Animation Mentor?

[Aozora-Hime]

Hello! I was wondering if anyone attends/knows about the online animation school Animation Mentor and could put in their two cents. Is it a good school? How easy is it to learn considering it is entirely distance learning? (coming from someone who just spend a semester modeling with Maya and nearly had a freak-out haha!) It looks really cool (and has alot of industry associated mentors involved) from the videos Ive seen on their site. Any thoughts, anyone?

[Taxguy]

I do NOT go to Animation Mentor nor have I ever attended there. However, if you read the forums of the computer graphics society, Animation Mentor is widely considered to be the best trade school in character animation and maybe better than most colleges. HOWEVER< they do have one big drawback. You will only learn character animation and get no training in any other area of the animation pipeline such as foundation work, skinning, modeling, rigging, lighting,texturing, concept art etc.

I strongly urge you to first get a four year degree, preferably in art or animation. You can then go to Animation Mentor to hone your skills in character animation if that is your real preference.

[mbarq]

The school's garnered a pretty good reputation from people in the animation industry, from what I've seen. As far as online animation programs, hands down, Animation Mentor looks like the way to go. Just google animation mentor and you'll see stories of people going on to Blue Sky, Dreamworks, etc.

The work coming out of there is great, the acting, staging, soooo goood :) I've read, mostly on cgsociety (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=289&t=147156), that a lot of people get kind of overwhelmed with Maya and as a result spend more time learning the technical aspect than the animation part of AM. So, it kind of defeats the purpose?

It seems it would be wise to get comfortable with the app and maybe try some on your own (Audodesk Press Books), maybe try some traditional, watch some imdb top 100 films, work your sketchbook, and then go to AM. It's a lot of money, so prepare yourself to absorb instead of going in cold.

This might be of interest:

http://www.11secondclub.com/

Good Luck!