Yellowbrick / Animation Mentor

(2021 Dec 06) Yellowbrick is an online learning and collaboration platform that empowers the next generation of talent to discover, pursue, upskill, and advance their career within the creative arts, media and entertainment fields. Yellowbrick owns Animation Mentor and Artella. Animation Mentor has an alumni community of over 5,000 students in over 105 countries, now working in world-class studios like Pixar, DreamWorks, Industrial Light & Magic, Laika, WETA and many more. Artella is a Creative Education and Collaboration platform used by globally-recognized creative brands such as Riot Games, Wildlife Studios, Electronic Arts. Hello everyone and welcome to what is going to be another great webinar with GridMarkets. Today we have a very interesting session for you. As you can see we've got myself Charlie Watson, I’m based in London and I’ll be moderating the session.We've got Mark Ross, who has brought us all together as always and he'll be talking a little bit later about GridMarkets and what they offer and who they are and the main event the two people who will be sitting on the edge of your seats to hear from Emily Lynch and Justin Owens from Yellowbrick and animation mentor respectively and it's really super exciting two educational providers coming together and it's gonna be a really inspirational chat. We can go into that a bit more later before we get to the main part as always we'll have Mark the lovely Mark telling us a little bit more about who GridMarkets are and what they have to offer you please without further ado Mark thank you Charlie I did spend a lot of time on my hair today so I guess I am looking particularly lovely all right Hi I’m Mark I’m from GridMarkets and I’m going to briefly tell you what we do in a nutshell we're a cloud rendering service and we support all the major 3d solutions like Blender Houdini Cinema 4d Maya and 3ds Max and them and the major renderers as well that go along with those it's a very simple process to get started the setup is very simple I’ll explain that in a moment you can submit from your favorite 3d user interface so nothing new to learn you can specify that you want to run on one to hundreds of machines per submission we have a pay-per-machine hour usage model where you pay only for the machine seconds that you use and there's a budgeting mechanism that we've included as well so you can specify a limit of what you spend our platform was built and supported by artists so we understand your pain we understand your deadlines and we're here to help you get over the visual finish line the platform is secured by the oracle cloud and we have some information on that to follow as well so how to get started you go to the GridMarkets.com sign up page step one you create an account step two you download our plugin called envoy and I’ll explain what that does in a moment step three you install the plugin and that's the end of it so if you're a Houdini user for example you would install the Houdini plug-in into your Houdini session your local Houdini session which would then allow you to submit directly from Houdini to us envoy is a tool which allows you to move your files from your local machine to our cloud and it also serves to get the results back which you'll see in a moment envoy also has a real-time dashboard which is represented here so all the projects that you submit to us all the jobs that you submit to us each one is given a row on this interface you can then drill into each of the projects to find out the status of that project as the frames complete they download to whatever designated folder you have identified no need for waiting it happens automatically we're offering a free trial with some free credits and if you use this discount code here you'll get a 15 discount on any credits you buy thereafter so visit us at GridMarkets.com sign up set up your account if you don't already have one and use that discount code to get some free credits back to you Charlie thanks Mark and we'll be flagging again that really great deal for the discount code at the end of the session so make sure you keep your eyes peeled if you haven't written it down but now as you mentioned at the beginning of this session we have two very inspirational and talented people joining us today they are really working and pushing the boundaries of how we educate and we're really lucky to have them Emmy and Justin come from two different educators who have combined their power to live an essential tool for the animation industry and beyond actually which we'll hear about now if I can ask Emily to share a little bit about yellow bricks you can you can explain it a lot better than I can please tell us a bit about yourself sure so hI everyone welcome to today's session to today's session I’m so excited to be having a conversation with you all a little bit about me before I dive into yellow brick I am yellow bricks director of strategic initiatives and partnerships I’m actually still fairly new to the yellow brick community I joined earlier this year in June but I have about 10 years in higher education as well as education technology experience but I’m very passionate about VFX animation and all the different other creative careers that yellow brick as well as animation mentor which you'll hear about a little bit later today have to offer but less about me and and more about yellow brick and the one thing that I think I’m really proud of with yellow brick is that they are like we are a pioneer in really opening pathways and doorways to creative careers and that could be to those that are who just getting started in a particular industry those that may have a passion perhaps maybe even a side hustle or maybe they do want to have like a career pivot and want to pursue a pathway in in a creative industry and we have courses all across different verticals such as film and tv production music industry essentials fashion as well as sneaker and streetwear design we also