Mike Jutan's World: Siggraph 2008 Day 2: Evening events to the max

Wednesday afternoon I saw some of the pretty crazy 3D Motion Holograms from RabbitHoles, which is part of the Gnomon Gallery I believe it is. http://www.rabbitholes.com/

Then met up with Rachel and chatted with her friends from Wisconsin, and then saw Julien for like 2 seconds before they had to run off to the airport. Then headed back to the hotel and then off to the Renderman User's Group!! This was awesome, saw lots of old Pixar and Alias friends there, and had some tasty food and of course got my Renderman Teapot and Renderman 20th Anniversary Hat!!! Super awesome!!!!!!!! Stayed around briefly but then had to run to get to the Autodesk Masterclasses Reception which was back at the Westin. Headed over there and got a pile of free Autodesk shirts (thanks Lisa) and then met Alex Ongaro (from DreamWorks, and who also presented at the Maya API Conference this year!!) We chatted a bunch about - you guessed it - 3D Animation Studio pipelines. :) Then ran into a few other familiar faces, the legendary, now "Maya Master" Andrea Maiolo!!! Also ran into Rob Ormond and almost passed out I was so excited. I haven't seen that dude in AGES!!! That rocked. Lots of good food and cheese there too.

All partied/socialized out? Nope. Then dropped off my stuff, and met up with P. Coleman and Paul Kanyuk and a few others as they were finishing up at the RenderMan User's Group. Then back to the hotel, and checked my email to see that I had 7 fwd's of the "this is where the Alias Tequila Suite party is going to be!" Then we decided to trek there by walking about 30 min. We got there and a few people were there but they said the bar sucked and they were going... back to the hotel we just came from. :) So we walked back, another 30 min, and made a friend along the way who worked at Autodesk Montreal (a former Kaydara employee), super awesome. We also ended up walking on a sidewalk that turned into a highway onramp, so we had to scale a dirt hill and then hop a fence!! Good times!!

Then got to the Westin, wandered around the rotating restaurant at the top, couldn't find anyone, (turns out they were in a bar downstairs) and so we took off down Figueroa St, still walking... and ran into like 20 old-school Alias|Wavefront people!!!!!!!!!! Holy crap!!!!!! This was amazing as Dave Atkinson and Chris Carden were there, people I haven't seen for freakin' ages. Amazing. From there we went to the Disney R&D Party, where I saw some friends from the Maya API Conference, and chatted a bunch with some of Rob's crazy British friends from MPC in London. Also Ryan from work and a few other peeps were there, it rocked.

Then, yes, more walking!! Back to the Westin as we found out the Alias Tequila Suite was actually in the bar downstairs. Got in there and half the place was old school Alias peeps and a bunch of my old Pixar friends too!! Amazing. So we chatted in there for ages with people, I ran into John and also Chris again too. Fantastic.

From there we were pretty tired, and we'd walked all around downtown LA all day and night too. So we went up to get P. Coleman's stuff from Paul's room and ended up chatting about a bunch of stuff for another hour. Finally got back to my room at like 4am and was asleep in like 2 seconds. What an AMAZING day!!!!!!!!!

Rachel's hilarious Siggraph ASIA keychain

Wilshire Grand, where the Pixar party was

Sweet

Waaaalll-E!!!!!!!!

Hey, it's P. Coleman again!!

A more hip-hop version of the previous shot

Sun setting at the Westin

Rob Ormond?!?!??!?!?!??!?!?! Amazing. Also, I love the mustache.

On the way back to our hotel there were all these flashing lights and police cars... then we realized they were NYPD police cars!!! They were filming an episode of the TV show "House"!!!!