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Top Teachers
At AnimSchool, students learn from experts— the people now working in the field.
Animators and character artists working at companies like Blue Sky Studios and Pixar will teach you, review your work in person weekly, and give you the feedback you need to take your skills to the next level.
Students meet all together in a web conference, interacting with the teacher for up to three hours per week.
At AnimSchool, students aren’t assigned a teacher! Each term, you can choose which teacher to learn from. Each class has listings taught by particular teachers at certain days and times each week, so students can pick the one that works best for them.
Here are some of the teachers at AnimSchool!
| Engelhardt, Nathan
Nathan Engelhardt is an energetic and passionate animator at Blue Sky Studios. He has four years of industry experience and his credits include: 'Horton Hears a Who!', 'Ice Age Dawn of the Dinosaurs', and 'Rio'. He has a great sense of appeal, graphic/stylized cartoony animation, and subtle acting.
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| Burkard, Ian Michael
Ian Burkard is an
industry experienced modeler, currently leading character and environmental
work with other veterans at Blue Sky Studios. He supervises and models
characters for production use, and is well versed in topology layout for
enhanced character performance and render efficiency. Ian is currently supervising
and modeling characters and sets for Ice Age 4 and Leaf Men. He is a great modeling talent, with a quick modeling and
retopologizing workflow.
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| Bruno, Nick
Nick is an Animation Supervisor at Blue Sky Studios, now working on Ice Age 4. Nick has been called "the best teacher they've ever had" by several Blue Sky animators. He is known for his excellent grasp of entertainment, style, and caricature.
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| Coats, Andrew
Andrew is an animator at Pixar. Andrew is a stellar talent with a work flow utilizing extensive use of 2D animation in his planning stage. This brings exceptional graphical appeal to his animation. Andrew is also a gifted modeler and has rigging experience as well.
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| Barker, Dan
Dan is Character Development Supervisor at Blue Sky Studios. Dan is an excellent animator at Blue Sky Studios and also lends his great aesthetic to the rigging of the characters there.
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| Lima, Daniel
Daniel is a rare talent who can animate and rig at film-quality levels. He animated on District 9, and has rigged and animated on many projects. He has supervised on projects in his native Brasil, and is passionate about 3D.
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| Hindman, Brien
Brien is a senior modeler at Blue Sky Studios, where he has worked for 8 years. He served as the environmental modeling lead for Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, as well as modeling such characters as the T. Rex from Ice Age 3, Cretaceous, Crash and Eddie, and Scrat for Ice Age 2. He is also an adjunct professor at New York's School of Visual Arts where he teaches advanced modeling and rigging and a former adjunct professor at New York University's CADA.
Brien's Demo Reel password: goat
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| Lopez, Ramon
Ramon is a skilled environmental modeler at Blue SkyStudios. He formerly taught 3D modeling in Spain.
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| Roberts, Thom
Thom is an animator at Blue Sky Studios and has been animating professionally since 2004. He has worked on a wide range of productions including fully animated features, visual effects films, and commercial productions. Before joining the animation department at Blue Sky in 2008, Thom spent several years at Los Angeles based Rhythm & Hues.
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| Sakai, Marcelo
Marcelo is a passionate Brazilian animator with industry experience in both feature film and games. Currently animating on Hotel Transylvania at Sony Imageworks, he had previously worked at Blue Sky, EA Visceral Games, ReelFx, and Rhythm & Hues. He has been credited on projects such as Rio, Arthur Christmas, Open Season 3 and Dead Space 2.
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| Fortin, Jackie
Jackie is a Senior Animator at Blue Sky Studios. She has 10 years of experience in character animation. Recent film credits include 'Rio','Ice Age-Dawn of the Dinosaurs','Horton','Ice Age-The Meltdown', and 'Night At The Museum'.
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| Shikuma, Garrett
Garrett is an Animator at Blue Sky Studios who's worked on such films as Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Rio and most recently Ice Age: Continental Drift. Before joining Blue Sky, Garrett has over four years experience at Electronic Arts: Los Angeles animating on the Medal of Honor series and other titles. His love of drawing and caricature brings a strong graphic quality to his work.
