Pixar Success
By Barbara Robertson

We talked with three of the animators who worked on Toy Story 3, Aaron Hartline, Victor Navone and Matt Strangio, to discover how they came to Pixar to work on the top animated film of all time. Hartline and Navone are mentors at Animation Mentor; Strangio is an Animation Mentor graduate. Here are their stories.

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Animation Mentor Panel and more at CTNX!

Animation Mentor is excited to announce that we will be at CTNX Nov 19-21, 2010. We would love to see you there! Join us to get inspired and hear the inside scoop on what's happening at Animation Mentor.

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Online Campus Tour: Sneak Peek into Animation Mentor!

We'd like to invite you to check out an Animation Mentor online campus tour! You'll get a peek at our school, meet our team, cruise the Animation Mentor campus and see firsthand what makes our community unique.

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Behind the Scenes with Svetla Radivoeva

Check out this month's video, which shows a glimpse into the making of Svetla Radivoeva's renowned showcase shot. Svetla, a recent Animation Mentor graduate, explains the process of creating her catwoman shot, which was chosen as one of the select few shots featured in the 2010 student showcase.

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Animation Mentor:
What inspired you to learn character animation?

Kenny Roy:
My pursuit of character animation resulted from a "perfect storm" of influences. My father was an editor and cut many of the Disney behind-the-scenes pieces in movies ranging from The Lion King to Finding Nemo. For my birthdays, we'd go to early screenings at El Capitan, and the producers would give me crew shirts and soundtracks as gifts. My older brother was a computer genius who in high school endeavored to make a video game for PC, and for lack of a better word, forced me to learn a 3D program to generate assets for the game. I'd been performing all my life in theater and improv, loved to draw and paint, and was fascinated with film.

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Animation Mentor:
When did you first become interested in character animation?

Angela Haynes:
Growing up, I was always doodling in class and sketching in notebooks. I had a lot of encouragement from family and friends to keep at it and I always hoped I'd end up doing something in a creative field. I've been a huge Disney fan since I was little, and I remember The Little Mermaid really sparking an interest in drawing characters. I would try to mimic how the characters in that movie were drawn. But it was Beauty and the Beast that had the most impact on my interest in animation.

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Lists Are a Helpful Tool in Animation
TIPS & TRICKS WITH Dovi Anderson

In this Tips & Tricks video, Pixar Animation Studios animator Dovi Anderson discusses the importance of organizing feedback and criticism through note taking. Dovi uses and creates working lists for various changes to be made in his animation. For instance, while watching the blocking pass, Dovi will make a list of all the areas he'd like to tweak in his shot. He refers to the priorities in his list as an "animation triage," meaning that he focuses on what's most important first. Dovi suggests tackling the biggest issues first then moving down the list to less important changes.

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Geek Fact

Tangled marks Walt Disney Pictures' 50th full-length animated film. In the film, Rapunzel has 70 feet of golden hair and 100,000 individual strands. Special software had to be created to simulate movement for the hair and no one had ever animated that much hair before.

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Movie & Games Preview

The Animation Mentor Newsletter is your inside guide to U.S. movie and game releases and the visual effect companies who make movie magic.

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