have some more generalized industry agnostic programs such as product design and whatnot but really the idea behind all the courses that we have and what yellow brick really stands behind is giving you the fundamentals and essential skill sets to be able to pursue your passion whether it's going to be an informal as well as formalized capacity and we do that in a way where we're partnering with top-tier schools so such as NYU you know the school of the arts one of the most common household names probably you know in the united states but also around the world we work with fit as well as well as the new school of parsons school of design in partnership with leading brands such as complex Condé Nast we also partner with Nike Adidas Reebok all of these different programs to include industry experts to deliver what is a very holistic and comprehensive program to give you those basic skill sets those fundamentals to pursue your passion across all those different courses that I mentioned and beyond and combined with the academic component of the university partner but also the leading brands and industry experts that we have as part of our courses you're constantly staying up to date with common trends you do have a very strong academic component and the best part about it too is that we have such a robust and very diverse community that you'll also learn from your peers as well as the content from the course one of the really exciting things too about yellow brick is that all of our courses are actually delivered asynchronous asynchronously so if you have a full-time job maybe you're going to school full-time or perhaps you just have a very busy lifestyle your courses can fit in with everyday life and they usually take anywhere from probably six months to a year to complete and you're able to own that pathway and to really take your time to understand the material complete the affiliate affiliated projects all on your own time and then once you actually do complete your course you're going to be delivered with a university branded certificate that you can display on LinkedIn you can we issue printouts so that you can have your certificate probably displayed on your wall and that way you're able to really take that next step into a career or even just really deepen you know a passion or interest that you may have and I will actually take a break here hand it back to Charlie before we actually transition into our animation mentor component of our conversation today thanks Emily I already have so many questions to ask you and go ahead well I think if we if you Justin talk about animation mentor and then I want to everyone's got an idea of who you guys are and we can really start getting into the how you guys started working together and how do you complement each other and what and what that and how that came about I mean it's just really fascinating I think it's a really great new way of learning accessibility to artists really yeah absolutely so Justin the Justin’s product development director manager sorry if I’ve got your job title along there Justin I’ve got it i and please tell us a little bit more about animation mental sure thing so first you know my name is Justin Owens I thought I would talk a little bit about my journey kind of how I got to be an animation mentor and with Yellowbrick so I’ve been an animation mentor now for 10 years I you know had a life change where I wanted to you know change up my career and I got into animation I went to a four-year university studying character animation kind of finally realized I wanted to get more into the arts like I’ve always had this dream of being an artist but I thought you had to be born with that skill set and I didn't have that skill set but over time I kind of learned anyone can do it if you just really focus and learn so I went and studied character animation in San Francisco and when I I finished you know I needed a job and I saw an opening animation mentor I joined the crew there and that's where I kind of put together my love of animation my love of arts with my love of education I’ve always loved tutoring and teaching and all of a sudden being able to help our students kind of achieve their dreams all really came together and so that's where I really kind of honed my craft and also kind of realized I love painting and so I also did a second change up there and really started focusing you know my professional development and my personal development around painting and developed a painting workshop within animation mentor as well and so really you know as we talked with you all today one of the things I wanted to share about my journey is you don't have to start with the skill set of being an artist whether it's a VFX artist or a storyboard artist or an animator if you have that passion and dream to really get into the educational process and kind of invest in yourself you can do it so that's a lesson that took a long time for me to learn and that's something I really always try to impart with our students so that's a little bit about me what I would love to do now is I want to share a little bit of our student showcase so I’m going to play kind of like the first minute for you all so you can kind of see what our animation students are kind of doing by the end of the program so let me queue this up says that again I tell you what I’m gonna say I’m gonna say back up off me baby okay I’m a grown man I’ll make my own decisions just not face is that a new song yeah I’m not really ready to share it yet you want to know who I am here's who I am I’m in a supermarket looking for some peaches like a craving for peaches my ostensible search for peaches was in reality a search for adventure I was in a really good mood which is kind of the problem so that kind of gives you know a nice overview of what our students do within the main animation courses so I wanted to talk just very briefly a little bit about you know what animation mentor is so we saw the showcase actually