Previous demo reel: http://www.garrettshikuma.com/Video/Garrett_Shikuma_IA3_Demo_Reel.mov
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| Heller, Sabine
Sabine has great aesthetic and technical skills. She is rigging main character faces and bodies at Blue Sky Studios for movies like Rio and Ice Age. Her degree is from School of Visual Arts in New York, where she also taught a graduate seminar during her studies. She was Lead Technical Director at Spans & Partner in her native Germany.
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| Sans, Juan Pablo
JP was an animator at Blue Sky Studios for 2.5 years, and currently working at DreamWorks Animation . His work has an excellent graphical quality from his abilities in drawing, thumbnailing, and sketching which infuse character and life into his shots.
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| Bonilla, Tony
I have 7 years of professional experience on projects such as: Jimmy Neutron, The Ant Bully, Open Season 2 and 3, Monster's Inc. Laugh Floor, Secrets of the Furious Five, and Ice Age 3.
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| Strick, David
Dave Strick currently models for DreamWorks Animation. Previous experience includes EA and Blue Sky Studios with film credits on Ice Age 2, Horton Hears a Who, Rio, and Ice Age 4.
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| Havran, Martin
Marty has 16 years of industry cg modeling experience. He has worked at Sony, Disney, Laika and at Dreamworks as a Modeling Supervisor. For the past 4 years he has successfully been working freelance for his own company Havran Productions.
Early in his career he worked on live action films and modeled characters like Sil for the movie Species and Michael Jordan’s head for Space Jam. Since transitioning into animated films he has modeled Shi Fu for Kung Fu Panda, Verne for Over the Hedge, Bob and Susan for Monsters vs. Aliens just to name a few characters.
Marty has also taught and mentored students for several years as adjunct faculty at Art Center and Oregon State University as well as mentoring students remotely at NYU’s CADA program and the Art Institute of the Inland Empire. Having a background in illustration he has a passion for drawing, painting and sculpting as well as digital media.
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| Doble, Matthew
Matthew Doble is an Animator working at Blue Sky Studios. He's worked on films such as Ice Age : Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Rio, and is currently animating on Ice Age : Continental Drift.
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| Lyman, Eric
Eric currently works at Dreamworks Animation in San Francisco. Previously he worked with Animal Logic in Sydney and Laika in Portland. He has worked as a modeler on such films as Coraline, Legend of the Guardians, and most recently Puss in Boots. Currently he is modeling for 'Mr. Peabody and Sherman', due out in 2014.
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| Pagoria, Chris
Chris Pagoria is a Character TD at Blue Sky Studios. He has worked on Ice Age 4: Continental Drift, Leafmen and is currently rigging on an unannounced project. Previously he has worked at Rhythm & Hues and also spent 2 years in television animation. He grew up in Florida and graduated from The University of Central Florida in Orlando.
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| Sanghrajka, Nico
Nico Sanghrajka studied "Film and Media" at the renowned Filmacademy in Germany, with a major in computer graphics at the Institute of Animation and Visual Effects. After his graduation in 2006, he moved to Berlin and started to work at “Chris Creatures” as a Character Rigger on his first feature film “Rudi – Return of the Racing Pig”. Later that year he joined Framestore in London to work on the animated feature film “The Tale of Despereaux”.
He now lives in the Bay Area in Northern California and works at Dreamworks / PDI as a Character TD on animated feature films such as “Megamind”, “Kung Fu Panda 2” and “Madagascar 3”. He has mentored colleagues at Framestore and Dreamworks, worked as a mentor for “TD-College” and taught at the Animation Workshop in Viborg / Denmark.
His experience in Maya goes back to version 1.5 and he has been using MEL in production for over 6 years.
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| Richard, Michael Philip
Mikey graduated from Pratt institute and spent the first 7 years of his professional career in the video game industry, ranging from titles in Mechwarrior, Playboy, Lord of the Rings and Dungeon's & Dragons franchises. He started at Blue Sky Studios as a temp animator on IA3 then left to go back to video games, working at Insomniac on the new Ratchet and Clank: All for One video game. Coming back to Blue Sky as a fulltime animator he shortly worked on Rio then transitioned over to preproduction on IA4.
Mikey attributes his love of body mechanics/physicality shots to his past in video games... and all he listens to is techno music.
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