Newswise — AnimationMentor.com, the online character animation school® that is a cross between youtube, myspace and art school, takes online learning to the next level with its fall '07 virtual campus. Students from more than 40 countries worldwide will study with working professionals from Pixar, Disney, DreamWorks and other Hollywood studios in a web 2.0 experience enabled by one-of-a-kind proprietary digital teaching tools.
AnimationMentor.com students will participate in weekly, real-time, interactive classes (Q&A sessions) led by mentors, all of whom are studio animators from Ratatouille, Shrek the Third, Transformers, and more. The same mentors will provide them with personal, frame-by-frame, audio-visual eCritiques® of their assignments that include side-by-side verbal explanations and illustrated corrections of their work. Students will also learn from rich media training videos filmed documentary style with professionals in physiology, storyboarding, acting and other essential topics for aspiring animators.
Formal learning will take place within a thriving, 24-hour animation community in which students and mentors will meet in forums and chat rooms; maintain profile pages with blogs and animation vlogs; and Cruise the Campusâ„¢ using easy links between the forums and student profile pages and between student and student.
They will communicate using AnimationMentor.com's priority, embedded, Ajax/Flex-based instant messaging system (AMIM); find fellow students in their own country; and learn by viewing each other's eCritiques, all of which are stored on the school site. AnimationMentor.com's first graduating class (January '07)) have landed jobs animating on Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Transformers, and fall 2007 releases The Bee Movie and The Golden Compass.
"Our goal is to train the finest animators for studio employment using the best tools we can develop," said Bobby Beck, CEO/President, AnimationMentor.com. "More than 60% of our grads have landed coveted studio animation jobs which proves that we are succeeding in doing just that."
ABOUT ANIMATIONMENTOR.COM Based in Berkeley, California, AnimationMentor.com is an online animation school at which top working professionals teach character animation to students worldwide. Opened March 2005, the school offers an eighteen-month program built from the ground up by its founders, Bobby Beck, Shawn Kelly and Carlos Baena, whose combined credits include Ratatouille, Finding Nemo, and Transformers. AnimationMentor.com's California-certified curriculum includes student mentoring; expert audio/video rich media lectures; live, real-time, interactive Q&A sessions (web classes); eCritiques® and 24/7 online creative community. More information at: http://www.animationmentor.com.
Note to Editors: professional still images and broadcast quality video available
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