Advanced animation seminar with ILM's Shawn Kelly
October 11, 2012

Advanced animation seminar with ILM's Shawn Kelly

VANCOUVER —  Animation Mentor (www.animationmentor.com) an online school for animators, is hosting a two-day educational event in conjunction with Autodesk. It will take place on Saturday, November 3-4 at The Improve Center in Vancouver. The cost is $499.

Shawn Kelly — Animation Mentor co-founder and current lead animator at Industrial Light & Magic — will lead a series of educational lectures and conduct shot breakdowns with studio footage. A partial agenda includes instruction that goes beyond basic animation principles, a practical guide to planning and blocking, lessons to fine-tune acting performances and lip sync, an in-depth study of advanced locomotion, Animals & Creatures animation and key demo reel guidelines.

Kelly personally designed the seminar to teach the advanced techniques required to elevate student work and make it stand out. “I love teaching almost as much as animating. For me, there are few activities that are anywhere near as fun, challenging and rewarding as passing on and teaching what I’ve learned — especially when it has to do with animation,” he says. “I do feel like I’ve soaked up a lot of knowledge over the years from my peers and my mentors. Animation is a never-ending journey of continual learning — and my hope for this seminar is that it will help animators push their work to the next level.”

Kelly's partial list of 23 film credits includes Rango, War of the Worlds, the Star Wars prequels, all three Transformers movies, H ulk, A.I. Artificial Intelligence and The Avengers.

To find out more information and to register, check out  http://www.animationmentor.com/seminar.

Will there be other events like this in different cities? "We definitely envision a series of educational events … and we see these events taking place either in a city or online, making them widely available to our students, alumni, and studio friends to participate," reports Micha Hershman, VP of sales & marketing, Animation Mentor.