree program at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and today [Saturday] finds out if his two-minute, 3-D digital animated short wins the Electronic Arts Canada Great Canadian Art Competition.
The competition was developed this year to support graphic arts education and promote young talent in the thriving industry. After a year of ironing out details, the competition – Canada’s largest prize payout for students and universities – was launched on Dec. 1.
It was open to graduating, post-secondary students, requiring them to submit a five minute, 3-D digital animation that’s judged by EAC staff. The deadline for submissions was April 1 and the top 25 finalists were flown to Burnaby on Thursday.
The finalists experience a behind-the-scenes look at how video games are created. They’re subjected to individual, final judging by a panel of experts giving them criticism, praise and tips. And today, at the evening gala presentation, the grand prize winner will be announced.
The grand prize winner receives $20,000 cash with a matching grant given to the winner’s school.
“What would I do with the $20,000? Gee, I just don’t know,” Hilliard said, sitting in front of his computer screen Wednesday afternoon.
Three first place winners receive $3,000, three second place winners receive $1,500 and three third place winners get $500.
Hilliard believes he’s got a good shot at winning it all. He’s been working on the short since September for his final school project and describes it as being a little bit of everything.
“I wanted to try everything so I could see what I like to do,” he said, admitting the action is his favourite.
“You can almost tell I kind of focussed the most on the action clips. At one point I had to hold myself back and stop messing around with the action scenes, because there were others I had to focus on too.”
The animated story is a somewhat of an autobiography that features a graphic artist trying to decide what kind of film to produce. Hilliard uses 10-second clips to ask his audience what they would like to see.
“How about a scary movie?” the character asks, and then the lights in the studio go off and suddenly a monster appears. Car chases, blood-splattering shoot outs and more were also created.
Fifteen years ago, a computer-animation career was almost unheard of. But then the industry skyrocketed with theatres welcoming computer brilliance from such movies as The Matrix, Tomb Raider, The Mummy and not to mention cartoon masterpieces that include Pixar’s Toy Story, A Bugs Life and Shrek. Now it’s the career to have, and Hilliard is sure he’ll be one of the greats.
He was already offered a job with EAC prior to the competition, but couldn’t accept as he hadn’t yet finished school. And then on Wednesday, EAC staff called again for another interview.
“I think I’ve got a job there,” he said with a smirk on his face. “The industry’s huge here – there’s tons to choose from.”
Eventually he’d like to become an art director for strictly cartoon productions similar to those of Pixar. But after a year of hours and hours logged in front of his computer screen, he’ll first be taking a much-deserved break.
