Animation Mentor

DreamWorks animator and Animation Mentor alum Nicholas De Lotto explains how to take a shot from floaty blocking to something entertaining and appealing, by pushing timing and posing beyond what reference alone gives you. Using a simple jump over a car as his example, he walks through his process for scaling keys, adjusting spacing, and knowing how far is too far.

In this lesson, Animation Mentor mentor and Rant Senior 3D Animator Gleb Sitnichenko shows how to build a convincing spinning jump for Stella based on ice skating axel reference. He focuses on why preparation and reference matter more than...

DreamWorks animator and Animation Mentor alum Nicholas De Lotto walks through what “polish” actually means in a professional workflow and how to approach it without turning your shot into a floaty mess. He focuses on separating body and face, fixing technical issues, offsetting motion, and using squash and stretch and arc tracking in a way that supports appeal and show ...

In this tutorial, Animation Mentor Game Animation and Character Animation mentor Natasha Krinsky shows how to communicate emotion through posing, posture, and movement instead of relying on facial animation alone. Using Animation Mentor’s Stella and Stuart rigs, plus examples from Inside Out, she breaks down how body language can carry acting performance a...

We were honored to sit down with Disney Legend Andreas Deja as he reflected on decades animating some of Disney’s most beloved characters and the making of his hand‑drawn short film Mushka. He even took us behind the scenes to the initial sketches of characte...