let me go back one what I wanted to call out here and I think this is so cool about our school and this really fits along with yellow brick as well is we're an international school both of our schools are and with this particular showcase that I just showed you know we had 18 of our students participated that we showcased from 18 civ cities and from seven different countries around the world now this is very common for us with our showcases and just with our student body is we are international we definitely have a lot of people in in the us and Canada but we have students joining from all over the world so it's a really cool experience to get to meet people from all over the world and also to bring that education and that educational experience to so many people so real briefly and then I’ll hand it back to Charlie I just wanted to say you know what is animation mentor one we are the original online animation school we've now been in business for 16 years when we first started you know YouTube I think was just getting started it's like the landscape of the internet at the time was just so different but always our mission from the very beginning and we reiterate this within our staff is we're always trying to create the most personal and fulfilling learning experience on the planet so this really drives every decision we make to make the educational experience better and that animation mentor you know our initial focus was character animation as you kind of sean saw in the showcase but we also teach workshops in character modeling 2d animation storyboarding so we really have a breadth of content and again our goal always is to help our students help them achieve their dreams and we do that through high quality educational content and mentors who actually work in the industry so there's a lot of me talking I’m gonna go ahead and stop there and hand it back to Charlie thank you Justin that was I could have watched that all day there's so much humor in that showcase as well it's not just it's not just the visual side of it do they do they do their own scripts or are they going a bit of peace from the conversation but I’m just generally interested do they write their own scripts as well yeah they come up with their own their own ideas so if it's say an acting shot typically what students are doing is they're going to find a dialogue clip from a film or a movie or a movie or tv show so something that's been you know professionally delivered by an actor or actress and then what the students do is try and come up with their own twist so okay you have that piece of dialogue what's your idea how can you take it and put it into a totally new situation so yeah I think one of the main things we're teaching is not just the technical and artistic side of animation but also your thinking process and your ideation how do you come up with a totally new idea and that's honestly what studios want to see they don't want to see the same ideas over and over they want to see your creativity and your interpretation of an idea yeah I bet it's just brilliant I think that's yeah especially when you're looking at wheels or the studios are sending in their reels it's so important thank you and I just want to thank our listeners today that we are taking live questions nearly the end of the session so please do send them through anything you've got to ask Emily and Justin Emily yellow grip so when it's quite a new concept I would say and the sort of the way you guys work and really innovative when what was there and I apologize because you are as you said you're fairly new as well but what was the thinking process behind it what was the gap in the market that the founders saw sure so when you think about I and I’ll call this the alternative credential market within higher education you see a lot of different programs you have your traditional two and four-year programs associate bachelor's degree so forth masters doctorates but they're all within traditional subjects and of course there are definitely two for and beyond year-long programs you know with universities but there's also a lot of a lot of I don't know how to call this but fluff within those courses and you also see now more probably within the last two to three years like boot camp programming very much like animation mentor where they're a little bit shorter than your traditional degree programs but still give you really that fundamental skill set to be able to begin your career and that is where we actually identified a gap because a lot of these programs exist within the tech space you know think about ux uI coding software development there's really not a jump start course there aren't really jump start courses that give you the knowledge but also the industry the baseline career knowledge but also the industry trends and knowledge that you need to be able to start a career within creative space you know a lot of people when you think about what would you really love to do if there were no holds bars and it's you know become an influencer be on become an actor maybe be a director to design their own fashion line to be really take their creative career interests and passions and turn it into something real and tangible so that was really the foundational thinking behind what brick is and why it was formed to really fill in that gap not only from like a creative space and giving students an opportunity at a lower cost lower entry point to pursue their passions but also to create academic program in that short course space that's not as much of a commitment as a degree program or a boot camp but still gives you the skills that's needed to maybe to pivot into a career path and then what was so yellow brick bought animation mental earlier this year so what were the synergies that yellow bricks saw with animation monumental what was that I mean that was your first acquisition wasn't it yeah that would be correct so I think what really attracted yellow brick to animation mentor was