Our intensive program is designed and delivered by experienced industry professionals to train digital story-tellers to enter the many emerging employment arenas in digital animation. We offer one academy session per year (September 5, 2001 - April 22, 2002) that is limited in enrollment to 20 students on-campus in our new state-of-the-art $1.7 million facility. This intensive, 1080 hour academy session is set in a production studio atmosphere, with each student repeating the standard industry production cycle through the course of creating original shorts, commercials, games, product simulations and virtual set designs. New this year is our first Online Academy Session for an additional 60 students, who will experience the same instruction in a "learn anytime, learn anywhere" virtual studio environment. Academy students develop professional skills in pre-production, story-telling, modeling, rigging, texture art, lighting, character animation, effects, animation programming/technical direction, render management, web animation and game design as they work alongside experienced industry artists.