I'm super pumped on this months Animation Mentor newsletter and wanted to point people to this insightful article that Victor Navone wrote around tips for dailies. Check it out here
Animation Mentor The Online Animation School in the news!
I get monthly emails from my PR group to show me the latest and greatest articles that have been published from Animation Mentor. I thought it would be good to post this here so they are all in one place. Sorry for any repeats.
Animation Mentor The Online Animation School on Forbes.com
Yesterday I was interviewed about my journey from animator to entrepreneur for Forbes.com! I had a blast being able to represent our animation school to a totally different audience. I'm stoked to be able to share more about the business side of what we do as that is now my big journey and area of growth over the last several years. WOOT!
Click here to view the piece. We interviewed for about 30 minutes and somehow they were able to pick all the parts where I wasn't bouncing off the walls. Ha ha!
DISCLAIMER: I was not the designer for Nemo and Boo, rather I was the character developer for those characters.
Here is a link to an interview I just completed about the exciting and challenging aspects of Online Animation Schools. The picture of me in the interview is rather old and I need to get some new snaps, which leads me to today's post.
SOME THOUGHTS I've made some changes to my look/feel/style/wardrobe over the last 7 months and am super happy with how I look as I feel it reflects who I am, what my style is and the interests I have in life outside of work.
It's always tricky to change one's style as it can reflect in backlash from friends, family and I can say I definitely did/do get those comments.
When I was younger I had a similar experience with my best friend. He changed his style in such a "drastic" way that I didn't know how to handle it and, as a result, I pushed him away. During my transition to Bobby 2.0 (ha ha) This experience came back to me and I realized it was my own insecurities of "losing a great friend" that wound up pushing him away.
I have definitely grown as a result of experiences I've gone through recently but I will always maintain my BOOM no matter what! :) I feel so alive and so fantastic and I just wanted to share from the honest place as that is the place I live and thrive in. Enjoy being you!!!
I was wondering what happened to this interview. CGChannel did this interview with the three of us at Siggraph and it's up on their site. The quality is really good and the audio is excellent. Click on the Animimation Mentor Icon and then scroll back up to watch the video. Enjoy!
So the folks over at 11 Second Club decided to add a great feature to the monthly winner. On top of getting the Animation Mentor eCritique that person will now also have a cool featured interview. I think this is an excellent addition and helps round out the whole thing!
Shawn Kelly (co-founder of Animation Mentor) took home the award for "Best Single Visual Effect of the Year!" This was for his work in "Transformers" specifically in the Desert highway sequence where the robot is running like he's on roller blades and knocking cars all over the place. WOW! I'm so proud of Shawn in the biggest of ways. He's come a long way since we sat next to each other the first day of our first art class ever! He remains one of my best friends in the whole entire world and I'm just so proud to see him become so successful! He's an amazing guy and works very hard at what he does; I'm so thankful to know him and have such an amazing friend in my life! Congratulations Shawn!
I know this may be "old news" as it came out late December however, I wanted to make sure I posted it because this is so cool. It was an honor being interviewed for this. It's so cool when a piece like this comes together as so much work and effort goes into it. Overall i think they did a fantastic job with the piece.
Ps. We are having our 3rd Graduation this Saturday and it's going to be so cool. We have a lot of new things that we added to this one and some amazing people attending. I don't want to let the "cat out of the bag" so I'll wait until after. I can't wait to post up some pictures and stories which I promise to do after the event is done and I get some sleep. :)
Happy New Year to everyone. I had a nice trip away with my wife over the last few weeks to Australia. It was tons of fun and definitely needed!
I wanted to post an article below that went out a few days ago but I thought I'd put it up anyways. It's nothing new about Animation Mentor but the cool thing is that it is for my local paper. I grew up in the Bay Area and it's cool to be in the paper that I've read my whole life. I ran into a few people at my local video rental store, etc. who saw me in the article. It's a funny feeling, but cool.
It's good to be back and I'm excited about the upcoming Winter 2008 Term start on Monday!
Alexiss is one of our super students. She caught up with her local news team in Utah and did this great story about Animation Mentor. Our Publicist, Rochelle Winters, is also featured in the story representing AM!
In the story Alexiss is quoted saying "I'm the only girl," but she told me that was related to a question about how many girls in Utah studied at Animation Mentor. They simply edited it strangely. The press is not perfect, but we're excited to have the great press! Enjoy the story.
Shawn Kelly seems to be the master of getting himself on TV. Ha, ha. About 3 minutes in you'll see a sneak peek inside the "lunch hour" at ILM and what these crazy cats do all day, and night. :) Enjoy.
Carlos Baena and I caught up with CGtantra to do a fun video interview with them. Anand Baid (Animation Mentor Graduate) led the interview with some fun questions and a great enthusiastic attitude.
When Shawn, Carlos and I started thinking about creating AnimationMentor.com I knew we'd need some help. I'm big on reading books for personal development and, in recent years, on business and business practices. When we were in the beginning stages of creating AM I came upon a great book called "The E-Myth Revisited." This book talks about many important concepts for new businesses but focuses on why so many businesses fail and what you can do about it. I've used this book and training to help guide Animation Mentor's success. I often get asked about business and people who want to start their own. This is a great starting point for sure.
Carlos Baena is like a brother to me. We've been friends for over 10 years, went to school together, worked together and started Animation Mentor together. He was the guy who married my wife and I! Our priest if you will! He's one of the most talented guys on the planet in so many ways. Check out this great interview from him if you get the chance, it's worth the read.
Last week I was pleased to find out Animation Mentor was among 10 animation schools being considered for Variety Magazine's "Education Impact List" article. The article features the best schools devoted to acting, comedy, TV production, VFX and animation. I was contacted and answered several questions. I was told they were narrowing it from 10 animation schools to 5. I hoped we'd be in the top 5. Well, the article came out yesterday and they narrowed it down to 2 animation schools and Animation Mentor is one of them!!! We're so excited about this.
It's such an amazing feeling to put something into the world with care and attention to detail. It's amazing to know we're getting recognition for the efforts and it's all due to the amazing people who mentor at our school, the staff who care so much about it and the students who work so hard to be the best animators they can be. I wanted to thank everyone for making this school so amazing and the best place to come to work to each and every day!
I just completed an interview with Animation Arena. I had a blast doing it. If you have any questions about it or would like more info about anything I discuss in the interview please ask away and I'll be happy to answer them in my comments section.
Also, the new Animation Mentor newsletter version 2.5 will release this month (April). Be sure to check it out as we're stepping up the quality of articles and content as well.