along the lines of core value alignment and being able to really provide a quality product to creatives that is very impactful you know that does make a difference within a particular industry and one of the I think most important things and things I’m most proud of working with yellow brick is that we are so focused on impact we're very focused on diversity and being able to create opportunities and that's exactly what animation mentor is founded upon too so the synergy and alignment was truly a no-brainer for us to come together and create basically this upward trajectory of offerings for the creative community so as I mentioned before Yellowbrick operates within the short course space you know think six months to a year certificate programs but animation mentor is a boot camp program so you are going to have formalized training you're actually going to have synchronous content with your mentor which is one-on-one by the way which I think is really amazing and it really helps both expand our mutual product offerings but more importantly giving students such a diverse array of choices to choose from their educational you know their educational programming to really make a difference in their career and to pursue their passion so it was really just making that connection and understanding that we are great partners we just need to come together and Justin what are your thoughts how has how has the house things changed for me since working with yellow brick there we go that's a big question you've got to become a spot then yeah I mean to some extent things really haven't changed a lot I think what has changed is we have a whole lot more team members to tap into and great people to work with so you know I’m on the product side so I’ve been meeting with the product team on Yellowbrick and it's all just really good people it's inspiring to feel like I just have more co-workers all of a sudden sitting alongside me even though you know we're all remote to really impact students so I don't know like day to day really hasn't changed at all and I think instead we have a lot more alignment and resources just to do some really cool things in the future and you mentioned in your presentation that animation mentor is global so there's you know there's people that who want to either upskill or learn a completely new trade with it they can from anywhere around the globe now it's not just university-centric is that a model that follows through a yellow brick is that a new concept that's something are you are you looking to maybe take things from animation mental that could work with how some of your other courses work I think we're definitely looking at those synergies like on the Yellowbrick side from the conversations we've had like my animation mentor has been teaching synchronously so mentor teaching live to students along with great content you know we have great lectures that we record we provide students with all the tools they need to just get started which I can show in just a bit what we haven't done as much is the asynchronous educational space where Yellowbrick has really kind of nailed that and so I think both companies I mean one umbrella company but kind of like different divisions we're looking how can we learn from each other so on our end we're looking at how can we take all that learning from the asynchronous content maybe there's some really cool offerings we can provide our community and in our educational space and kind of bring that and I think yellow brick is looking at the same thing within our space we know mentorship we know how to you know get studio mentors and hook them up with students so they can create a Keller experience I think yellow brick is in exploring that as well and I know just because I know there's many people who have benefited from animation mentor really is a great thing you're doing you have some of the top names in animation mentoring and tutoring those artists that go through it Emily I know that yellow brick workforce not just animation but fashion design can you talk a little bit about the people there that you've got inspiring the students who come through yellow brick I know you've got some great affiliations oh my goodness there there's so many to even name my goodness I think you know our most popular programs are within the fashion arenas and then I would say by extension the film tv and music industries and so for example within the music industry one of the industry experts you may see you featured on out in the courses is DJ Clark Kent which is a very common household name but you know conversely on our fashion programs we've worked with Rebecca Minkoff who is an international luxury fashion designer but we also go a little bit more granular too within some of like within our streetwear and sneaker design where there's a lot of underground sneaker heads or streetwear designers that are have a very large following but may not necessarily be a common household name so for example I’m sure everybody is very familiar with the met gala and one of our industry experts that we partner with and we actually do regular webinars with him as well as Mugzy Mcfly so at the met gala when you attend you get a thank you bag it's a goodie bag filled with probably a lot of very expensive luxury goods but Mugzy actually designed that particular welcome bag and also included a lot of his different gear and he's a very notable streetwear and sneaker designer so in our courses one of the things that we're really founded upon is keeping up with industry trends and of course every season you're going to have new fashion designs you're going to have new influencers coming to the film and tv space you're going to have new artists you know on your apple music or your Spotify playlist so we try to rotate those industry experts within our courses that are the most relevant that have these you know really cool industry insights that keep you as up-to-date as possible so we're constantly reaching out to