Have you ever had the feeling that you're stuck at a crossroads -- torn between two decisions? Should I or shouldn't I? What if it doesn't turn out the way I hope? What if I go down this path, and end up wishing I chose another?

Sound familiar?

All of those questions are far too familiar to Bobby, Carlos, and I. But you know what? Those questions... that fear... the unknown -- that's really where creativity lives.

When we decided that we wanted to teach animation in a way that it's never been taught online before, and to teach it the way we wish we were taught, we were so excited. We'd have these marathon brainstorming sessions, coming up with tons of ideas. What we found when we would try to implement some of the ideas, they could sometimes turn out completely different than what we thought.

Before AnimationMentor.com became what it is today, it went through quite a few iterations. The original idea was more of a telephone coaching program. We thought students could send us their assignments, and then we would talk to each one over the phone about their work. Then we realized that there wasn't enough time in the day to work with the amount of students we hoped to have. So we decided we'd take it online, but at the time our big idea was to video tape ourselves teaching using a white board and a television we could play reference and examples on.

As we were doing our first video recording session, the camera broke! We always think of that as such a blessing, because sitting there staring at that broken camera, we couldn't help but laugh about how amateur the whole thing felt.

That night we really got thinking and decided to radically change our whole concept into the AnimationMentor.com you know today.

The road isn't always easy, but we found that the hardships and the frustrations are where our most creative solutions come from. We've learned to take risks, to trust ourselves, and even when we think something is scary, to take that next step to make the impossible possible. I think at the end of the day, we won't regret our failures, what we'll regret are the times we didn't even try.

These lessons don't only apply to life, though; they apply to animation.

Take risks, trust yourself, and even when you think something is scary, make the impossible possible. If you never try, you'll never know... right?