Estylo from Fernando Jimenez

A former student of the Academy has launched a new one of a kind product and a successful Kickstarter campaign to back it up.

Fernando Jimenez has come up with the Estylo 1.1, the first and only wooden stylus to work on capacitive touch screens such as the iPad. His goal was to create a completely eco friendly product that would inspire the imagination. Designed for artists seeking greater accuracy over their work, it can also be used for writing or simply navigating the Web. Estylo uses high quality conductive materials so no extra pressure is needed for it to be detected by the device. Estylo is in effect, a pencil for the iPad.

Fernando recently took the Estylo to Kickstarter.com in an effort to raise funding for the project. The campaign has been a tremendous success so far, with 538 backers and approaching 6 times the original funding level of $3500 he was originally shooting for as of this writing with 13 days left to the campaign.

To find out more about the Estylo 1.1 or to contribute to Fernando's launch for the Estylo product line, follow this link to his Kickstarter page.

Fernando has a company of his own to back this up. Go to Plai.tv to see what's happening.

Congratulations Fernando and good luck! You're helping many people expand their avenue for creativity with the Estylo. Looking forward to the many great things you'll be doing in the future.

Joel Valdez BG Designs

Joel Valdez came to Burbank from Tucson, Arizona to embark upon his art education for animation at the Academy. He's a character centric artist until recently, when he progressed to Background Design and Perspective with his instructor, Robert Gold. Robert is an excellent teacher and does great things with our students. Joel had no experience to speak of regarding BG Design and took to the subject like a fish in water.

Here are his first series of concept sketches in perspective that he's created for the class recently. Keep in mind that he's never drawn backgrounds before and these are concept sketches from his imagination.

Andre Medina at Sony on Cloudy 2

Heard good news from former Academy student Andre Medina. He was previously at Disney Feature Animation as a Visual Development intern. Now he's found a home at Sony working as a Character Designer on the sequel to "Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs". Andre regularly maintains his blog. Follow this link to see what he's up to. You can also view his online portfolio here. This is something Andre came up with while interning at Disney this year, which reflects key aspects of what our students delve into in Character Design I.