Earthlight Pictures has taken a unique step in animation training, now utilizing a live-video classroom, direct to students’ desktops. The internet-based system, TelAnimate, arrives after two years of development in Santa Barbara, Boise, and Earthlight’s current base of operations in Portland. The official press release for this helpful program may be viewed here:

Earthlight Pictures has launched a major innovation in animation training with an innovative live-video classroom, direct to students’ desktops.

Coming online earlier this year after two years of development in Santa Barbara, Boise, and Earthlight’s current base of operations in Portland, Earthlight’s unique TelAnimate(SM) system has freed a proven classroom instruction approach from the limitations of geography.

The new, internet-based system is believed to be the first animation moviemaking training program of its kind for both young people and adults. It avoids such web artifacts as avatars, chat, and instruction bulletin boards for assignments and comments, featuring instead direct, real-time visual and oral connections between instructors and classmates throughout all lessons via desktop closed-circuit television. Teletrainees and instructors see and hear everyone else in the group, screen smooth-motion examples of animation principles as well as classic studio and off-beat art films, have one-on-one, face-to-face coaching in the production of the students’ own animations, and – on occasion, for those willing to travel – take field trips to world-class animation studios. Other than an alternative system for recording drawings and stop-motion work, it’s essentially the same as an in-person class minus the need to travel from home.

TelAnimate(SM) was developed by Earthlight Pictures owner, film/video producer and writer John Teton and Michael Ray Allison, an information technology specialist based in Boise. (Allison is also a digital media artist who produced the graphics for the covers of Teton’s novels Upsurge and Appearing Live at The Final Test.) It builds upon programs Teton has run at settings like San Francisco State University and Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles and many other sites ranging from public and private secondary schools to Pixar Animation Studio’s in-house university.

Opening the door to younger students was triggered in 1997 by the requests of J.J. Villard, then a high school student in Santa Barbara. Teton reports, “J.J.’s pleas made me see the need for a forum where aspiring animators, regardless of age, could access high-quality college-level training without the time and cost requirements of regular degree programs.”

Villard spent 2 1/2 years in Teton’s programs at Earthlight and Otis, and later went on to win the top prize in international college animation competitions at Ottawa three years in a row, getting snapped up by DreamWorks along the way to create storyboards for Shrek the Third and other features. Earthlight students and alumni have won first prizes in international student animation festivals at the college, high school, middle school, and/or elementary school levels in each of the last five years. Some, like Carolyn Chrisman (Envious Heart, animated at age 15), now a freshman in the animation program at the University of Southern California, and Aidan Terry (Some Like It Heavy, animated at age 12), of Santa Ynez, California, have prevailed in competitions for students much older than themselves.

Nickelodeon Animation Studio recruiter Alison Mann says she and her colleagues “have been most impressed with [the young Earthlight trainees’] knowledge of the industry, and how far advanced they seemed in their artistic ability at such a young age.” Nickelodeon is not alone – other studios which have extended multiple invitations to Earthlight classes include Pixar, DreamWorks, Film Roman, Rhythm & Hues, Cartoon Network, Warner Bros. Animation, Laika, Bent Image Lab, and Digital Doman.

Research for a teletraining option was triggered by the relocation of Earthlight’s center of operations from Southern California to Portland in 2005 and the desire not to abandon students remaining in California or who had moved out-of-state. It wasn’t easy though. According to Allison, “The challenge was to come up with a combination of stable, all-see-all videoconferencing with a format for simultaneous film clip screenings at a cost our business and students – many of them kids – could afford. We finally licked it though, and we’re excited to see it all come together. Even though we may be using up to eight programs per class, from the students’ perspective, it’s largely seamless and user-friendly.”

Teton sees TelAnimate potentially expanding the horizons of animation itself. “Those who discover in themselves a craving to make animated movies are scattered around the world,” he points out, “most of them far from the few colleges with full animation programs and the field’s long-standing centers of gravity in places like Los Angeles, New York, Paris, and Tokyo. With TelAnimate, we can coach them in this form of magic wherever they are. Liberating a lot of talent that might otherwise be delayed or stifled altogether could make some real waves in the animation seas over the years ahead.”