Siggraph

Over at the animationmentor.com booth the company’s CEO Bobby Beck provided some fantastic insight into their online training methods. With over 700 current students from more than 50 countries worldwide, Beck has secured Teachers, a.k.a. “Mentors” from some of the best respected animation companies in the world–Dreamworks, Pixar, etc.

Students learn very specific animation techniques over an 18 month curriculum (Beck says a new, updated curriculum is launching in 2009) in which students can learn at their computer via live video webcasts where students get more individual exposure and training to their Mentors than can be found in traditional classrooms.

These classes as well as Student Evals (apparently, examples of project evals can be seen on http://www.11secondclub.com/), video libraries, studying, chatting, networking, etc all happens via a back-end interface developed from scratch by Beck and his team. A new, 3rd generation back end is launching now–and demos can be seen at their Siggraph booth.

Like any other school, Beck says that animationmentor.com students build strong relationships worldwide, often bringing each other onto projects at Pixar, Ilion, Blue Sky Studios, etc. One couple even got married from their studying at AnimationMentor.com.

So, just like many of the new technology and sites built for all types of virtual networking inside the tubes of the world wide web, so has College Campus 2.0 been built.