Disclaimer: The following opinions are mine and mine only, and do not reflect those of any other person, company, or organization.

1. What advice can you give me about getting an animation internship? What do I need to be considered and how can I stand out from the other candidates?

2. What advice can you give me about preparing my demo reel?

3. How is the Academy of Art College?

4. What is your opinion of (fill in name of school)?

5. What software do you use?

6. Can you please critique my short/animation/reel?

7. How do you animate?

The best advice I can give you about landing an internship is simply to apply. You don't know how many people I've met who want an internship, and yet don't take the initiative and time to prepare a reel and fill out the paperwork. How can you get an internship if you never apply?! The way I look at it is the worst you can do by applying is not get the job, which coincidentally is the same result of not applying at all. The best you can do is get the position. So it's a no-lose situation.

Different internships have different requirements and you'll want to check each one individually. In general, most internships require at least a cover letter, resume, and reel, so be sure you have plenty of each.

The way you can get yourself to stand out is by having good work on your reel. It's that simple. Most production houses view internships as a trial period for a potential employee, so they want to hire someone who can possibly fill a vacancy after the internship is over. If you have good animation on your reel you'll grab their attention, guaranteed.

In terms of reels, just make sure you put your best work first and include only the strongest work on your reel. Don't include anything just to make your reel longer. Keep in mind that to the people looking at your work, you're only as good as the worst piece on your reel. So be selective when deciding how you want to showcase yourself. Another thing to remember is to include only work relevant to the position you're applying for. If you're applying for an animation position, don't include any work that is focused on lighting, texturing, or modeling. Make sure each piece shows off your animation abilities in one way or another. That is what the people reviewing your reel will only be concerned with.

As for the packaging and everything else, don't spend a lot of time working on it. Fancy packaging generally means you've spent a lot of time on the exterior appearance instead of using that time to animate. Remember, the ONLY thing that matters is what is on your reel. So don't waste a lot of your time on extraneous details when you could be animating instead.

For additional info on demo reels, I've found CGTalk.com has a lot of useful links in their forum towards the bottom of the page.

Seeing as how attending the Academy of Art College eventually led to my dream job, I really cannot say anything bad about it. The school provides all the needed facilities, resources, and classes for any student who has the willingness, determination, and discipline to take advantage of them. By far the best aspect of the school is that it draws animators from the surrounding production houses, including Pixar, PDI, Tippett, and ILM, to teach there. For anyone wanting to learn animation, having the opportunity to learn from such talented professionals is invaluable.

For additional or more specific information, you may want to try contacting a student currently attending the school or a more recent graduate. It has been several years since I attended and I know the school has undergone a lot of administrative and curriculum changes since then. Also, there is a thread in the CGTalk forums discussing the Academy of Art College that you may want to read.

The only school I know anything about is the Academy of Art College. I don't have any insights or knowledge about any other school. Sorry.

All the animation on my website, excluding those produced at Pixar, were created with Maya. Pixar has its own proprietary software that, due to confidentiality agreements, I cannot say anything about.

I can certainly try. Please keep in mind, however, that doing so requires a lot of time on my part and therefore it may take several days or weeks for me to respond. If I don't reply at all, please do not take it personally or as a sign I did not like your animation. I can be extremely busy at times and may not have the time to respond to my email as frequently as I would like.

When sending me your work, please do not send it as an attachment to an email. I have limited space and generally cannot receive large attachments. The best way to send me your work is to provide me a link to a website that contains your animation. I will download it or view it from there.

I generally employ a pose-to-pose method when animating my shots. I first key all my major poses paying particular attention to attitude and how the poses relate to one another. After determining my main poses I space them in time. At this point I have a rough version of my final shot. I then break those poses down until, depending on the action, I get my animation somewhere between 2's to 6's. If I'm happy with the blocking at this point, I go through and smooth the curves, tweak the timing, and add the facial animation and any additional polish. That's it.

Although this method may work for me, I know many others who use and swear by a "layering" method where you first animate a character's root and work out towards the extremities. My suggestion is to try different methods, experiment, and find a technique that you are comfortable with and gets you good results. There is no right or wrong way to animate.