A character animation diploma can be applied in virtually any direction within the animation industry. Special effects, advertising, games for TV or games for hand-held devices and, of course, feature animation. We spoke with five animators across North America, all of whom are alumni of Animation Mentor, to find out how an education in character animation can blossom into a career.

Robots in Disguise – Character Animation and Special Effects

Travis Tohill is doing what few thought possible – character animation at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). "Transformers II is a lot of fun because you have to make your animation feel realistic," he says. "It has to fit in a real world setting too, and also work within the confines of the live-action camera moves. It's character animation, but it's problem-solving as well."

Tohill was a recent college grad in Tennessee who had taken a course labeled as Computer Animation that taught a little more than modeling and rendering. When he began Animation Mentor, he found a love for body mechanics. "It's about understanding how a character moves and taking in consideration of the weight of your character. If you're animating a giant robot, that's something important to think about."

ILM differs little from Tohill's lessons at Animation Mentor. "All the principles of animation are the same, " he says. "I learned to stay true to the character. That could mean personality-wise, but also the physicality of the character. You always have to keep in your mind the timing, and the weight shift, and while all that is really important, your ultimate goal is to have all of that not noticed so the personality of the character comes through. And that's what I try to do every day."

Lessons Beyond Car Insurance – Character Animation and Advertising

Pete Devlin prefers cartoony character animation to realistic type, but finds a happy medium when his freelance work leads him to work with characters such as the Geico Gecko, or the Aflac Duck.

For Devlin, animating non-human characters with human characteristics has its challenges, especially within the limits of an animal's natural movements. "I try to get the most appealing poses I can out of a character, depending on whatever the shot is. After posing and staging, I might start applying the other principles of animation: weight, arcs, timing -- that's after I decide how I want the character to behave. And then I'll work with clients on the animation scenes to get something we're both happy with."

Devlin was primarily self-taught in animation and worked for seven years in the industry before Animation Mentor. "After Animation Mentor, I started doing everything the right way," he admits. "Something I learned at Animation Mentor that I'm still working on is taking that pose and pushing it further than I would have in the past. Exaggerating an idea even further – that's something that stuck with me and helped me develop a better eye."

In Games Wii Trust – Character Animation and Games

Steve Adamson has been the sitting CEO and head animator of his company, Gear Worx Productions Inc, for nine years. In the past two years he has gone into game development, creating game titles for the PC, Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch and the Nintendo Wii. "I've always been a hard-core gamer and I always wanted to be my own boss," he says.

It was only in the last couple years that Adamson graduated from Animation Mentor. "The techniques I have now have come from the vast knowledge of the mentors there. I learned secondary action and the inner force of a character. This is what drives the character, and it's all things I normally wouldn't think about. I learned so much it's ridiculous."

To further study personality on his own, Adamson carries a tiny pocket cam wherever he goes to record interesting movements. "Where I think the creativity, or the personality, comes from is actually your own personal life experiences," he says. "I have over 500 gigs of video reference that I've shot on this little cel-phone-sized pocket cam. If I see someone with a quirky run, walk, or humorous facial expression, I'll record them. Observation is key when you're not actually in front of a computer."

So has his business changed since he graduated from Animation Mentor? "Now my characters feel, look and act like they're alive." he says. "I have more clients now."

From 2D to 3D

"I like drawing characters and bringing them to life," says Disney Interactive animator Mel Milton. "I'm a character guy."

Mel Milton was a graphic designer in the '90s and taught himself computer programs during the Internet boom to get work. He got into video games and was encouraged to sign up for Animation Mentor. "Every class was a standout," he says. "My turning point was when I had to push a box up a hill. That one was a challenge for me, and I had a hard time understanding how to use constraints. After I got through that, I realized maybe I could do this for a living."

Mel found boundless support in his mentors. "It was the passion of the Animation Mentor people that really got me. It really brings that next level to your work. They basically said, 'when you get into work, you're an animator, so let's focus on animation. Get it good. We want you to nail it and make it the best it can possibly be.' That's really helpful now when the assignment we're working on is a story-driven project and we're trying to bring another level of storytelling to video games."

Even now, whether its animating monsters or characters from the Toy Story 3 game, Mel says he draws upon his Animation Mentor lessons every day. "A lot of things I came away with were the mechanics and the acting. It really prepped me solidly for things I'm doing now."

Intro to DreamWorks Animation – Character Animation and Feature Film

Only a few years before animating at DreamWorks Animation, Adam Strick was a full-time student focusing on music and audio engineering. "I had only heard the term 'CG animation' about a year before Animation Mentor in 2004." Strick didn't have much drawing experience, but related his learning curve to learning guitar. "Studying animation fundamentals was like starting off playing 'Mary Had a Little Lamb.' First learning the notes on the instrument and the basic language of music and then we built on that. My first mentor, Stephen Gregory, was all about making sure that you stayed true to the material you were animating. If you were animating a beach ball versus a bowling ball, we made sure their movement and timing were done properly."

Strick also credits to his mentor the process he uses to animate. "It was great hearing him talk about his workflow which consisted of a 'copied pairs' and 'layered approach,' keeping the keys simple and clean. I lay out my key poses, my breakdowns, and then the final polish. Some animators will have keys every two or three frames in the timeline. In my process, I copy my key poses to create a pair of keyframes to create the hold and then once I go into the graph editor I can adjust the eases or create overshoots fairly quickly after I've added my breakdowns."

Another mentor, Brett Coderre emphasized timing, "He would talk about separating your actions, making sure you're moving specific things at specific times and not moving everything together. If you're moving more than one character at once it could get confusing where to look, so you want to break up those actions so the audience can read it. That's one of the biggest things I try to keep in mind."

Today at DreamWorks Animation, Adam animates cycles in crowd scenes for the upcoming feature How To Train Your Dragon. He admits that the work isn't character-specific and has to work on a variety of character models. "You want to be entertaining and unique but since the animation will be applied to multiple characters you have to hold back," he says. "It's a matter of good posing, good mechanics and good timing. Timing is key in cycles. But I wouldn't have known anything about it – and I wouldn't be working at DreamWorks Animation today – if it wasn't for what I learned from my mentors at Animation Mentor."

Jake Friedman is a New York-based animator. Visit him at www.jakefriedman.net.