Mike Jutan's World: Siggraph 2007

The second day of Siggraph was freakin' action-packed.

I saw a whole bunch of cool stuff on the showroom floor, got a ton of swag, and saw some neat presentations too. There was a talk on how Sony Imageworks used some crazy level set stuff to make the sandman character in Spider-Man 3. It looked amazing!! I got so much swag it was crazy, Disney pins, EA pins, several Maya shirts, Pixar Renderman teapots (this year they are white with Ratatouille chef hats on them) and tons more!! It was really fun to check out the booths as usual, and I wandered by the posters too.

For lunch we went to a place called Fred's and got some Mexican food. The girl turned up her nose at us when we said we wanted the "House Margherita" - she said, "Really? Don't you want one of the ones we are famous for?" Hilariously enough after we told her we just wanted the house one, we looked and the house one was called something like "Our famous house Margherita" haha!!

In the late afternoon I met up with Ian, Kev and Jake again and we dropped our stuff back at the hotel. I then went to the LucasFilm party!!!!!!!!! It was soooooooo awesome. I got a bunch of good (and free) food!! Awesome. Some nice grilled vegetables, chicken satay skewers, cheese and more. Also free drinks, so I got some White Russians and (for the Zach Braff in me), an Appletini (easy on the "Tini") haha.

That was SO fun and I saw a bunch of people from work there, from some students to prospective new employees to my new manager and all the awesome people I've met from work already. Amazing. I also won a "Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith" shirt, so that ROCKED!!

I then met Taylor, Gillian, Ian, Kev, Jon, Angelique and Jake at a Steak place and chilled out there, but didn't get any food cause I'd already eaten. But after we got Ice Cream. Creazyness. Then most people left, but Ian and I went to the Alias Tequilla Suite party!!

This was SO cool and I was really glad I got to go. John Gross was so nice and called me to invite me and give me directions. That was SO nice cause he was super insanely busy meeting customers ALL DAY... but still found a chance to call me and make sure I knew where the party was. So awesome. So I was REALLY psyched to go because I'd never been to the Alias Tequilla Suite before and it's such a legendary party. Ian and I were the only ones of our group of friends who were still out partying, so we hung out there, I chatted with lots and lots and lots of awesome people from Alias, and also some ex-Alians like Shawn and Carl who I also knew from Pixar. It was REAAAAAAAAALLY awesome to run into some people I didn't expect to see too like Monika, Sivanny, Rob, Tim and they were all really nice. Kevin Tureski also said Hi and wished me good luck at my new job!!! Crazy!!!!! It was so nice that everyone was happy to see me and stuff. What a nice group of people. John and I had a tequilla shot, haha!! It was sooooooooooooo fun and just ridiculous to finally make it to the Alias Tequilla Suite party after hearing so much about it for so long.

Ian and I headed back to the hotel about 2am, getting only about 5 or 6 hours of sleep before the next big day at Siggraph.