He is hoping to make it big in Hollywood working with the best of the best in animation and film.

On this episode of the Supercast, meet Ethan Jones, a former student who talks about his time at the Jordan Academy for Technology and Careers (JATC) North Campus. It’s a place where Ethan found the confidence to pursue his dream of heading to Hollywood to work in animation and film.

We also meet a JATC North teacher, who Ethan credits with setting him on the path to career success.

Anthony Godfrey:

Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. He's going to make it big in Hollywood, working with the best of the best in animation and film.

On this episode of the Supercast, meet Ethan Jones, a former student who talks about his time at the Jordan Academy for Technology and Careers, JATC, North Campus. It's a place where Ethan found the confidence to pursue his dream of heading to Hollywood to work in animation and film. We will also meet a JATC North teacher, whom Ethan credits with setting him on the path to career success.

We're talking now with Ethan Jones, a former student of the Jordan Academy for Technology and Careers. Ethan, thank you very much for talking with us.

Ethan Jones:

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Anthony Godfrey:

You're joining us via Zoom from where?

Ethan Jones:

Los Angeles.

Anthony Godfrey:

And tell me about the career that you have now as a result of a lot of factors in your life, one of which includes your experience at JATC.

Ethan Jones:

Yeah, so yeah, I started my creative pursuits at JATC, doing the digital media program. And during that time, I got to do a tour of Gnomon, which is the college I just barely graduated from. There at JATC, I kind of was exposed to 3D animation, and that kind of kickstarted my aspirations for the discipline. Back then, I wanted to be a filmmaker. And thankfully, JATC was like, no, animation's way cooler. And thanks to my teacher. Yeah, that's the dream happened.

Anthony Godfrey:

Tell me about your teacher. What do you remember about your teacher, the class, that experience at JATC?

Ethan Jones:

The class was pretty great. My teacher was amazing, Lisa Wadzeck. She teaches the digital media program at JATC North. And she really just pushed me and showed me these new career paths I could go down. How the program works, you kind of are like a jack of all trades for the first half of the year. And then the next half, you get to kind of specialize in something. And so I did the JATC program twice. The first time I did video production, and then the second, I did 3D animation. And that 3D side of things, the creative freedom I had was just perfect for me. And yeah, since then, I haven't looked back, and that's my career path since.

Anthony Godfrey:

Tell me about what attracted you to the 3D work after you were exposed to that through the program where you get to try out some different things.

Ethan Jones:

Yeah, what really bothered me about traditional filmmaking, especially being a young student, was I didn't have a lot of resources. So in order to make a film look good, you have to be at a good location, somewhat decent camera, and a million other equipment, lighting, audio, all that stuff. And as a poor student, I couldn't have access to those things. And so 3D, all I needed to do was just dedicate my time, and I could make whatever I want.  I think that aspect of 3D is what really attracted me to make the movies I want to make. Eventually, I want to be a director, so the 3D is kind of temporary. It's just a way of me understanding the discipline and getting to work on a few productions eventually. And hopefully, one day, live out my real dream, which is to make my own stuff.

Anthony Godfrey:

So the 3D animation allowed you to be creative without being bound by quality of equipment or circumstances you could really let your imagination take off.

Ethan Jones:

Exactly, yeah.

Anthony Godfrey:

Now tell me about the training that you had after leaving high school.

Ethan Jones:

So I went to Gnomon School of Visual Effects and Animation. It's a trade school. They specialize just in my industry for both film and games. And so they've won a lot of awards. They're considered one of the best schools in the world for my trade. At first, I did not even apply to that school because I was too nervous to. And my JTech teacher kept telling me, just apply. The worst they could say is no, and then you could work on it and eventually get there. But you're never going to get it if you don't apply.

And that self-doubt, I stopped. I didn't apply for six months. And I kind of regret that, but I've had a lot of experiences since then that are good that kind of kickstarted my career in ways that I didn't foresee. But after I applied, I got in. And then for the last three years, I've been kind of rigorously training in 3D in all aspects from programming to modeling, texturing, lighting, rigging, the whole pipeline.