different like designers different influencers different artists that we can incorporate within the courses and I could probably go on and on but in the essence of time I’ll hand it back to you Charlie well I I’m just interested again from you know your working areas that I’ve never worked in and I know that in the animation VFX industry and I’m sure Justin has come across this is that there often is there seems to be a gap between in educational institutions and what's expected in industry which is why animation mental is so great because it's people already in industry that are going do you do these industry experts that come in as well as mentoring and teaching do they have a say in what happens in the curriculum and kind of informing about what industry needs absolutely and I think that's what's really unique about our particular instructional model because I think it's blending those elements the all those pivotal and key elements you need which is you know top-tier academic instructional design coupled with industry experts who really talk about what made them successful and really creating that bridge of okay here are the fundamental skills that you need to understand from a theoretical perspective but here's what it actually takes to become an entrepreneur here's what I did to be successful here's how I networked here are the brands that I worked with to help me get off the ground and then that's also a really good segue into our leading brand partners because they will talk about the more inner workings of okay here's what it takes to become a multinational conglomerate that's delivering multiple different product lines because most of our students that are in the program are entrepreneurs and I would even say by extension that really holds true for animation mentors too because they're in their entrepreneurial spirit comes from getting started within animation and then aiming for those big tier animation production companies Pixar Sony Netflix and beyond that same thing holds true for all our entire portfolio of courses at Yellowbrick sorry I keep there's always a bit of a gap but I’m trying to find the mute button sorry about that yeah and that's and that's really bad you know that is such an important thing across all industries and that's so important Justin can I ask you to talk a little bit about our teller yeah so I’m gonna go ahead let me show kind of some slides so for those who don't know Artella is a sister company of animation mentor and so both companies were acquired by let me see real quick if okay I was trying to get your cameras on screen at the same time with my screenshot but it's okay so you know I want to talk about Artella and kind of how it's used with an animation mentor I thought I would take a quick step back and kind of give a sense of what the educational experience is like within animation mentor so you see the context of kind of how Artella fits within the educational experience so animation mentor you know and you can see this over here on the left we have a curriculum that we've designed with mentors working in the industry and we deliver that through lectured content so you know we give you the curriculum that teaches you the score the core skills that you need in any particular subject what you do is then you get paired up with a mentor in eight other students so we keep really small class sizes this way there's a lot of individualized feedback you can get from your mentor and so each week you're gonna attend a live q and a with your mentor so it's a one-hour session with you your mentor and up to eight other students and the mentor is going to have specific lecture material that they provide that they bring to the table so animation mentor provides the holistic curriculum the mentor brings their unique experience to that class and their learnings and deliver it to students and then what you can see here on the right so students will have an assignment they do that assignment by the end of the week they upload it to our site and the mentor is able to see that use all the critique tools on our site that were developed by our sister company Artella so I’ll show that in a moment and they do a video recording so it's a critique of your work it's your animation being reviewed by a professional they're gonna give you notes on how to improve it so I want to show this this is our platform this is our site and this is kind of the Artella platform in action where students upload their work and it'll be a video file and maybe an image file then anyone on the campus can open that and you can actually see it you can scrub through the timeline you can do draw overs which is really cool so you can leave very specific notes and you can save that in the comments so you can see some of the comments on the right side there that's student interaction that could be mentor interaction either just text or also comments on top of it and then over here on the left side of the screen with Artella we actually have a plug-in that you download on your system that ties into Maya so Maya is the 3d software that we utilize in admission mentor for character animation and so you can open your Maya files from your browser directly into Maya you can version up your files and so that's a lot of the functionality that comes from Artella I I forget the exact name but Mark was talking about it earlier kind of that that little plug-in that you download that helps you tie into GridMarkets with your software that's what Artella does for us so it is the platform it's the educational experience in terms of bringing community so that students can interact and then it's also this project management and asset management system that we use to deliver character rigs to students or let students use kind of that studio experience of versioning files that you can submit for review thank you that's I think that's really interesting for people who who are on here and maybe don't quite understand how it all works and they can