Teachers

Richard Quade, PIXAR

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.

Andy Schmidt, PIXAR

Andrew L. Schmidt is a senior animator with Pixar Animation Studios.  He has worked in the animation industry for 20 years and has a long list of credits in both traditional 2D animation and CG animated films.  He began his career in 1990 in London, UK at Amblimation Studios where he worked on Fievel Goes West, We’re Back and Balto.  In 1996, Schmidt relocated to Los Angeles, California where he worked for Dreamworks Feature Animation on The Prince of Egypt, then moved to Warner Brothers Feature Animation where he animated on The Iron Giant and Osmosis Jones.

In 2000, Schmidt moved to San Francisco and joined Pixar Animation Studios where he has worked on Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Wall-e, Up and Toy Story 3.  He has also animated on various Pixar short films, including supervising animation for Partly Cloudy.

Michelle Meeker, ANIMATION MENTOR

Graduating in 1996 from California Institute of the Arts, California, with a MFA in Character Animation, Michelle Meeker joined the crew at Pixar Animation Studios, USA, where she animated on Geris Game and A Bugs Life; then moved on to PDI/Dreamworks, USA, as lead animator on Shrek and Antz and then on to Weta Digital in New Zealand to work on Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. After returning to the US, Michelle did some freelance work for a while, before taking a job as Senior Animator/Lead Cinematics Animator at Stormfront Studios in San Rafael, and then in 2005 she became a full-time instructor on Animation Mentor; a position she still holds while teaching at various animation schools around the world including Animation Workshop in Viborg, Denmark, and GOBELINS, lécole de limage in Paris, France.

Keith Lango, VALVE

Keith has worked on icons of childhood (Mickey Mouse & GI Joe), singing vegetables, space traveling penguins, Oscar nominated films, commercials, top tier game cinematics and features. Along the way he has made a few short films. Keith Lango is head & shoulders above most Animators of the world. He is also one of the best mentors of animators, and his tutorials that are internationally known & utilized. If you are an Animator you need to know this guy! His experience stretches from studios such as Big Idea, Ree FX, DNA Productions, Blur Studio, and currently Keith is at Valve in Seattle.

Victor Vinyals, Independent TD, formerly Aardman Animations

Born in Barcelona (Spain) 39 years ago. Working initially as an animator for 8 years, discovered his passion for character rigging when started at Furia Digital in 2003. Since then, worked as character rigger in different studios in Spain until finally moved to the UK to become Senior Character TD at Aardman Animations. Was first in charge of developing the characters rigs for the Commercials Department, and in 2008 started working along with Sony Imageworks team in the development of the incoming feature film „Arthur Christmas“, being focused on the facial setup system mainly.

Currently back in Spain, keeps building rigs as a freelance for companies like Aardman itself, iAnimate.net or Molinare among others. That leaves him more time for doing other rigging-related work like giving lectures and masterclasses or developing new rigging techniques and tools.

David Toušek, 3Bohemians

David Toušek is a 3D character animator and artist living in Prague running his small studio since 2002. Studied digital graphics and animation in Seattle. In 2007 studied in Denmark to get further trained in 3D and character animation at the Animation Workshop in Viborg. David  also delivered lectures about Maya and Animation Basics at the Animation Workshop and Institut l’image de l’Ocean Indian on the Reunion Island. In 2008 – 2009, in collaboration with a french director Matthieu Jorrot produced a short film TELE-VISION.