It kind of works the same way J Tech does, kind of funny. So the first year, you kind of learn everything. And then the next two years, because it's a three-year bachelor's degree program, the next two years that you study, you get to specialize in either film or games. And I specialize in film. It's kind of funny now looking back. That's kind of how J Tech works. I think that's the perfect way to do it, get you exposed to everything. And then you get to choose what you're really passionate about. It's a good way of learning.

Anthony Godfrey:

And I love that your teacher helped encourage you to apply. The worst they can say is no, but it can feel pretty terrible to be told no, because that can feel like somebody saying, no, you have no potential. No, you should not follow this path. Not just no, you're not admitted to our school. So congratulations on completing that program. And I'm really glad to hear that JATC seems to mirror what they do there.

Ethan Jones:

Yeah, that's great.

Anthony Godfrey:

So now, what piqued your initial interest in film? You say you started out wanting to do film and then moved to 3D. Where did that initial interest, that spark come from?

Ethan Jones:

I got interviewed by a couple articles, a couple magazines, and I kind of got to reflect during that time on what made me the way I am. And I think looking back, I think it's my dad who really kickstarted me, because as a kid, he would kind of tell me stories, and he would play movie soundtracks, and he would kind of involve us in the story somehow. And so it would be like a night in a desert or something and then we'd have this awesome movie. And in my brain, I could picture the movie he was pitching to us. I think that mixed with my mom kind of pushing me to read a lot of books. I fell in love with storytelling.

And then at the age of 10, my dad actually owns a media production company, so he does a lot of commercial work in the Salt Lake area. And I got to basically job shadow him on a couple productions when I was really young. And just kind of seeing how that worked, I knew I belonged there. I just didn't know how I was going to get there. And then middle school came. I was kind of making my own kind of silly stop-motion, Lego animations. And then high school hit and my mom told me about the JTech program. And since then, the rest is history.

Anthony Godfrey:

Great support from your parents being aware of that program. And I love that your mom helped push you toward reading and that your dad fostered that creativity from an early age. Imagining the movie to go with the soundtrack, that just sounds fantastic. We're big movie fans in my family. So the letterbox accounts, tracking all their movie watching and all that is a big deal. So thinking about that and thinking about the soundtrack and the creativity levels that were encouraged by your family. That's exciting. Tell me about the experience seeing your dad at work.

Ethan Jones:

I think as a kid, you kind of look at your dad as this awesome person. I always thought that when I was young. So seeing my dad kind of work his craft. Kids typically like to mimic their parents and they kind of want to be like them one day. And since I was a little toddler to an early teenager, that's all I wanted to be. And then it's kind of funny at like 13, 14, I wanted to be the opposite. I wanted to do something else. And I kind of went full circle and went back to wanting to be like my dad.

Anthony Godfrey:

That is not an unfamiliar cycle. It's exciting that you're where you are now. So tell me about your work currently in LA now that you've graduated. Tell me some of the projects that you've been involved with and some of the work that you're doing.

Ethan Jones:

Yeah, so currently the film industry’s in repair. We have the actors and writers strike that kind of took out a lot of the film jobs. I graduated this year in September. So it's been about a couple of months and they told me right before I graduated it's the worst time to graduate in 50 years. So that was kind of comforting. But since then I've been working as a freelance CG artist. I've been able to pick up a few gigs here and there from online freelancing sites. I'm currently under NDA, so I can't necessarily talk specifically what I do. But it's not film. It's more like video game related. But yeah, since then I've just been doing freelancing.

Anthony Godfrey:

Since you're bound by a non-disclosure agreement for whatever work you're doing, just kind of tell me the types of work that you're doing. Are you creating figures that have been described to you or what exactly does work look like even though you can't give specifics about a particular project?

Ethan Jones:

Sure. So typically in a production, this is kind of what I'm doing. We have concept artists who would make what I'm doing is specifically environment work. So I get a lot of props for lamps or barrels or stylized pieces. And I then create those for the environment, whatever environment they're creating for their game. So as a CG generalist, typically, this is kind of hard to explain, especially the people who aren't familiar with a lot of computer stuff. But in a CG pipeline, you have a lot of different disciplines and I was trained as a general.

