Online school Animation Mentor holds 1st grad

Students from Europe, Asia, and North and South America will gather Saturday, January 13 at San Francisco's Fort Mason Center for online animation school Animation Mentor's first-ever graduation.

Many will be meeting each other for the first time outside cyberspace at the non-traditional event. Eric Darnell, award-winning director of Madagascar and Antz, will keynote the ceremony.

Recognition will be given to the Best Forum Ninja, Best Personality in a Q&A (Web-conferencing class) and Mentor's Choice, rather than a valedictorian. These awards are fitting for a school that teaches character animation with such 21st-century technologies as Web-conferencing, streaming media and social networking, and where all students receive one-on-one mentoring from a working pro.

Also in attendance will be top artists from leading Hollywood films, including Cars, Pirates and Shrek.

Graduates will receive a diploma in Advanced Studies in Character Animation from the California Bureau for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education. Many have already found jobs at such widely recognized film and gaming studios as Industrial Light & Magic, DreamWorks/PDI, Sony Pictures Imageworks and Electronic Arts.

Animation Mentor graduates complete an 18-month program that includes live, interactive Q&A sessions/classes led by mentors who work at Hollywood studios; eCritiques, in which mentors provide personal audio-visual critiques of weekly assignments; rich media instruction from pre-eminent animators; and combination live/virtual improvisation classes. They also partake in a thriving, 24-hour animation community that includes personal profile pages, forums, chat rooms and buddy lists. They view each other's coursework, find fellow countrymen attending the school, and turn to each other for feedback and support.