'E-School' Draws From World

It's 10 p.m. West Coast time, and Animation School is about to begin.

The students take their seats all over the world. There's Fabian in Switzerland, Susanna in Italy, Gustavo in Spain. Richard and Rafi are just waking up in England.

Then there's the professor, Jason Schleifer, a wisecracking animator at DreamWorks Animation SKG. Instead of standing at a lectern, he plops down in the sun room of his Bay Area home and aims a tiny Web camera at his face.

"Do we have everyone here?" he asks, as his image, including baseball cap and T-shirt, appears in the corner of his students' computer screens. Then it's down to business, as Schleifer fields questions about how to make cartoon characters evoke emotion.

"Add ticks and mannerisms," he advises, explaining how even a cleared throat or a raised eyebrow can help entertain.

Schleifer is one of more than 50 teachers with AnimationMentor.com, a Berkeley-based "e-school" that uses the global reach of the Internet to link working professionals at major studios with aspiring animators worldwide.

Since its founding in the spring, the school has grown to about 400 students from 35 countries. Apart from its global reach, the school, with an 18-month program that costs $14,000, also stands out for its unconventional student body. Although some students work in the industry, the group is mostly made up of people outside the field: accountants, a former NYPD homicide detective and a part-time fishmonger from Iceland.

The school owes its existence to a shortage of young talent. Spurred by the commercial success of such hits as "Shrek" and "Finding Nemo," Hollywood studios have largely abandoned hand-drawn animation, instead pouring millions into developing new computer-animated features. About 25 such films are scheduled for release by the end of 2007.

As a result of the production bonanza, the biggest in a decade, colleges and art schools have had trouble training enough animators to keep pace with studios' demand. It's not just familiarity with computers that animators need, but the more basic skills, such as building characters and crafting story lines.

"The talent pool is getting extremely thin, making it extremely difficult for employers," said Ray Schnell, chief marketing officer of CreativeHeads.net, an El Segundo company that operates a job board for 160 companies that create video games, visual effects and animation. The board has more than 700 jobs posted on its website.