A few Fridays ago, March 14th, I had the opportunity to visit Blur Studio in Culver City with a group of my fellow digital arts students. Blur is a company that has produced various 3D character animation, design, and visual effects for films, television, video games, and more. Some credits for Blur include James Cameron’s “Avatar,” “Thor: The Dark World,” and the playfully animated goldfish cracker in Pepperidge Farm’s Goldfish commercials.

We arrived at Blur for our 11:00 a.m. tour and I was immediately struck by how casual the work environment for the studio was. Everyone’s workspaces were close to each other so that they could easily consult and interact with one another. I observed workers on the ground floor modeling on Maya, and just a few rows over, there were workers adding lighting effects to completely different projects. We moved upstairs and could see artists working on storyboards and character designs on their personal Cintiq drawing tablets as well. While Blur is not necessarily a large studio, wherever we went, we could see people working on many different effects for numerous projects. I observed the employees working diligently on their projects while still being able to joke around with their fellow workers. I even learned that each employee has his or her own Nerf gun, and random Nerf gun wars can break out on a daily basis.

On this tour, I really got to see more of what opportunities are out there for digital arts students like myself. Workers were lined up and working on various projects while collaborating at the same time. I talked to one of the workers and one of the best qualities he mentioned about working at Blur was how the work you do is more fun than work. This experience motivated me to continue working hard in school so I can have the same opportunity in my career.

We were able to see a screening of some of the new trailers they have released for recent video games as well as a breakdown of how they created certain scenes in “Thor: The Dark World.” Students were able to ask questions to experienced digital artists with the company, making it a very successful and informative day at Blur Studio.

I’m looking forward to the next opportunity!