Testimonial from Samantha Youssef

Hi! I'm Samantha Youssef and I'm from Montreal.  I'm a 2D feature film animator and artistic director of Studio Technique, where I provide artistic training to various VFX, gaming, commercial and feature studios.

I knew about iAnimate Games through the iAnimate community as I was running a sketching group for the students there last year.  I had been wanting to learn to animate in Maya since I work with a lot of 3D artists, but with my workload I was having a hard time being able to commit to it.  I learned about the gaming program in more depth by David Hubert, and realized that doing the gaming workshop would be an excellent option for getting into 3D as it was extensive body mechanics.

iAnimate Games has been a great experience. I loved it!  The course content was really fun and engaging, but thorough.  I also learned so much about the how the animation has to be integrated into the game, how the systems work.  My instructor was amazing, and the community was fantastic.  The internal community had a great feel, it was a close knit group, and the instructors were involved in the community as well, and were there for us if we needed.

I had the opportunity to be mentored by David Lam.  He is an amazing teacher.  He is really patient and informative.  At the same time he expected a high bar, and was thorough in his critique and feedback.  He structured the lessons really well, kept us motivated, and inspired us.  He was clear in breaking everything down, and opening up our work in Maya to really get into our scenes.  Great great teacher, I would absolutely take another class with David.

I had a lot of fun, gaming assignments are great because you get to do cool combat scenes and really fun body mechanics.  I felt like a Jedi the whole time! The best parts were the support of the program and community, and most importantly the clarity and care of the instruction.  I couldn't have asked for a better mentor.  The online part worked really well for me, with my work schedule, I wouldn't have been able to attend a course like this if it wasn't online.

I would obviously recommend iAnimate Games and one of the main reasons is the quality of the program, not just for animation technique, but explaining the process of working on a game with a team so that you're aware of all the technical details as well.  My teacher is an incredible artist to learn from, but also a great mentor, those things don't always come together!  iAnimate games obviously puts a lot of care in their program, and it shows.  We were very well taken care of, I appreciated that the teachers were always responsive to us in the class forums, and brought a lot of care and preparation to each class.