Wayne Gilbert is a Canadian working in Vancouver, British Columbia, now Head of Animation at Vancouver Institute of Media Arts after three and half years as Senior Animation Director for EA Blackbox where he directed animation and cinematics for the ground-breaking video games "skate and skate2". He is also a Mentor for Animation Mentor, the world's premiere on-line school of animation. His computer-animated short Let Go won a Crystal Heart Award at the Heartland Film Festival. It was his second film created while working at ILM. The first was CPU. Prior to that he created 2D shorts entitled Bottoms Up and Traffic Jam, which was accepted into the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. He has authored a highly respected book entitled Simplified Drawing for Planning Animation and is working on another with a work-in-progress title of Animation - Master the Fundamentals. Wayne is in the final writing stages of a fantasy novel titled Tooza for youth readers. Prior to moving to Vancouver, Wayne spent nine years in northern California where he worked at Industrial Light and Magic on such films as and The Mummy Returns as well as numerous commercials, two of which won Clio Awards. Much of his work at ILM was reviewing animation and providing Professional Development for animators. Wayne coordinated and taught in the renowned Classical Animation, and International Summer-school of Animation Programs at Sheridan College. Before that worked as a Background Illustrator and Assistant Animator at Leach Rankin Studios on Witch's Night Out, then at Nelvana Ltd as Assistant, Animator and Background Illustrator on 7 half-hour television shows and numerous commercials. He took on the roles of Background Illustrator and department head on the feature, Rock and Rule. Wayne twice served as art director at Wang Films in Taiwan. In 1996, Lenora Hume, Sr VP at Walt Disney Studios brought Wayne on board to help set up the Disney Canada Studios by supervising creative staffing and professional development. He was asked to co-direct the studio's second DVD feature but opted for a move to ILM. Gilbert was educated at Sheridan College where he received a diploma for Classical Animation. Eventually he returned there as a professor for ten years, and was the co-ordinator of a novel educational project providing resources to Sullivan Bluth Studios in Dublin, Ireland. In the late 1980s he was Sheridan's co-ordinator of animation, and later held the post of artistic director of classical animation. He has taught and lectured at schools and universities around the world. Gilbert is a Master of Film and Animation with The Beijing DeTao Masters Academy, a high-level, multi-disciplined, application-oriented higher education institution in Shanghai, China.
