Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/4522
M ost aspiring animators follow a linear education/ career path: ey go to a school where they learn the basics of art and animation, they snag an in- ternship, they graduate, and (if all goes well) they land an entry-level job where they spend some time working their way up the preverbal ladder, with hopes of eventu- ally landing their dream job. is certainly was not the case for Lluis Liobera. His was a complex journey where education and professional experience intertwined. He studied computer science un- til he persuaded his parents to send him to an animation school. He became an instructor at the school. He worked as a character animator. en, he did something unusual: He transitioned from pro to student. After turning down professional job off ers, Liobera focused entirely on his re-education, enrolling with Ani- mation Mentor, an online animation school founded by three professional animators from two of the industry's top studios. Liobera took the 18-month course, and af- terward become a member of the school's fi rst graduating class. e additional skills he learned at Animation Men- tor helped land him what many would consider a dream job at Blue Sky Studios, where he worked on Horton Hears a Who! and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. "Even though I had some experience, I was never fooled, and I knew that my skills were very far below feature-fi lm level," says Liobera. " e more you learn about animation, the more you realize you've got tons to learn, and the people doing animated features at Pixar, Blue Sky, and DreamWorks defi nitely knew things that I didn't." Liobera's amazing journey took him through many stages of "education," from self-learning, to formal educa- tion, to on-the-job experience, to specifi ed education, to a career where he never stops learning. An aspiring tale for those just setting out on their own journey or those who are well-traveled in their careers, Liobera's story proves that there is always something new to learn in this industry. Home Schooling Born and raised in Barcelona, Spain, Liobera had always liked cartoons and playing with toys. "Animation seemed to sum up most of the things I liked best: reading and writing, acting and theater, and I loved playing with toys and coming up with stories. I had my collection of GI Joes and Masters of the Universe [fi gures], and would build vehicles and buildings for them with anything I could fi nd—from leftover cardboard boxes, to empty cof- fee containers, to broken parts of old toys. At some point I even began 'Frankensteining' my favorite toys, taking them apart and slapping this character's head onto that character's body. I fi gured that animation would be very closely related to playing with toys: Given a character, all you have to do is play around with it, make it jump from here to there, and so on. at sounded like something right up my alley!" It was only after Liobera saw Toy Story, e Nightmare Before Christmas, and Jurassic Park that he realized people were making a living doing animation. "I had thought that animated features just came to exist," he says of his youthful naivety. Wanting to give animation a go and with stop motion out of reach, Liobera turned to another interest—com- puters—and purchased a copy of 3D Studio R3, an early version of what eventually became Autodesk's 3ds Max, and began to "mess around" with it, creating crude mod- els and animations. e budding artist experimented with 3D Studio for three or four years, off and on, making ro- bots that walked and little cartoon characters that jumped off platforms. "Obviously I never reached a very high level of expertise, but I enjoyed playing with 3D a lot," Liobera says. "I had plans to make my own short fi lms and such, but I guess I never did more than animate a couple of scenes in total. ere are so many [other] things to do when you are a kid." During this early phase, Liobera was self-taught. "I had November 2009 37 Liobera created the images above, taken from his animated short fi lm called "Miss Clover," which he did during the last two semesters while attending Animation Mentor.