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Gnomon has also had an active 'resident artist' program for several years, which has included such artists as Meats Meier, Eric Hanson, Jeremy Engleman, Sil van der Woerd, Ryan Kingslien and now the director Shane Acker. Through this program we have offered these artists an opportunity to focus full-time on the development of their own personal artwork. We recently completed work on the music video 'White Swan', which was a collaboration between Sil and several of our students at Gnomon. I think they really put together an extremely unique and beautiful piece, and I can't be more proud of Gnomon's involvement in that.
Today we are thrilled to have Shane Acker join us in the development of his new short film 'Plus Minus'. A few years ago Shane actually accepted the resident artist position not long after having completed his short film '9', but a week later he got a call from Tim Burton to develop '9' into a feature. Heh... so of course I was very excited for him and now that the film is done, I was thrilled to hear from Shane that he still wanted to come to Gnomon. Over the next few months we will be developing 'Plus Minus' in conjunction with a variety of students and professionals... very exciting!
And finally, our current big news is the development of Gnomon Studios. As my fourth company, it can be said that I am pulled in a lot of directions, but this is something that I am very dedicated to developing into something wonderful. I am very fortunate to have an amazing staff amongst the Gnomon companies, allowing me to continue to develop new projects, which really has become my role. The Gnomon Studios will initially focus on the development of Shane Acker's short film, but we will also be working on a variety of projects doing vfx, creature work, and pre-production design visualization... as well as other short films. This will be an amazing opportunity for our students to get some production experience prior to graduation, while further developing our mission to be a creative and professional environment. Stay tuned. :)
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3DTotal: Do you believe you will ever reach a saturation point with regard to the topics you can adapt to DVD or do you feel the evolution of new software will continually supply new content?
Alex: The Gnomon School offers about sixty courses every term, both in Hollywood and online, and The Gnomon Workshop library has over 200 titles. So yes, there is a lot of information to be gained from all of that... but of course, the industry continues to evolve. New tools and techniques are always being developed and it is our job to stay on top of that. For this reason Gnomon will always continue to develop our curriculum, add new classes and, of course, continue to release new DVDs. The rate at which we release DVDs, however, has slowed down. This is primarily due to the absolutely insane amount of piracy that exists today. While top artists used to be appropriately compensated by the sale of DVDs, today it seems that most people feel that it is ok to just grab our titles from torrent sites. This has had a major impact on the entertainment industries, meaning film and music, but of course impacts us in a big way as well. If people are going to just pirate everything, Gnomon will just focus on other things. Sad but true.
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There are still, however, many people who do not believe in piracy and support us, and for this we are grateful... so for the time being, The Gnomon Workshop will continue to produce titles. I know that other companies such as Lynda.com, Digital Tutors, Total Training, etc are also all over the torrent sites... but if Hollywood with all their money can't figure it out, what are we going to do? If you are reading this and have a bunch of pirated stuff on your hard drive, just be aware that I understand why you do it... but in the end by not supporting the content creators, you are limiting how much content gets made.
On a positive note, the Gnomon School is busier than we've ever been. You can't replace a real education, at a school, developing your personal network with other artists in person and benefitting from
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the great efforts we take with job placement. We are very dedicated to continuing to offer the best education that we can in order to allow artists the opportunity to realize their full potential. Education has been my career for over twelve years and I am very proud to be in a position to help people; extremely proud. Gnomon exists to be the school that I was looking for when I was a student searching for somewhere to develop myself as an artist, learn 3D, Visual Effects, Gaming, etc. For this reason, I think Gnomon will continue to be extremely unique. We are not run by suits who just care about profits and could care less about quality. Gnomon is an artist run facility, developed by artists, for artists. Most other schools are unethical and have no problem lying to their applicants... which is really a shame.
3DTotal: Do you feel your artistic background has been an invaluable part of |
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Gnomon’s success?
Alex: Very much so. As I mentioned earlier, Gnomon has been developed based on my own vision of what an ideal learning environment would be. From the design of our furniture (all designed in Maya and custom built), to the artwork on the walls, to the caliber of our instructors, Gnomon is meant to inspire and motivate artists to create. Being an artist is a lifelong pursuit, where you are continually aware of your own weaknesses and strive to improve upon them. Whether you are 22 or 72, this is something that I have discovered to be a universal constant amongst successful artists. Furthermore I am just as fascinated and excited by the tools, techniques and potential of our industry as I have ever been, and think that this enthusiasm is felt and appreciated by Gnomon's staff, faculty and students. Gnomon at its core is an art school, where visual effects, animation and gaming happen to be the medium. Should a medical school be run by an engineer? With this logic, how could a school like Gnomon be run by someone who isn't himself as involved in or excited by our industry as our students hope to be? When I was in art school, I was continually frustrated by the fact that all of my instructors were 'staff' instructors... people who really were no longer part of the industry and were not doing what I wanted to do. While well intentioned, they did not inspire me. In the end I had to be self-motivated and feed off the energy of my fellow classmates. I wanted to create something better than that and, while Gnomon is still in a continual state of evolution, I think that we are on the right path, with the correct motivation.
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