Animawarriors Is An Animation School Where Individuality And Quality Of Life Are Paramount
A while back, it occurred to Jorge Vigara that there must be a way to work in the creative and entertainment industries and feel artistically fulfilled, while maintaining a healthy lifestyle. This led him to create Animawarriors.com.
After almost three years of steady growth, Animawarriors has established itself as an online platform with a holistic approach to teaching the arts of cg animation. It takes a holistic approach to teaching animation, emphasizing creativity, individuality, and a balanced life over deadlines.
The platform’s offerings include over 100 hours of pre-recorded online courses, live masterclasses, and workshops, which are delivered to its growing connected community of more than 500 students.
Sam Surplice, Sony Pictures Animation animator and student featured in Animawarriors’ reel:
When I started, I had a lot of shot ideas, but landed on this crashed car idea. It was originally planned to have no dialogue at all and be purely pantomime. I was hoping to improve my pantomime acting as well as adding more entertainment value to my work.
I think the most concrete thing I learned from this shot was the importance of polish on things that shouldn’t be noticed. The walk in of the “toy rig” at the start of my shot was heavily polished (on ones) so that the massive feet didn’t look out of place or distracting. Jorge alluded to his time on the Smurfs movies when he gave me polish notes on those feet, hahaha.
Animawarriors emphasizes the cultivation of creativity and skill sets over the relentless focus on deadlines and grades. Its ethos rests on teaching future digital artists to create and live a balanced life, firstly embracing the individuality of their creative flow in order to then become a good team player.
Will Robson, student and animator at Sony Pictures Animation:
Something that I learned very early on with Animawarriors is balance. In all things, but especially in life. If you don’t love what you do, why do it?
So when approaching my shot, I wanted to prove to myself that I could create a shot worthy of a feature film, without burning myself out in the process. Every session would start with Jorge asking, “How do you feel about your shot?”
Still to this day, I find myself asking myself this question. Am I enjoying my job? Is there anything I can change in my approach to do so? It wasn’t so much about telling a beautiful story or reinventing the wheel — it was about proving to myself, without burning out my inner creative flame, that I was good enough to make it in the big leagues.
At Animawarriors, a roster of top-class artists teach the craft of animation. Current teachers include Andrés Bedate (lead animator at Sony Pictures Animation and Annie Award nominee), Kevin Nguyen (Sony Pictures Animation, Animal Logic), Stephen Eusebio (Blizzard Entertainment), and more.
By being exposed to a variety of artistic visions and workflows, students are in the best possible circumstances to explore what makes them unique. This helps them establish themselves as healthy and fulfilled artists, which in turn makes them valuable and reliable in the career they choose.
Sandra Schulz, student and lead animator at Mainframe Studios:
I wanted to learn how to properly and confidently work with cartoony techniques, with smears and multiples, and how to get them to look just right. Up until then, all those techniques were still a mystery to me; I watched shots by other animators, always wondering how they achieved certain things.
By doing my shot, I learned so much! More specifically: I learned to closely consider the transition of graphical shapes, and also how important it is to control the spacing — and sometimes every single frame — in those quick transitions. Finally, I learned just to have fun animating and experimenting.
Animawarriors is not a conventional animation school centered on getting its students production-ready. Its philosophy is about individuality: it helps its students and community members to be successful in their careers by cultivating what makes them unique.
Gerome Gan, student and animator at Icon Creative Studio:
My time with Animawarriors was top-notch. I was under both Jorge and Stephen. There are no words to say how much both of them have really helped me: their high-quality notes and amazing instructions really pushed me to improve.
Jorge really made a school that is focused on learning and catering to the student’s available time. This makes the school perfect for people who want additional lessons on the side, or working animators who rarely have time. With a great dashboard that stores all recordings and student support systems even for offline students, this really gives the time back to the students who can learn at their own pace. I would highly recommend Animawarriors to anyone.
To learn more about online and live courses at Animawarriors, visit the school’s website at Animawarriors.com.
Image at top: Lighting and groom by Alex Mateo