So I can do all of them from modeling, texturing, lighting, rigging, animation, the final rendering, and compositing. Those are kind of the main disciplines. A lot of people specialize in one of those. As a jack of all trades in that field, it's easier for me to get work that way because everyone needs somewhere I can fit anywhere in a production pipeline, which is nice. That's kind of the stuff I do.

Anthony Godfrey:

So the CGI work that you do for video games, not to be disclosed, is as you said, it's texture, it's lighting, it's other things. I've seen articles where if the lighting is off, the viewer or the player, as it were, may not be able to identify, “huh, the light on that barrel looks weird.” But you look at it and it just feels artificial. It doesn't feel right. It just feels like something is off. So we can really tell without knowing exactly what's wrong if something isn't quite what it ought to look like.

How can you tell when you've hit the mark? Do you run it past people who haven't seen it before? Or how does that work? Because I would imagine that after you've worked on something for a while, it's tough to see any of the flaws because you're so deep into it.

Ethan Jones:

Yeah, it's kind of funny you mentioned lighting. Lighting is actually the most important aspect in all art, basically, even photography. If you have bad lighting, the whole scene looks bad. So when it comes to, you know, getting pure feedback on whether something looks good or not, I typically I go to people in my – I have a pretty good connection from everyone at Gnomom. My teachers are all working in the industry. I got to learn modeling from the guy who made the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars. There's a ton of cool little people I got to meet that I'm now friends with.

So I go to them whenever I have something like a personal work. Obviously, I can't, you know, my work work stuff, I can't show them yet. But when I'm making my own personal work, I typically like to go to them and like, you know, what can I fix or like, could you critique this? And you know, as an artist, it's very important to be open to critique. I feel like, you know, going to other people who either are in your industry who can tell you specifically, you know, like your model needs to like be higher poly or whatever, or even my family I go to just to get an overall like, is this cool looking? It's as simple as that. I feel like anyone can tell you if an art is cool or not.

Anthony Godfrey:

Yeah, well, and it's pretty awesome to be able to go to Millennium Falcon guy and say what do you think?

Ethan Jones:

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Anthony Godfrey:

That's amazing. Stay with us. When we come back, we talked to one of Ethan's teachers credited with setting him on a promising career path.

Break:

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Anthony Godfrey:

What would you say to anybody who's considering taking either the film classes or the 3D modeling classes at JATC?

Ethan Jones:

I would say the best advice I can give you is just hang in there and the learning curve is very steep. Learning 3D is very tough. It's not an easy thing. It can be very kind of demotivating when you see your stuff and you kind of compare yourself to other people. I would just say focus on your own journey and everyone starts somewhere.

Some people kind of pick it up quick. Some people don't. There's a lot to learn and also learning how to learn. A school can teach you what they want to teach you, but there's a lot of things that you still need to learn. Learning on your own, having that passion, going to YouTube, kind of picking up new skills will serve you far better in life. That goes beyond film. It's just like a life lesson I learned learning art.

Anthony Godfrey:

As you mentioned, the writer's strike and the actor's strike have been resolved, but it takes a while for things to work through the production line and kind of get to you at that point, which is why you said it's the worst time in 50 years. Hey, you can only look up from here. It's only going to get better from here, right? When those projects come through, is it your hope to then work for a studio? Is that kind of how that works or for a particular company? You say you're doing freelance now. What's the next step once that wave, that kind of void that was created by the strike ends and the wave comes back?

Ethan Jones:

Yeah, yeah. I think my dream would to work at a studio called Industrial Light and Magic. They did Star Wars. They kind of work on every giant movie you see. They do more than Star Wars. I'm open to working for any studio just to get more experience in a production studio environment.

Anthony Godfrey:

Even I know Industrial Light and Magic, that's a great aspiration and I think you're well on your path. When you get your opportunity to direct and you and I are chatting on set, what genre of movie will you be making?

Ethan Jones:

That's a good question. I love all genres. I think it's funny because I've had life experiences in my life that kind of lead me to tell stories that have impacted me. A lot of the stories I tell are stories of grief, of loss. In 2013, I lost my brother, Mitchel, to Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Since then, my dad wrote a blog called Mitchel's Journey. I think that experience, losing my brother, kind of made me tell stories about grief and about loss. Really it'll be more heartfelt stories like that that really draw me. I also do have a lot of love for sci-fi films too. I'm only 23. I have hopefully another 60 years of my life. Hopefully, I'll be able to make a lot of more genres, different films.

