Today we’d like to introduce you to Gavin Dell
Hi Gavin , so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
About 10 years ago I realized my hometown of Kansas City really needed a school for animation. In fact the whole country needed a specialty school that trained students in the way the studios needed them trained.
For the last 20 years colleges have been trying to capitalize on the popularity of animation with young artists but none of them actually new how studio productions operate and were exceptionally limited in their understanding of how to teach it. I had been working as an animator, character designer, story artist, and a director for every major studio in Hollywood for almost 30 years so I knew the ins and outs of every department in production like the back of my hand. I also had a rare asset of working in film, games, and television in many of these positions so I was uniquely qualified to develop a deeper program than most.
I had just finished directing on Scooby Doo and went to work on developing the best training program for animation the studios had ever seen. My passion for the craft started to come back as I was developing the animation program. It reminded me of the excitement I had of making stories come alive for the first time. I got back in touch with the admiration of the masters before me and striving for excellence in the craftsmanship of this artform. Many of those things can get water down over time when you work on shows that want infinite amounts of drawings on a budget that doesn’t allow for nuance. Television is a monster that most artists can never dream of. High paced schedules with little room for error, scripts with multiple characters in every shot, and a demand for the highest quality possible regardless of the time you have.
Yet I had thrived in that for 15 years of my 30 years in animation and loved every minute of it.
In 2020, like a weird twist of fate, there was covid. For the first time the studios were letting us work from home! I had a website for my school, a plan and an opportunity that may never come again. So I packed up and moved from Burbank to Kansas City to start Hollywood Animation Academy, the first specialty school for animation. It would be taught by the same animators that have taught at Cal Arts and Gnomon in Hollywood but for half the cost and with 30 years of my insight into production. Plus I had removed the non career relavent courses, and added a much deeper curriculum than those schools. It was an exciting breath of fresh air, so to speak, leaving lockdown in LA for the lovely city of KC. 1/10 of the amount of people made Kansas City seem safe in comparison and people were behaving like the world was pretty normal.
Kansas City is the birthplace of animation in this country. It is where Walt Disney started and as a matter of fact the small group of animators that worked with Walt in KC scattered around LA and started the whole industry. This made Kansas City be referred to as “The Cradle of Hollywood.”
I started my journey in KC finishing high school and taking commercial art for a year, but in 1989 went to Cal Arts for animation where things really went into motion. Before that I was lost as an artist, drawing from Dungeons and Dragons strategy guides and Heavy Metal magazine.
I took to animation right away and was one of three in my class to make the Cal Arts producers show that year.
I started my first job on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles then worked for Steven Spielberg and Tim Burton. I was shot out of a cannon to go to work everyday. I got to work on Looney Tunes five times, Pink Panther, Hercules, Pirates of the Caribbean and more! But in the late 90’s Toy Story came out, and like the foot of Godzilla stomped on 2D animation. All of a sudden feature films were switching to 3D and 2D artists had to move into television or learn 3D to survive.
At the time I was most inspired by what was happening in video games. I was a huge gamer and had two young boys who were playing games daily. So I applied at Sony Playstation and got hired! They trained me in 3D in a matter of weeks and I was off to the races. My background in storytelling and animation was deeper than the young 3D artists I was working with and pretty quickly those other skills helped me rise to a lead animator and cinematic director. I got to work on Tomb Raider, Gears of War 2, Saints Row 3 and 4 and Silent Hill. Suddenly I am becoming a filmmaker directing movie scenes for games right when the graphics were getting super realistic looking. I had a great time working in games for about 10 years until a game I was working on got cancelled and at the same time had a chance to go back to work on Looney Tunes again.
My career took me back to the reason I became an animator in the first place. Bugs and Daffy! It felt like an old pair of shoes, comfortable immediately. I spent several more years directing and storyboarding until arriving at the realization I wanted to do something new by starting a school.
Coming back to Kansas City felt like a warm blanket in a storm. LA was locked down and on fire. People were stressed out and holding onto everything they had like hungry dogs. In KC people were comfortable and friendly. You could even say they were warm and generous. It is a culture of people where the cost of living helps you thrive and that affords people the room to help others without worrying they might lose their own. I started by going to the schools I knew when I grew up here and offered to give presentations on careers in animation. I told them I was starting a school and started an interest list. A year later I had spoken at nearly every high school or technical school in the city and had found an assortment of interested students. The hard part was that to start a school you can’t just hang a sign outside a door and say “Get your training here!” You have to get state certified to be legit, and thatwas a challenge, but one that I feel alot of accomplishment from.
I opened the school in January of 2023 with 6 students. Now I have 20 and we hold online classes too! Hollywood Animation Academy is the first fulltime 100% animation school in the country. We excel with instructors that are all industry veterans with 20 years or more of experience and a wealth of real world knowledge to pass on. One semester with us is like 2 years at a college. We even had one student that had already gone to Kansas City Art Institute and gotten a bachelor’s degree. He said he learned more in the first semester from us than he did in the whole 4 years there. I recruited 24 guest instructors from Hollywood to participate in the school who visit our classroom via Zoom every couple of weeks. We have two veteran directors teaching from morning to 5 daily so our students get used to hours like a real job. Students have all day support and world class notes to elevate their work whenever they ask. It is like a revolution in education. You mean the teacher can see exactly what to do to make my work stronger and elevate me to pro?