they can see it very visually and how easy the platform really is and how intuitive it is I’m going to move on to some questions you have quite a few questions being sent through so I want to make sure we can cover them in the next 25 minutes so this is for animation mentally this is also tea remedy I suppose are there any prerequisites that need to be satisfied when before getting started with animation mentors so I suppose do you have to be already an animated do you have to have a degree or is there a certain standard you have to hit so we kind of have options for every skill level so if you have xero experience say you're interested in animation but you've never touched Maya as your software then we have a workshop we call it the Maya workshop it's a six-week workshop that's really focused on just kind of what does an animator need to know within the software so we have a option for the total beginner or for someone who's maybe dabbled with 3d software Blender or Maya itself maybe done a little bit of animation just testing out how do you set a keyframe then those students are kind of ready to start in the main animation courses so our first animation course is animation basics really focus use you on those principles the 12 principles of animation make sure you really understand those and then you can go on through each class or if you're a more experienced student maybe you studied animation at another university and you've developed that basic understanding then we actually have an advanced placement process where when students apply to the main animation courses they can submit a demo reel and one of our mentors will review that demo reel and kind of place the students into the correct class making sure just based on the real that we see okay you have this skill set you're ready to move on to this class so you don't have to start with the absolute basics and then we have other workshops you know we have these creature animation workshops which teaches more VFX animation so animating creatures animating creatures or a fight against a background plate so we have a professional development options so if you're already working in the industry but you need to brush up on a skill we have that option we've also actually worked with studios like we've worked with Electronic Arts in the past and we created a master class for them they wanted to brush up their animation team on the sims animation team on acting so we worked with them in partnership and we developed a I think it was a 12 week I don't remember course that was specific for them and just their students their staff members their animators to just get that mentored feedback from someone working at a studio in this case they think they were working at DreamWorks at the time so we kind of have a lot of options for wherever you are from the total beginner to the more experienced thanks and I guess Emily I mean you mentioned that with yellow brick you know it's really flexible in terms of when you can work and how long the time are these courses with people who are looking for career changes that could be completely new to them and we don't require any type of prerequisites for our program I think that's what one of the truly beautiful things about yellow brick is because our courses are designed for everyone you know all across the lifespan span all geographic locations and specifically like whether you are just pivoting and are going to be a career changer and you're very passionate about fashion but actually don't really know too much a course will be our courses will help you get to that I would say you know novice to intermediate level to help springboard you into the career but conversely a lot of the students in our program are very knowledgeable and even expert level within their industries and very similar to what Justin had mentioned before is it's still an opportunity because we do keep everything so up to date you know to understand some different industry trends maybe there are some skill sets that they weren't necessarily familiar they take our course and now that's in their toolbox so I really love the versatility of all of our programs because it'll either help get you started it'll keep you up to date or it'll just continue to advance your knowledge so it's very versatile in the fact that anybody can really take the courses and benefit in a way that they need to benefit from hey thank you and I suppose this then goes kind of flip-flopping backwards and forwards sorry but with the scheduling on animation mentor and spoken about that it's being global are you all and obviously people from Pixar and DreamWorks are very heavily involved in that how does the scheduling look like for them especially when they've got someone in China and they're based in the us and they've been are there do you have mentors all over the world as well as artists we do so we have mentors all over the world but most of them are focused where wherever the major studios are so there's kind of like you know pockets of where they are most of them like a lot of them are based in the us California in particular just because you know that's where DreamWorks picks are Disney have their main headquarters but we have mentors in Vancouver and London also as you know the pandemic happened and everyone went more remote I think mentors were we're all of a sudden having more flexibility to move across the world but as far as the educational experience and you know how does you know say someone from China find a time that works for them what we make sure is one on the lecture side on the curriculum design side that part is kind of at your own time you can review that whenever you want so when you sign up for a class really what you're doing to pick is the mentor that you want to work with in that particular class and that mentor will have a set schedule and so that set schedule is that one hour each week that you meet with your mentor and other students so that's the only time