Animation Mentor Graduates Help Power the Oscar Awards

By Bill Desowitz

It's Oscar Award nomination season, and Animation Mentor graduates are behind some of this year's potential animation contenders, including DreamWorks' Puss in Boots, Industrial Light & Magic's (ILM) Rango and Blue Sky's Rio. We spoke with alumni who worked on each film — and they all agree that the Character Animation Program has prepared them for animation careers at the highest level.

Peer Lemmers – Puss in Boots
"Animation Mentor changes the way you think about animation ..."
Peer Lemmers embodies the spirit of many Animation Mentor students. He was freelancing as an illustrator. Then he went to see Peter Jackson's King Kong, was blown away by the computer graphics — and immediately became inspired to pursue a passion for animation. Some online research introduced him to Animation Mentor ... and the rest, shall we say, was eye-opening.

For Lemmers, Animation Mentor wasn't so much a school with a core curriculum (though that is very much the case) — or even a means to learn industry software. Instead, he explains, "Animation Mentor changes the way you think about animation, which is something that I really needed. The mentors really help you to observe, interpret and ultimately present your work in a different way. How [the mentors] help you to structure your ideas was revealing.

"What I got from the [Character Animation Program] — especially Class One — was the principles of animation. The mentors emphasize the industry workflow." Lemmers would then discover the true value of these lessons, particularly the workflow and means of thinking. That's because he soon landed a series of animation assignments. He began with Reel FX, followed by his work on Cats and Dogs 2 at Tippett Studio.

But that was just the start. Lemmers felt that the use of body mechanics in his Animation Mentor short was what caught the eye of DreamWorks — ultimately joining the studio as a cycle animator on Kung Fu Panda 2, then completing a short stint on Megamind before working again as a cycle animator on Puss in Boots.

Lemmers channeled the production-ready mindset that his mentors emphasized. This was especially helpful during Puss in Boots. "There was an understanding around the studio that Puss was going to be the star — this was going to be his movie. So we all had to up the level of performance ... There was a lot of time spent on remodeling and re-rigging Puss, and the amount of controls to allow for detail was significant ... You can easily get lost in that but you have to find the set of controls that works for you." Lemmers also remembered what his mentors taught him — to constantly communicate. No wonder he felt right at home at DreamWorks.

Simon Fillat – Rango
"... You could really affect how the movie came out ..."
Simon Fillat, who worked as an animation assistant on Rango, graduated from the online animation program five years ago after starting at ILM in a technical capacity doing back-ups and loading frames online for shots. But since he had a motion graphics background with After Effects and had never done any character animation before, Animation Mentor was especially invaluable in preparing him. "It was page one for me and it showed me how it was done. Animation Mentor is the only training I've had," Fillat says. "As soon as I got animation shots here at ILM, they let me jump right in."

Since this was ILM's first foray into feature animation, Fillat cut his teeth on VFX, doing match moving in the layout department. Then he got a job as an animation assistant on the first two Transformers movies before getting Rango.

"Rango was a huge project for ILM. It was also a huge project for me because I got to do a good chunk of acting shots for the first time," Fillat adds. "We were working on every single shot, so you could really affect how the movie came out. We were working directly with Gore [Verbinski], who was directing us at our desks in the view station. That was a really unique experience because there aren't that many directors who do that. And he is so story- and actor-driven. We were in our animation acting room and he acted out a scene with me on one of the shots I worked on."

Fillat noticed that his work on Rango was no different than his work in class. Fillat spent half his time helping animators get their shots into the pipeline and assisted other animators when an asset got changed. He spent the rest of the time on his own shots, which were all hand close-ups for Rango and Doc. "Hands were my claim to fame but I also got to animate the big spigot when it's being turned on."

Rich Fournier – Rio
"...The best ideas, the best work — come from working together and bouncing around ideas ..."
For Rich Fournier, who worked in video games and was a self-taught animator, Animation Mentor helped him make the jump into feature films. The formal education enabled him to secure a position at Blue Sky, where he's been working for nearly four years. In fact, he got hired at Blue Sky as a contractor after completing his fourth Animation Mentor course, working on Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. He eventually got picked up on staff while he completed the Character Animation Program. "Animation Mentor was a great experience," Fournier admits. "It gave me a structured foundation and they really taught me about workflow and how to progress through a shot.

"The really great thing is that I am now a mentor at Animation Mentor myself. It's a great chance for me to interact with current students and I think I have a keen understanding of what they're going through because I've graduated from the program. And on top of that, critiquing work every week and interacting with the students really keeps my skills sharp — and their enthusiasm keeps my enthusiasm going."

For Fournier, the experience as both a student and current mentor has proven invaluable. At Blue Sky, as with most studios, the director approves the cameras and the angles and makes sure everything is cut together the right way. And he was introduced to this studio environment methodology while working on a layout project as an Animation Mentor student.

Fournier also leveraged his coursework while working on Rio. He says that it was challenging to animate birds. "Normally, if you have furry animals or creatures on screen, they're more human than animalistic, and animating the birds as birds was tough," he suggests. "You'll notice that with the hand gestures here and there, they're not actual hands. Keeping the look and feel of birds while integrating the character aspects and acting was a lot of fun, and the bird rigs were amazing. They put a lot of time on the front end doing pre-production work. They had experts come in and we talked about how birds fly and their mannerisms. They paid really close attention to keeping character continuity throughout the film and I think the look and feel of the characters from shot to shot is consistent. I remember at Animation Mentor, we were always taught that the best ideas, the best work — come from working together and bouncing around ideas. So one of the things I like about working at Blue Sky is the camaraderie."

As you can see, the strength of the Animation Mentor curriculum is alive and well with Best Animated Feature contenders for the Academy Award. As Lemmers, Fillat and Fournier have shown, their Animation Mentor education has prepared them for the highest level of Hollywood work ... and perhaps, the highest acclaim.