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(prHWY.com) April 14, 2011 - Mumbai, India -- Lucasfilm Singapore has started - 'The Jedi Master's Program' (also referred to as "JuMP" - although there is no "u" in the title) which is an intensive, 6-month full time paid apprenticeship. The basic aim of this program is to help prepare entry level talent for high-end production work in Television Animation, Feature Animation,
degree in animation, Visual Effects, and Games.
This quarter, JuMP is running two tracks: one starting on June 28th (Organic Modeling), and the other starts on July 19th (Texturing). Additional tracks are yet to be confirmed for later this year and 2011. For more information, you could even visit their website: lasjedi.com
The program lasts for six months for which people of any nationality are free to apply; after which if the apprentice performs well they are absorbed as full time employees at Lucasfilm studio itself. 70% of the total students who started in the program were absorbed by Lucasfilm while the remaining went out to find jobs at other digital media companies in Singapore itself.
Apprentices are required to have graduated from their studies to be eligible to apply for this program. "We usually look for apprentices with a strong academic background and/or exposure to disciplines like animation, visual effects, game design/engineering, and fine art - as well as some industry experience' says Kelly Buchanan, Training department manager of the Jedi Masters Program(JuMP).
"We also now incorporate a test into our application process, which is essentially a mini-assignment. This is used as a baseline for seeing how well applicants do at executing both the technical and aesthetic skills related to a certain discipline - like modeling, or texturing, for example'' Kelly further adds. What's more interesting is that the faculty for JuMP predominantly consists of the Lucasfilm staff who are seasoned industry veterans from California and who come to Singapore to teach.
This program which began in the year 2007 has run 11- tracks until now with 8-12 students in each. This is also a very distinctive program in more than one way i.e. it consists of not only 3 months hands-on classroom training but also another 3 months of working on the production floor. Lucasfilm has four different production groups under one roof - TV Animation; Feature Animation; Visual Effects; and Games and they have the ability to place apprentices in any of the four groups.
A lot of times students have truly been lucky to work on actual projects. During the three months spent on the production floor in the second half of their
animation training, the apprentices are treated as a part of the production team. Depending on what work is in-house at that time, and what resources are available, the apprentices may be assigned actual production work. If not, they work on shots that have recently been completed, and repurposed for training. For example, some of the recent visual effects apprentices got to practice on shots from Transformers 2 and Iron Man 2.
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