All posts by David

Why we think LABS?

We believe that animators should have an opportunity to grow continually.  Learning does not stop after they complete their proper academic education and needs to continue even during their very productive professional years (or low times), simply because this kind of a career and craft is hard and the process of learning needs special environment and opportunities for animators to be successful in this long run.

Most of what’s considered quality animation is not really talent dependent ( how many of us are natural animators that just happen to shine without any struggle? ) but a lot of the skills are relative to the amount of time spent basically just animating, animating, animating and allowing yourself to make mistakes to learn from. It’s called hard work and many years or trial and error. We dare to think that if somebody does not realise this, they will eventually leave the craft anyway. This is why general public typically sees animators as crazy fellows.

So, the investment of our human time to learn to animate and do it well is priceless. isn’t it? When an animator decides this craft is his / her livelihood, then from that moment we hope to provide a platform to make the artists more confident to survive on the market as well as keeping their passion alive. Motivation to learn should be supported continually and we hope to provide a place of excellence where artists can take some time off, move to an isolated island (ANOMALIA) and learn intensively from the best artists some new ways, new techniques, meet new people, produce and relax. That’s our deepest desire.

There is also one situation in life of an animator when he / she deserves an opportunity for further training and more art. It is when s/he is (temporarily) unemployed. During that time of insecurity, one can basically do basically three things:

1. do nothing and let time pass
2. use the time wisely and look for a new project to work on and get back on track
3. use the time wisely and learn something new to avoid point 1 and make point 2 easier to accomplish.

ANOMALIA should be the place to challenge all of the three points mentioned above.

We have already started ANOMALIA some 5 years ago, because many regional opportunities are no longer relevant or useful for professional growth in CG animation. If a studio, or a freelancer, needs to survive, working on a project does not always allow true learning opportunity parallel to being expected to meet deadlines and produce results.

So now, we are taking another step to define a specific method of training and helping animation artists to support their long term professional growth and creative inspiration. ANOMALIA LABS is a training concept of professional work and study experience.

Every once in a while, ideally every year, we will try to open LABS courses, such as a Short Film Making Lab, Storytelling Lab, Rigging Lab or similar team collaborative project for intermediate to advanced artists with a specific production outcome. It’s still training, lectures, seminars, assignments but allows even experienced artists to benefit from the participation because by people still create. Storytelling with Isaac Kerlow, that will take place this summer 2013, is also such an example where many topics on storytelling have been said, and will be said in the lab, but the focus is to write more then listen, giving participants to stimulate their own growth in their own pace. That’s not totally new concept. We just want to do it more and better.

Our goal is to create the opportunity for everybody from the animation industry and our region to get a valuable team experience, guidance by experienced directors / artists who also bring in their passion for storytelling and mentoring who also would not be, otherwise, able to produce their own projects as well. Everybody should get a piece of something out of the collaborative art, experience and new skills to produce a piece together, which is the essence of the craft. And so should be part of our training as well.

We are moving away from a classical animation school that teaches animators only to animate and pushes them out into the wild.

visit labs.anomalia.eu

ANOMALIA has been selected among the TOP 100 schools in the world

The author writes: I think it is important to recognize that animation education never stops. And it certainly doesn’t end after a 4-year degree. Working in the animation industry means constantly learning; learning new tools, new plugins, new techniques. ANOMALIA, a professional training and 3D animation network, caters to exactly this style of learning. It may be a little strange to add unaccredited ANOMALIA to this list but their summer courses and video teaching sessions are beyond reproach. This isn’t a rinky-dink set of courses though, their guest lecturers and teachers are veterans in the industry who work for institutions and studios like Animation Mentor, Pixar (multiple teachers) and Les Gobelins. Their courses include subjects like Pantomime for Animators, Studio Pipeline and Character Design for 3D.

http://www.animationcareerreview.com/articles/top-100-schools-animation-gaming-and-design?page=0%2C1

We have invented our own Festival on Wheels because we strive to put animation into public places. Animation short films are being screened on buses across the Czech republic and people have a chance to share their feelings with the authors via the website www.festivalnakolech.cz

We have been asked by Dan Sarto from Animation World Network to blog about our visit of Mifa in Annecy. So we posted 3 blog entries at the AWN.com server.

Excerpt from the blog:

MIFA is a trade show for studios, producers, individual artists and pretty much anybody involved in animation so they can share time and space intensively for just a couple days of the year to see if they can do business together. And so people talk a lot. Yeah, it’s all about talking and knowing how to start a conversation as well as ending it in the right time…. you can imagine.  That’s basically what it’s all about and how to take advantage of such opportunity to have all the key players and everybody else as well on the same spot. But this is typical for any tradeshow, at least the philosophy and logic behind it. However, MIFA has something much more valuable – being extremely friendly. I cannot think of another term other than a family party (though I assume your family is also pretty cool.)

For more you can read at

http://www.awn.com/blogs/animated-travels/3bohemians-go-mifa

http://www.awn.com/blogs/animated-travels/3bohemians-bid-annecy-and-mifa-adieu

HUDY Sport comapany has been awarded for having the best company website of the year. Congratulation to HUDY, their website is our job!

NEPAL: It is our pleasure to inform you that your entry „Tele-Vision“ has been selected to be screened at the 8th Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival 2010. We were incredibly impressed by the quality of your film and congratulate you on your effort.More info at http://www.kimff.org

Czech TV has shot an interview with us and Rich Quade during our summer professional courses in Litomysl. It has been a really great experience to have them come as well as seeing our project on TV.

Rich has worked at Pixar Animation Studios off and on since 1992. He was a directing animator on Toy Story, and a supervising animator on both „A Bug’s Life“ and „Monsters Inc.“. He recently finish work on Toy Story 3. Rich has also delivered professional animation courses in past 3 years at the Animation Workshop in Viborg, Denmark. His students have always pulled out some extraordinary results in just two weeks of his dialogue class.

You can view the coverage in our Production section. It is in Czech only, but you can get an idea about the courses as well ..

http://beta.3bohemians.eu/portfolio/czech-tv-headline-news-2010/