Sony Pictures Imageworks Selects Animation Mentor for Academic Excellence Program

Have you heard the great news yet?... Check it out!

Sony Pictures Imageworks Selects Animation Mentor for Academic Excellence Program

+ Berkeley, CA – July, 2007 — AnimationMentor.com, the online animation school® where all of the teachers are working studio animators, has been granted membership into Sony Pictures Imageworks’ Professional Academic Excellence Program, IPAX. Animation Mentor joins a select group of top-tier educational institutions accepted into the program, which is a wide-ranging knowledge exchange between the Academy Award®-winning digital production studio and the academic community.

“Animation students attend our school with the dream of working on a film as big and inventive as Imageworks’ SPIDER-MAN® films,” said Animation Mentor CEO/president Bobby S. Beck. “This is a great day for our program.”
"Animation Mentor has a unique program that offers real world expertise to animation students around the globe," said Sande Scoredos, executive director of training and artist development at Imageworks and the chair of IPAX. "Several of our top animators are already teaching at Animation Mentor, and it is impressive how well this innovative approach to teaching works for both faculty and student.” Scoredos continued, “Animation Mentor will benefit from IPAX membership and we look forward to what this
animation program will offer our other schools in the IPAX community."

Sony Pictures Imageworks created IPAX to nurture a strong relationship with established academic organizations and cultivate future generations of high-level animation and visual effects artists. With IPAX membership, faculty at member schools gain access to several formal programs including in-house training, curriculum reviews, guest lectures and guided tours, all designed to enhance faculty and student knowledge of real-time production activities and issues. The other IPAX member schools include: Carnegie Mellon, DePaul University Computer Graphics and Animation Program, Gnomon School of Visual Effects, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Otis College of Art + Design, Pratt Institute School of Art & Design, Ringling School of Art & Design, Stanford University, University of New Mexico and University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.

ABOUT AnimationMentor.Com
Based in Berkeley, California, AnimationMentor.com is an online 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. Animation Mentor’s California-certified curriculum includes professional 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: www.AnimationMentor.com


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My Current Demo Reel (from SCAD)

I've finally finished tagging my latest demo reel for YouTube... This is from my days at SCAD(Savannah College of Art and Design)

It's kinda blisteringly(new word-just created!) obvious why I want to take the AM classes for animation.*grin*

If anyone out there has any suggestions for making the video look better than it does on YouTube, give me a holler... (I used Premiere Pro's media encoder to make a .wmv 1024k streaming file with a constant bit rate)

It looked so much better before the final processing at YouTube. I've just realized that YouTube looks pretty good until you down-grade your own work*grin*... just producer syndrome(the love of looking at your own work*grin*)I guess... You always want your stuff to look its best.

YouTube is still pretty cool in my book though...

Hope you like it!...