Animation Mentor

When you’re deep in animation school or production, it’s easy to think your problems come down to “not being motivated enough.” In this talk, Animation Mentor alum and director Fernanda Frick breaks that idea apart and shows how much of what we call laziness is actually about missing emotional skills no one ever taught us.

In this presentation, animator and Animation Mentor mentor Nicole Gregory explains what a technical animator does, why the role is vital on game projects, and how tech animators collaborate with animators, programmers, and designers. She also shares real examples from her own work and advice gathered from experienced tech animators on how to get into the field.

In this tutorial, Animation Mentor Game Animation and Character Animation mentor Natasha Krinsky shows how to build a sneak walk cycle that feels stealthy, physical, and full of character. She starts from classic walk‑cycle structure, then pushes posing, balance, and timing to create an eccentric, backwards‑leaning sneak based on live‑action ...

AJ Jefferies has been making animation since he was a kid, starting with hand-drawn Looney Tunes-style shorts before moving into 3D. After working as a CG generalist, he came to Animation Mentor to focus on character animation, which helped him push his work further and start creating his own films. Today, AJ produces original shorts like “DUCKS” alongside com...

In this lesson, Animation Mentor mentor Zachary Rahman shows how to use a green screen to shoot clear acting reference and then bring that reference into Maya in a way that supports staging, clarity, and efficient blocking. He walks through why green screen helps, how to process the footage in DaVinci Resolve, and how to drive an image sequence across cuts inside a Maya...