And After Graduation?

Paul K., who graduated in 2005, is a technical director at Pixar. Paul is in charge of the team of people who create crowd animations, so all of the crowd scenes that you saw of rats in Ratatouille were thanks to Paul's team (they actually went to a rat farm to study rat movements to ensure realistic results. Yuck). Paul did similar work in Wall-E .Paul's use of artificial intelligence techniques to create the crowds in animated films saves the animators months of work, which makes him a pretty useful guy at Pixar. And Paul reports that he can now look at an algorithm and know what the results will look like in an AI scene. Scary!

Alfie H. took the concepts that he learned from games and graphics software and put them to use in the non-profit world. First he created a community outreach course at Penn with the specific purpose of teaching community members how to envision and design a community center or housing project. Then, using free software, Alfie showed students how to make a viable model of the project. These skills also allowed area teens to garner jobs in the construction industry at a higher wage than the usual manual labor jobs they were qualified for. Meanwhile, Alfie was building a resource allocation game for use by NGOs. The idea was to replace violence ridden video games with similar, but practical games that teach players how to use resources for greater community good. Alfie is now the Associate Executive Director of Miracle Corners of the World (MCW), an international non-profit organization serving youth worldwide, where he leads community development projects. This work has taken him to Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. He is currently in Rwanda, building a community housing project for women and children left homeless by the aftermath of war rape during the genocide.

Craig M. moved to Hong Kong to become an independent book designer. He produces beautiful books with unique fonts on artisanal papers, printed with organic inks. When Craig found that most publishers weren't interested in printing books this way (it is quite expensive), Craig and a friend founded Chin Music Press, their own publishing company. They state: "Our goal is to resurrect some of the best practices of publishing in past centuries in books that tell decidedly modern stories. We want, on the one hand, to recreate that sense of awe book lovers get when they enter a rare book room and, on the other, to feed that appetite among readers for fresh, unflinching and entertaining looks at our world. In short, we want it all." Amazingly, they've succeeded! Chin Music Press has now been successfully operating for 4 years and yes, Amazon carries their books (Goodbye Madam Butterfly is their latest release).

Omer B. is the Associate Development Manager of the new Electronic Arts game, Dead Space (the release date is October), which is getting lots of attention. Dead Space is an original intellectual property that will 'introduce a new game experience' to the sci-fi and horror genres. The challenge of creating suspense in a game where the player must feel a certain amount of control is immense. Add to that the challenge of outsourcing portions of the game overseas, an absurd timeline, and a very small team of tech artists, and you can imagine how difficult the producer's job must be. Omer has won so many EA employee awards that they decided to give him an impossible task, but one that has the press talking!

Companies

The majority of our students go to work in the entertainment industry, with Disney and Electronic Arts as our largest employers at the moment. The list of companies at which DMD students have interned or worked is impressive and a small sampling includes:

• ABC News
• Activision
• American Jewish Committee
• Apple
• The Barbarian Group
• The Cartoon Network
• Chin Music Press
• Cisco
• Curious Pictures
• Crystal Dynamics (division of Eidos Games)
• Disney Animation
• Disney Imagineering
• DreamWorks Animation
• Electronic Arts
• Electric Sheep
• Framestore CFC
• Goldman Sachs
• Google
• Governor of New York (press office)
• HBO
• IMD
• Launch (division of Charlex)
• Maxis
• Meebo
• Microsoft
• Morgan Stanley
• MTV
• Neversoft
• ng:moco
• New York Times
• NSA
• Ogilvy and Mather
• Oracle
• OLM Digital
• Pixar Animation
• Q1 Technologies
• Rising Sun Pictures
• Seventeen Magazine
• Shaba Games
• Silvertree Media
• Sony Animation
• Starz Entertainment
• Teach for America
• Thunk Design
• UGO Networks
• United Health Care
• Vanguard Animation
• Working Library
• Weta Digital