The hardest thing in the industry is how to find the right acting ideas to animate. It's the difference between the technically good animators and the great performance animators.

Acting is the key to an interesting scene and now we have a professional acting instructor who will give weekly classes on how to get the acting in your animated scenes to really stand out.
Link to sign-up.

Blizzard senior animator and iAnimate creature instructor, David Gibson, spoke at this years GDC.

In this talk from the GDC Animation bootcamp, David breaks down the animation basics of creating Overwatch characters by showing the process for creating the frozen scientist hero Mei.

Here is some of the best work from iAnimate students enrolled in our Feature Animation program. We present to you our Feature Animation 2016 Student Show Reel.

Visti our Feature Animation Workshop page to learn more.

Here is some of the best work from iAnimate students enrolled in our Game Animation program. We present to you our Game Animation 2016 Student Show Reel.

Visti our Game Animation Workshop page to learn more.

Here is the final rendered shot from one of Jason's live weekly demos he did in our Summer 2016 term for all the iAnimate.net students. It was a great line of dialog to use with 'Albert', one of our many feature level rigs.

Visti our Feature Animation Workshop page to learn more.

Why did you decide to enroll into iAnimate?

I knew that I wanted to be an animator for games for a long time, but I could easily see that I was nowhere near the skill level I needed to be to land a job. Realizing that my years of largely self-teaching weren’t getting me as far as I wanted to be, I started doing some research online to see what different programs were out there, which led me to iAnimate. Watching the previous year’s game workshop reels is what really solidified the decision for me. The amazing student work, combined with the ability to have access to the vault lectures, as well as the top-tier instructors, were all more than enough reasons for me to see that iAnimate was exactly what I’d been looking for.  

How are the workshops?

All of the workshops are amazing and extremely helpful to anybody who wants to get into animation for games. They gave me real world knowledge and expertise that I could have only otherwise gained through working at a game studio. Having all of the assignments centered around projects that we could potentially be doing at an actual game studio helped prepare me for what I could expect to be doing day-to-day as an animator. Going from iAnimate to working full-time as an animator was an easy transition due to the focus each workshop had on creating game-ready animations and receiving feedback throughout the process of each animation.

Why did you decided to enroll into iAnimate?

My experience as a professional animator thus far has mostly been motion graphics and composting work for web and television.  About a year ago I started looking for avenues within animation that were more aligned with my interests and in the end more rewarding. Deep down I always knew that was games but I wasn’t sure how to pursue that goal. Lucky for me I met someone in the iAnimate Feature Workshops and learned about the Gaming Workshops.  After seeing her stunning iAnimate work I decided to browse the website and was blown away.  The beautiful character rigs, amazing showreels and the quality of instructors sold me.

Did you enjoy your time at iAnimate?

From the very first class I knew I had made the right choice.  Learning under industry pros and being in a virtual classroom with other talented animators from all over the world was a rewarding experience. I enjoyed my time at iAnimate because every lesson, assignment and critique made feel closer and more prepared for my goal.

For over the past 10 years, Stephen has applied the craft of character animation to a variety of projects and has been fortunate to have worked with some of the biggest studios in the animation industry.  His start in feature animation came from an internship with Pixar Animation Studios.  Since then, Stephen has had the pleasure of working on projects for Blue Sky Studios, Reel FX, Dreamworks Animation, Laika, Blizzard Entertainment, and most recently as a Senior Character Animator for Sony Pictures Imageworks.  Eager to share his love of animation, Stephen has been involved with teaching at iAnimate.net and is co-creator of SpeakingofAnimation.com.