My Mentor

Just realized that I hadn't told you guys about my mentor.

My mentor is Amber Martorelli and she is awesome. She has worked as a character animator for 7 years. Most recently, she animated for Blue Sky Studios on their feature films, Robots and Ice Age 2. Prior to Blue Sky, she worked at Big Idea Productions on the film Jonah, as well as, a few Veggietale specials. Amber got her start at a small house, Aston Entertainment, working on TV promos and videos during her last two years finishing her animation degree at Ringling School of Art and Design. This is copied almost verbatum from her profile on AM, hehe.

In any case, it is soooo cool to have a mentor that has actually worked in the industry. What is so amazing about AM is that all the mentors have at least 3 to 5 years of experience in the Animation industry. Most of them are actually working at one of the many studios around the country. And you get to meet a lot of them as a student so it is a great opportunity to learn from the best.

In addition, Amber's husband, Lucas, is currently working for Pixar as a lighter! So it was very interesting in one of the live Q&A sessions we had with her to ask her husband all about working at Pixar and how the Disney thing has affected everyone. It's also been really cool because in a few occations Amber has shown us some of the animation techniques with actuall clips from the movies that she worked on, which include Robots and Ice Age 2!