Animation Mentor is putting the student highlight back into the hands of the students.  We let students create whatever they want – revealing themselves by sharing video, text, and anything else they feel is appropriate.  If you are currently an Animation Mentor student and you’d like to participate, send an email to newsletter (at) animationmentor.com and we’ll do our best to fit you in!

LET’S START AT THE BEGINNING. WHY ANIMATION?

I fell in love with animation very early on. I was probably 4 or 5 when I first saw King Kong and got hooked right away. It wasn’t long before I was watching everything Ray Harryhausen had ever done – the skeleton fight scene in Jason and the Argonauts, the Cyclops and Dragon in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad – I watched them over and over! And then I saw a stop motion movie called Mad Monster Party, which featured all the classic horror monsters, and robots, and zombies . . . even King Kong had a cameo! Well, from that point on I just assumed I’d be doing stop motion animation my whole life.

SO WHAT HAPPENED?

I went to film school at USC, majored in production, and right out of school managed to get hired on a stop motion version of Curious George. But then an opportunity came along to become a Disney Imagineer, dreaming up attractions for theme parks, and it seemed too exciting to pass up.

YOU ANIMATED FOR DISNEY?

No, actually. I started out as a dimensional designer, which meant that instead of drawing I helped create concept buildings and sculpting miniature models. Then I got side-tracked into writing and producing, editing and creating live-action movies and stage shows — all of which were fantastic experiences, of course! Disney has teams of incredibly creative and talented people, and the very name Disney creates opportunities for new and exciting things. For example, I had a chance to fly to the White House and film President Clinton recording a speech I worked on! (It was the audio for a life-size Audio-Animatronics® ‘robot’ version of Clinton for “The Hall of Presidents” show). There were lots of amazing adventures like that.

Later I got side-tracked again, into writing screenplays and books, and into a lot of other projects in publishing. It was a long while before I realized I should really be chasing my original dream of being an animator. But that’s what’s so special about Animation Mentor — everyone here is chasing their dreams! It’s hard not to be caught up by all the hope, energy, and inspiration of so many dreams!

DO YOU STILL DREAM OF DOING STOP MOTION?

I have nothing but awe for what it takes to create a stop motion film, but funnily enough, doing CG is a very, very similar thing. Both require building miniature sets and props, and then moving puppets one joint or control at a time. Both are very time-consuming and painstaking. You have to be able to envision the whole film and keep that vision in your head as you work on the tiniest little pieces of it, one frame at a time.

WHAT KEEPS YOU GOING?

I’m a control freak.

HA HA! WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

In spite of Shawn’s warning that animators are sometimes just ‘shiny tools’ in the director’s toolkit — and by that he meant the animator works at the director’s bidding (see his article “You Are a Tool” here) — the emergence of CG and the power of desktop computers has changed everything! Once I learned you could actually do professional quality animation at home, a strange gleam came into my eye. All of a sudden, there was nothing holding me back from creating new characters, new worlds, and telling the stories I wanted to tell! Mwah-ha-ha . . .

WHY, THEN, COME TO ANIMATION MENTOR?

It wasn’t long after I’d installed my animation software that I realized something was missing. Anyone can imagine a character, but learning to bring them to life, well, that’s no easy thing and there’s so much that goes into it — the laws of physics, body kinetics, a sense of timing, drama, finding individuality (the list goes on and on). I wanted to learn these things, and the cool thing was discovering I could learn them online, at the best animation training school on the planet!

I came to Animation Mentor because it’s the best place to learn. So many other places are just all over the map in what they teach, but Animation Mentor’s program is so well-designed and focused, they can take an animation newbie and build skill-after-skill, step-by-step until, 18 months later, you have the tools to pursue a real career in character animation! It’s been great!

WHAT’S THE MOST-IMPORTANT THING YOU’VE LEARNED SO FAR?

There’s probably no one important thing. Planning, for sure, is the key to success, but also (and this was the hard one for me to get in my head!), it’s important to keep things simple. You can take a single moment and explore the nuances of it instead of jumping from one big idea to the next.

DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE ANIMATED SCENE?

That’s a toughie. I always admired the way Chuck Jones could say volumes with just an eyebrow twitch or a wrinkle of the Grinch’s nose. The scene where Mr. Incredible as Bob Parr is called into his boss’s office and has to sit there, trying to restrain himself while Mr. Huph is saying things that make him want to explode. The sheer power and tension of that scene is incredible, and yet there’s very little animation going on – a quick glance out the window, or a fingertip stopping a pencil from jiggling – that sort of thing. There was a similar moment in Kung Fu Panda where Po, the ultimate fan-boy, tells the Furious Five that they’re so much bigger than their action figures, except for Mantis, who’s about the same size. Mantis has one antenna do a tiny twitch — that’s his whole reaction — and yet the whole theater burst into laughter at that moment. Amazing!

WHAT WOULD YOUR DREAM JOB BE?

To me, the ideal job doesn’t depend upon whether I’m working at a big studio or a small one; I just want to work with fun, talented people dedicated to creating the best animation possible! I like environments where everyone is involved and there’s lots of back-and-forth, sharing and input on projects. Just like Animation Mentor!

DO YOU HAVE ANY OTHER ADVICE FOR FUTURE AND FELLOW STUDENTS?

Yes! Never stop chasing your dreams! Learning animation is NOT easy and it takes a lot of patience and perseverance, but as long as you put the effort in it’ll be rewarding and worth it every step of the way!

Special thanks have to go out to Bobby, Shawn and Carlos. What they’ve created with Animation Mentor isn’t just fun and inspiring . . . it’s changed my life! Thanks guys!