No longer are grades given on the first pass. If you are an artist you know the first pass isn’t always your best pass and getting some feedback can almost always help you improve your work. Well in film and television, iteration is the job! We do it over and over and raise the quality multiple times along the way. We get feedback from leads, directors, producers, creators and colleagues. This is how you get the high level of work we see on the screen everday and we should have our students work in that system as well. Film, game, and television work is a collaborative process not a form of self expression. We serve the story, not ourselves. We compliment the creator’s vision and help them get the most out of their property. It is our job to make them look good until it is our turn as the creator. This is the heart of learning how to be a real team player in the film business and in many ways is more important than being the best artist. You have to learn to be a great asset to your team.
All of these real world lessons are part of our program and of course we want our students to be the best new animators in the business as well. Bringing the daily experience of working in a studio atmosphere into a school setting is what makes us cutting edge. We also can change our curriculum to follow industry trends without going through a committee of school board members. If we see the newest technology online one day, we can learn it and add it in by the following week sometimes. Or we develop projects for next years film and game roster that is coming out in the theaters so our students are working on the hottest ip’s in the business and their portfolios are as current and relavent as they can possibly be. If the studios call us to ask us to add something in the mix we can add it as if we are training people just for them. Which in fact we are! We want them waiting for our new graduates with great anticipation because they are exactly what they want in a career animator.
And now things have turned again and we are at the forefront of training students to be content creators. Studios are now looking online on Youtube and elsewhere for properties that are creating a following. They then offer to infuse some money into the property to blow it up and it puts the artist in the drivers seat because they own the property instead of the studio. They already created a following and the studio wants to ride your wave along with you. Or in the best scenario you don’t even need the studio, you made something that takes off enough to pay you money and you reinvest in your property to make it blow up yourself and now you have total freedom as a creator that is getting paid by your audience. We teach our students more than animation and that is how it should be. If you work hard and have the told for success you can make it without anyone else being your keeper.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
If you work in the entertainment business you should expect to look for a new job almost every year. It is a rollercoaster ride. Sometimes it is all smiles and sometimes you have a look of terror as you go through a dark tunnel. If you make yourself valuable you always come out of the tunnel into the light again.
I experienced many layoffs and project changes in my 30 years in film, games, and television. Sometimes the season is over, the movie is done, the game is cancelled, or whatever. Sometimes it goes on for years and you get to ride along. In many ways I liked starting a new show because the challenge of proving yourself is exillerating and I like the variety of creative challenges. If I were to stay on the Simpsons for 5 years I would go crazy. But going from a horror game to a cartoon, and then to an action adventure movie is an artistic dream come true for me.
Office politics are also something everyone has to learn to deal with. Do you believe in your bosses decisions? Do they communicate well or micromanage you? Ultimately this happens to everyone in every job and you have to decide if you have other options to walk away or buckle down and work through it. Most of the time you are a better person for facing the adversity and persevering. There is always a lesson to learn. Trust me I learned many times that my opinion didn’t matter and the more I fought the machine the less I was being a good team player. In the end you learn, you are there to make your boss look good. If you embrace that concept they will hold onto you for all they are worth. That is all anyone wants.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am the founder of the first specialty school for animation in the US and a 34 year veteran animator and director.
One of the things that makes me unique is that I have worked on a director level in films, games, and television.
I am definitely most proud of starting Hollywood Animation Academy. Even though I went to Cal Arts which is known mostly for their animation program, I also knew there were alot of things that could be improved to make an even better school. First and foremost, since you don’t need a college degree, why should you waste half of every year doing non career relavent courses to the tune of 50k a year? It’s outrageous and unaffordable, and the risk is way too high if you don’t get a job to carry a federal school loan of that size. Imagine not getting into the business and having to start over with 200k in debt to the feds. If it were a prvate loan you could file bankruptcy but not for a federal school loan. They sew that loan into your skeleton and you can never get rid of it so you better make sure you make the most of your school decision or it could haunt you forever.
I am happythat we found an alternative that costs less than half of the colleges with way more bang for the buck. A better level of training where you don’t have to do history term papers or math while you are trying to learn to animate. We have a 2 and a 3 year program that goes far deeper than any other school does in 4 years. And our tuition is almost half the cost because we don’t have to pay for a huge campus and tons of teachers to teach those non relavent courses. It’s better for everyone and I think it is the wave of the future of education. Trade School taught by masters of the trade. We increase the chances of our students employibility with practical training that fits what the target employer wants to see.
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
To be an animator you have to let go of control. There are so many wheels in motion and you can only do your part to make it great. In the end, the project’s greatness is not your sole responsibility. You can’t carry everyone else to greatness. Surrender to being a great person to work with that makes everyone appreciate you.
Everyone is responsible for themselves and their own greatness. Working with students has been my greatest challenge. I want them to understand that lack of effort produces no results in the real world. Many of them have never had consequences for failing. They just got out of high school and this is the first time that producing results is going to mean something in terms of a great salary or no job at all. If they got a bad grade on a test in high school they still had their parents paying for everything and it didn’t really matter. Now they could end up without a job if they don’t produce and I really care about their futures. But I am realizing that once again they have to be responsible for their own greatness. I can’t do the work for them as much I want them to be successful. I can only teach them the best I can and it is in their hands after that.
It’s just like being a parent. You have to let them skin their knee in order for them to learn from it. If you helicopter around with a pillow for them to fall on, it hurts them more than it helps. They become detached from the reality of consequences and disfunctional in helping themselves. I can be there as a mentor for many years into the future and hope they come back for advice from time to time. Or even better just say hello and tell me about their successes!
Pricing:
- 30,000 per year for 2 or 3 years
Contact Info:
- Website: https://hollywoodanimationacademy.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hollywood_animation_academy/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HollywoodAnimationAcademy
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hollywood-animation-academy/?viewAsMember=true