consideration you really need to take into effect and what we do is we make sure we just have those class times spread across all time zones you know as best we can so that if you're in China and depending on time of day one of our morning sessions may actually work for you or we'll offer morning sessions quite often for those in like the UK where it typically will align and I don't remember the exact you Charlie you'll be able to say what time it is there but that's what we do you know we try and find like a range of q and a times we call them q and a times and that way you find something that works for your schedule so kind of wherever you are you know you're not going to miss out and you're going to get a great educational experience thank you and I hope from whoever asked that question I hope enough I fell quite deep into that one and I actually I have another question that's from me and I will get around targeting everyone else's just because I’m really interested and I’m aware of the lack of diversity in the effects animation and what how I’ve tried to combat that will be as an industry I’ve tried to combat that I have been I can I can mainly speak to the UK I can't speak to the us it's going into schools and really raising awareness of the creative and it's not just VFX animation actually it's the whole of the creative industries and how raising awareness at a young age these industries exist that you don't have to be right middle class to be able to afford to go into these industries how involved are yellow growth and animation mental and actually going into schools is that something that you do as well to kind of to get young people aware of these courses that you're offering yeah I can definitely speak to Yellowbrick and I would say that is one of the pillars and part of our community that we're most proud of so to give you a little bit of insight so 75 percent of our students are from underprivileged communities and you're thinking a lot of and I would say a lot of this demographic data is going to be specific to the us but it does also extend to what is I would say about 25 percent of our students from a global population as well and we do have very robust scholarship programs that really help break down those barriers especially in terms of finances to be able to pursue their passion especially when you think about creative industries and I would say animation is also factored into that and you mentioned it too Charlie is that you know there are really high barriers and to go to a four-year program can be very cost prohibitive for a lot of different peoples so our scholarship program not only funded by Yellowbrick on our own but we also have a lot of industry experts that contribute to our scholarship programs some names that you might be very familiar with for me I’m a huge basketball nut as is a lot of different members of our team but you may be familiar with steph curry who is on fire this season and both he his brother and his wife have all individually contributed to the scholarship fund we do have a sports management program but that scholarship can extend to really any program that Yellowbrick offers we also have partnered with lamela ball who received rookie of the year within the MBA last year DJ Clark Kemp one of our industry experts has also contributed significantly to really help open the doors for those that may have not been able to previously and we're really all about creating accessibility for anyone who really wants to take that next step whether it's for their career or just to really engage with their passion right and that's really that's amazing to hear especially about scholarships as well yeah that's so important yeah thank you well done yeah we're very proud of it oh you should be maybe okay because there's so much that the industry needs to do and I think a lot of times you see institutions also in the studios banding together and to see educational institutions doing that as well is incredible I don't know Justin if you've got something to say to that as well yeah we've done some of that at animation mentor so we're located in the bay area and I’ve gone and done some talks at middle schools and high schools where all come and like talk a little bit about the school but really the core part of the presentation to students is a little animation demo because you go to talk to students who are like oh invest in your education they're like whatever I’m I want to play my video games or you know they don't care but you start actually doing some animation in front of them and showing how I use one of our characters their name is squirrels super simple character and I go through this process of like you can create six key poses in a really short period of time and all of a sudden you have motion and animation and their eyes just lit up it's like where before they're talking with each other and kind of not super focused they're just eyes are glued to the screen we're like oh how do you do that was you could get a job doing this so we've done that of like going to the local schools and just kind of showing you know younger kids hey there are these options out here career-wise there was also a after-school program we partnered with last year where they were bringing you know educated they were they were more focused on tv and media so we were offering kind of our Maya workshop you know free to them so that those students could experience animation and an introduction to kind of that space again as a career option and then something else we've done is we've partnered with women in animation so women in animation is a non-profit where they're focused on I think it's 50 50 by 2025 so the idea is getting more representation for women because you know as you're noting Charlie like the demographic spread is just kind of kind of sad and so women in animation is working really hard to get more equity and more opportunities for women within the animation industry and so we've partnered with them we