Patrick Kriwanek gives a streaming AV lecture/demo about editing and storytelling for Animation Mentor, a unique e-learning school. All images © Animation Mentor.

Once upon a time if your dream was to be a character animator your choices to achieve this dream were few and far between. You might have to save all of your pennies to move to California or New York to attend a premier art school or perhaps with lots of luck get a job as a P.A. on a production with, say, Richard Williams, and work your way up.

As time has gone on this process seems to have become more available and doable to those living in far off places with the growth of the industry and the influx of schools across the nation and the world offering animation programs. With the new era of technology and global community AnimationMentor.com, a character animation e-learning school, has taken it to the next level by offering a program that can be simultaneously attended by students in Dubai, Vancouver, San Francisco, or Scotland through video technology, and tools such as eCritique and public workspaces.

After just one year, enrollment is up to 453 students from 41 countries and there are more than 50 mentors who are working professionals from the animation industry. There are 35 fulltime and 18 campus mentors, which is a professional asked to visit the site, rove and comment on student’s work. The students are a cross section of complete rookies, animation and art school grads, engineers and even a police officer seeking a second career.

The program consists of six courses, with video training classes that give weekly assignments, live Q&As with mentors (from studios such as Pixar, ILM, Sony Imageworks, Disney Feature Animation, Tippett Studio, etc.), There are weekly deadlines to upload assignments, eCritique from mentors and a forum for public feedback from your classmates. Coursework includes basic foundations, principles of body mechanics, intro to acting, advance acting and then, ultimately, pre-production and creation of their own short film. The school costs less than a year at one of the top art schools, only $14,000 for the entire six sessions, which, if taken sequentially, would be about 18 months. Students can participate using 3D, 2D or stop motion to fulfill their coursework. The 2007 graduating class is currently entering into its fifth semester and members come from all points of the globe.

Using video and live interactive features makes the curriculum unique. “We strongly believe you can’t learn without quality feedback,” says co-founder Shawn Kelly, who currently works at ILM but functions as director of the curriculum for AnimationMentor.com. All assignments are uploaded to public workspaces for the entire student body and mentors to review. Along with the mentor interaction, they incorporate guest speakers, such as Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc.) and coming soon is a live Q&A session with five Blue Sky artists from the recent hit Ice Age 2. AnimationMentor.com also recently attempted a live improv session with remarkable results.

The idea of the e-school was born after Shawn Kelly, Carlos Baena and Bobby Beck (left to right) viewed many technically sufficient but dull animation reels.

The “real life” experience is really at the heart of the founders’ motivation for starting the school. After viewing reel after reel of technically sufficient but dull animation, they felt that students didn’t seem to be getting what they really needed to succeed as a working character animator. Already having taught a bit around town, Bobby Beck (formerly of Pixar, now fulltime as ceo/president of AnimationMentor.com), Carlos Beana (concurrently at Pixar and creative director of AnimationMentor.com) and Kelly began to bounce around the idea of, “wouldn’t it be great if we could get into the heads of these students and give them what they need!” Kelly in particular was very influenced in his career by mentors and felt a certain passion for this aspect of the program.