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What is your name and your current occupation?
Hi everybody, my name is Virgil Mihailescu and I’m currently a character animator at The Creative Assembly, working on Rome 2 – Total War.
What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I had to buss tables and wait for dishes at the dish machine with my international student schoolmates (the only ones left around during the long boring summer in Bowling Green Ohio..). I then worked in catering when I was living in Chicago and had to serve the Romanian president (I’m Romanian btw) at some weird official breakfast meeting.. probably my life’s most epic achievement? :} And I worked one day in flooring but did the easier parts of this job, which is probably one of the most awful jobs invented by humans. And then I worked for a month remodeling an apartment, well.. just destroying it in fact… which included breaking a cast iron tub with a sledgehammer, which I found extremely satisfying and fun.. and a completely awful experience at the same time, if you can imagine that!
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
The current one, Rome 2.. because working on the Total War series is a privilege, I think. And then I got to animate more animals than I ever animated before, and it’s such a cool project to be working on. And Tintin, which was for me my first project at Ubisoft and the first game I ever worked on, and, surprise of surprises, only 2 months into the project I was chosen team lead, or animation coordinator.. as it was officially called. Which, as you can imagine, came as an adrenaline shot and it also turned into one of the most challenging but also very exciting experiences.
Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I was born in Brasov, Romania, I started writing ‘novels’ and drawing ‘comic books’ when I was about 7 or 8 years old.. To better understand this.. you have to imagine that, in fact, my first novel had about 30 pages and probably half of them were drawings… and my characters were mostly traveling, eating, and sleeping (when they were not dealing with savage Indian tribes in the jungles of.. India). As a visual artist I’m Continue reading
