With all the buzz about new bi-coast visual effects companies opening here, alongside the city’s burgeoning community of top design/3D studios, how timely and coincidental that Chicago is the first stop on Pixar Artists’ Masterclass’ 2012 five-city North American tour.
The two-day Character Animation and Story Development Masterclass takes place June 22-23, appropriately at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, an historic graystone mansion at 1016 N. Dearborn.
Presented by Vanarts, the Vancouver Institute of Media Arts, the two animation experts instructing the Masterclass have been with Pixar many years, working on virtually all of Pixar’s many animated hits, winning top industry honors and heading continuing education instruction.
Pixar’s Head of Story, Matthew Luhn, started with Pixar in 1992 as an animator on Pixar’s first CG movie, “Toy Story,” and became a storyboard artist generating new ideas and characters on “Toy Story 3,” “UP,” “Cars” and all the other Pixar hits and current movies in development. He started his career as an animator on “The Simpsons.”
Animator Andrew Gordon has been animating characters on Pixar films 1997 and is currently an animation director on “Monsters University,” due out in 2013.
Earlier he worked in Warner Bros.’ Looney Tunes division and won a Visual Effects Society award for “Outstanding Character Animation in an Animated Film” for work in “Finding Nemo.” He is one of the founders of Spline Doctors, a blog/podcast dedicated to animation education
The Masterclass is geared towards 2D/3D character animators & designers; game designers and developers; writers, screenwriters, storyboarders; producers and editors; visual effects artists, cartoonists, actors; software developers; other creative professionals, working pros, students, educators and teachers.
Lectures are organized with visuals, including live-action and animated clips, supplemented by a workbook with notes prepared by Luhn and Gordon – the tools needed to create feature-quality animation.
To register, click here.