Anthony Godfrey:

Many decades of creativity ahead. I'm glad that you acknowledged how I slipped in an invitation to be on set and see you in action in the future. I'm going to hold you to that because I know you have great things ahead. It's inspiring to hear about your family's impact. I'm thrilled to hear about the role JATC played in your path forward. I wish you the very best. You're well-trained. You've had some great experiences. I have no doubt you have a lot of success ahead of you.

Ethan Jones:

Thank you so much.

Anthony Godfrey:

We're here at JATC North Campus with Lisa Wadzeck to talk about her program. Tell us a little bit about what you teach here.

Lisa Wadzeck:

Well, I teach digital media, which most people don't know what that means. It's basically being creative with a computer as your main tool. We do animation, audio, video, graphics, game development. It gives a chance to explore different ways that they can communicate and get messages across and actually do it as a career and get paid for doing something they love.

Anthony Godfrey:

Speaking of which, we spoke with Ethan, one of your former students, who is now working in LA in this area. How exciting is that to hear from him? I understand you've stayed in touch.

Lisa Wadzeck:

Yeah. I try to stay connected with my kids through LinkedIn so I can see the cool things that they do. He recently shared that he'd been highlighted in that article. I'm just so stinkin' proud of him. Just amazing things. It's just so fun to see students go out and accomplish and do the things that they love and want to do.

Anthony Godfrey:

It's interesting to me that he came in expecting to want to do video production and came away wanting to do animation and do some of the other digital work that you described because you were so influential in his path. I always say that classes at JATC North or South are useful sometimes because they draw you to something and sometimes because they draw you in a different direction from where you expect it to go. Tell me a little bit about that.

Lisa Wadzeck:

That's one of the things I love about this program is the first semester they come in and they try a little bit of everything. They try the graphics, the audio, the video. A lot of the kids will come in with that preconceived, I want to be an animator. I want to do video production. Once they get into it and try it, the skills needed sometimes are maybe a little bit different than what they anticipated. They decide, maybe this isn't for me, but wow, I really enjoy doing this over here.

Second semester the kids then get to specialize in one of the areas that they tried for a semester. Some of the kids will come in and do what they thought they were going to love doing. A lot of the kids will come in and do something completely different because they found something new that they really liked.

Anthony Godfrey:

Ethan's post-high school training, which is at a prestigious establishment, was the same sort of structure that you just described. It was more general exposure and then they get to be more specific in what they pursue. You prepared him extremely well and many other students for a career in digital media. Beyond the natural curiosity and obvious creativity that's required, what are some of the other characteristics you look for in a student to be successful here?

Lisa Wadzeck:

Students who, I like what you said about the curiosity, students who have a natural curiosity and just start exploring and playing. Instead of waiting for me to show them how to do something, I'm just going to go figure it out. We've got this day and age with YouTube at our fingertips. It's amazing what we can start figuring out online. To be honest, the reason I know as much as I do is because I've got 30 kids at a time who go, ooh, how do you do this? I say, I don't know, let's Google it, figure it out. That drive to just learn on your own is the biggest thing because technology is always changing. What they're learning in class now is not going to be how they're going to be doing it in four or five years out in industry.

Anthony Godfrey:

Learning that you can figure it out on your own and that you can, with a little creativity and hard work, do some things you didn't expect to be able to do, is the best preparation for a profession that's going to change a lot over the years.

Lisa Wadzeck:

Exactly.

Anthony Godfrey:

Well, you've created a very fertile learning environment for that to take place. I was walking in, when we walked in to talk with you, we're here in the lab with all these graphics around the room. There was one student here still working on a project and it's amazing. So we're going to be back to talk more about the great work that your students are doing. Thank you for everything that you do to provide this sort of learning environment for students.

Lisa Wadzeck:

Thank you.

Anthony Godfrey:

Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Supercast. Remember, education is the most important thing you will do today. We'll see you out there.

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