partner with their scholarship program and then most recently we started up a student club so this is bringing students awareness to it and what we're doing we're sitting in the background for the student club we're not directing what happens there they have their own their own board and their own leaders and we're really empowering the students to develop those leadership skills and also be bringing resources so if they want a webinar we'll provide them with a mentor and they kind of have the details so they have our support but we're trying to put the power into their hands and just make them aware that you know hey this is an option for everyone great thank you and I think that again that's all really super useful information for the people who are listening to this and understanding accessibility because really that is that like so that high barrier the prohibitive nature sometimes this industry such once you're in it it's wonderful but it's just understanding how to make that step so I’ve got one more question there that we have from an audience member I will ask it but just to be wary that we have only five minutes to answer it so give me two and a half minutes each we can do math as well and so I’m representing a studio we have significant challenges finding and recruiting creative talent does the yellow brick or animation mentor have a partnership program that would help us with this challenge over to you Emily you can start repeat it one more time Charlie just so I make sure I understand so if there's someone from a studio so at the moment there's there's a lot there's a there's a talent just lack of talent out there or too much work probably not lack of talent and so everyone's fighting for talent and do you this yellow brick or animation mentor offer a partnership program that can help with this challenge I say it's funnel through talent through different studios so actually that's an area that we're actively working on right now because we have such a robust portfolio of our partner brands and we're thinking across all of these different creative verticals we're starting to work right now and that's my role being new to Yellowbrick is to help start creating these partner programs and there's two schools of thought that we're actively pursuing right now and actually animation mentor has done this before where we'll work in partnership with a large-scale brand potentially develop some workforce development courses for them that are specific to the employees of that particular organization and it could be specific to their role or it could be completely generalized however we do have some programs currently in the works right now with other partner brands to really deliver something very specific within an industry that's tailored to that brand some small scale programs that we have already delivered come in the form of a micro boot camp and we've done that specifically within streetwear and sneaker design where we've worked with adidas as well as reebok as well as new balance to create programs for sneaker design but also how to really make a living with your ideas and they're a four-day intensive in-person camp and we typically target underprivileged communities for those that are very interested in sneaker design and in partnership with that organization and brand they understand really everything it takes to not only design a sneaker concept but also produce and market and then understand the life cycle of that product all concentrated within four days and then in return a lot of these students that are going through these micro boot camp programs in addition to just our general courses that we offer it creates that talent funnel not only directly into that organization but also for other like organizations within the industry the skill set is not always going to be brand specific so we're trying to really address that talent gap for you know big growing organizations and trying to create that talent funnel into each of them great thank you and I think we are just running out of time now I don't know if you had five words to mention just I’ll say this comes up no specific partnerships on the animation mentor side but this comes up frequently where studios reach out to us and we have our Alumni network so we'll do a call out to Alumni who are active and looking for work and then we'll also give very specific recommendations we're always keeping an eye on top tier talent within our community and we'll give very specific recommendations of students or Alumni that we think are ready for the studio that's great that's really good to know actually and I’m sure studios would be that that's really useful information for them to know that you've got that Alumni network so I will be sharing that information with some recruiters I know are desperate at the moment but as promised to everyone that this promo code would be returning at the end of the session thank you so much Justin and Emily for talking to us today and explaining and walking us through the great education institutions you work for I think they're doing so much with creative industries and for animation and thank you very much and yes as discussed there was the promo code you've all seen that now and now the next webinar Neil Scholes Neil is a director and artist for commercials promo tv and film and he's a founder and creator creative director of Valkyrie about beau barrels I’ve studied bear wolf at university so I should be able to pronounce it but as Mark knows that's not my best forte it's pronouncing names and they and he is in London so he will be joining us in February so put that in your diaries we will be announcing a specific day in February at some point in the very near future to listen back to this webinar or any of the others that we have done over the last few months please go to GridMarkets.com forward slash webinars to yes to educate yourself and just have a great time thanks everyone thank you Mark thank you Justin thanks Emily.