“I went to a presentation given by Doug Roble, and loved him so much I decided to apply for a job at Digital Domain.” (Roble, creative director of software at Digital Domain, won a technical achievement Academy award for a camera tracking system and a scientific and engineering Academy award for a fluid simulation system.)
Inspired by Roble, Mokhberi turned down a job at Microsoft to work in tech services at Digital Domain. Once at Digital Domain, though, he found himself tinkering with computer problems, which wasn’t exactly what he had in mind.
When the winning team of students
from the Paris-based animation school
Gobelins walked on stage at
SIGGRAPH to accept the Audience
Prize and the Best of Show Award for
their film ‘Oktapodi,' it marked a culmination of an intense journey for the talented crew, and an improbable one for the only American team member, Emud Mokhberi.
'Oktapodi' was created by Julien Bocabeille, François-Xavier Chanioux, Olivier Delabarre, Thierry Marchand, Quentin Marmier, Emud Mokhberi.
For one thing, two years ago, Mokhberi didn’t speak a word of French. “Attending Gobelins was an accident,” he says. For another, until a couple years before that, Mokhberi hadn’t considered animation as a possible career.
“It’s not like this was a passion that I worked toward,” he says. “It was a slow, slow process. It was unintentional.” But now, the accidental animator might find himself sitting in the audience on Oscar night alongside his former classmates.
The SIGGRAPH Best of Show win, one of ten festival awards 'Oktapodi' has scored so far, qualifies the animated comic adventure love story for Oscar competition.
It’s fitting that SIGGRAPH might fuel Mokhberi’s animation / visual effects career. “I went to my first SIGGRAPH in 2001,” he says. “I liked CG, but until then, I really knew nothing about computer graphics.” At the time, he’d just graduated from UCLA with a degree in computer science. “I didn’t do any programming at all,” he says. “I felt like I wasn’t living up to my potential. But, in hindsight, it was the best thing I could have done. I got to know a lot of different people; I talked to visual effects supervisors. When I went back to UCLA, I knew what I needed to do to be successful in the industry. I understood that they wanted people who were strong technically and artistically.”
So, while he studied for a masters’ degree in computer science at UCLA, he also took art classes and investigated the University’s renowned film school. There, he signed up for an introductory animation class. And, that opened his eyes to a new career path. “The class was open to everyone,” he says. “The point was to get an introduction and move on. But, I liked it so much, I took another class.” When he finished his masters in computer science, he transferred to UCLA’s film school to work on an MFA.
Meanwhile, his wife, a French history student, needed to live in Paris for a year. “I advanced my candidacy so that all I needed to do was finish a film, and I could do that anywhere,” Mokhberi says. “So, the original idea was that I would work on my film in Paris.”
Instead, he decided to apply to Gobelins where, unlike UCLA, he could work with a team. “At UCLA, it’s one person, one film,” he says. “At Gobelins, the students form groups based on who you want to work with and the type of film you want to make.”
His studies at UCLA qualified him to enter the last year of Gobelins’ three-year animation program. One problem. The school wanted him to know enough French to be able to understand a basic lecture and to ask questions – in French. Mokhberi didn’t speak a word of French, but he submitted an application anyway. Then, he signed up for eight weeks of intense French classes at UCLA. “It was the equivalent of one year’s study,” he says.
It was enough. He flew to Paris in June for the formal application process – three days of tests and an interview. And, the school accepted him. He and his wife moved to Paris on September 1, and he started school September 5.
“Most of the lectures were animation centric,” he says. “I understood just enough to want to understand more and the other students were super nice. But, also, I like to be in control of a situation, so even if I didn’t understand, I wouldn’t allow myself to be left out.”
