Gnomon offers the “total immersion” style of pedagogy, rather than learning in an ivory tower environment. Above is Jesse Cutrona’s work from an introduction to Maya class. All images courtesy of Gnomon.

The Gnomon School of Visual Effects is the school in Hollywood that everyone seems to know about. First you have to learn how to pronounce its name: “Noh-mon.” Then you can go visit the campus, smack in the middle of the Hollywood studios production area.

The Campus
Tree-lined walkways, ivy-covered walls, statuesque Roman columns, brick-lined steps leading to burbling fountains, groups of merrily laughing coeds with sweaters tied around their necks carrying stacks of thick textbooks, stately houses with large Greek letters embossed over their doorways. If that is your idea of a school, you’ll be disappointed, because you’ll find none of them here. You find dark walls covered with posters of animated or effects-laden features, offices filled with Batman and Star Wars and Shrek action figures, large rooms with projectors and giant screens, spaces full of computer terminals, open ceilings with exposed heating and ventilation ducts, metal stairways leading off in all directions.

It looks like — well, it looks like a typical L.A.-style animation studio. This is definitely the “total immersion” style of pedagogy, rather than the ivory tower style — you might as well get your feet wet, the walls seem to tell you, and learn what the future really has in store for you. Your future is now.

Gnomon offers three ways to attend: individual classes on an extension basis; the Certificate Program, which runs over 21 months; and Fast Track, an intensive nine-week course.

The place is not without its comforts. There is a kitchen area, there are groups of couches and overstuffed chairs, rows of soda and snack machines, and stands of classic videogame and pinball machines. Again, as in a real-life animation studio, you can tell that people spend a lot of time here, and that much of that time involves discussions of ideas and team building — fueled by pizza and Snickers Bars and Red Bull.

The Classes
There is an almost dizzying array of classes available — 45 of them, all going simultaneously. The catalog lists rows of them — Intro to Maya, Intro to Unreal, Texture Mapping, Digital Sets, Dynamic Effects, Character Creation for Games, Machinima, Digital Sculpting in Zbrush, Creature Development & Creation, Character Skinning, Storyboarding, Acting for Artists, Writing for Animation and Games. Although this comprehensive a set of offerings must be a logistics nightmare for the administrators, you learn that the large number of classes is being offered for the convenience of the students — the thought behind this is that if a student needs advanced skills in Maya to get a particular job, for instance, those classes have to be available right now, rather than six months down the road.

To make sure that students can use the facilities whenever they need to, the school is open from 9:00 am to 1:00 am, seven days a week; technical support is provided throughout this whole period, to make sure students have help and don’t get stuck on technical problems at any time.

Gnomon is a vocational school, more concerned with achieving levels of skill and knowledge than with academic degrees. This certainly reflects the state of the real-world animation industry, where many job interviewers are much more interested in an applicant’s portfolio or reel and production experience than they are with how many degrees he or she may have earned along the way.

User Groups meetings are a place for students to interact with professionals and learn the latest in technical and production issues as well as network.

There are basically three ways to take classes at Gnomon. The first is to take individual classes, on what is termed an “extension basis.” About 80% of the students at the school are doing this, and about half of these students are already working in the industry, looking to get additional training to either get into new job categories (such as 3D instead of 2D, or poly modeling instead of NURBS) or to freshen up their skills on the many new software toolsets that keep coming out every six months or so.

The second way to attend the school is via the Certificate Program, for seven terms that run over 21 months. This more closely resembles the way a traditional school operates, though the training is shorter (about two years versus the traditional four of a college) and more intensive — students typically spend 50-60 hours a week, including around 30 hours of studio time. “They learn how to work collaboratively, to help each other and to form production pipelines,” said Pam Hogarth, Gnomon’s director of industry relations. “Those are important career skills that they can’t learn at home.”