Hello and welcome to my personal site.

I am the President of Gnomon, which I founded 1997. Gnomon is a visual effects, video game and animation school in Hollywood, California offering full-time and extension studies for both aspiring and professional artists. A few years later, in 2000, I then founded The Gnomon Workshop. Originally a VHS/DVD training video library, today the Gnomon Workshop is an online streaming/subscription library covering a wide range of subject matter including entertainment design, sculpture, drawing, painting and 3D tools and techniques.

My background is as an artist who, through a series of events, founded a school as a result of my passion for art, 3D and education. I've drawn all my life, but computers entered the picture rather early (for 1982) at age nine. My parents got me an Atari 800 computer with a modem and I was immediately obsessed. I spent countless hours browsing bulletin boards at 300baud, looking for games and chatting in forums. I even ran my own BBS (Bulletin Board System) for a few years. Kinda like the internet. Only it was 40 years ago and really slow. But at the time, so amazingly cool.

Fast forward 10 years and it was during my second year at the University of Pennsylvania, trying to find a 'normal' thing to study, that I discovered 3D computer animation by watching a 'Beyond the Mind's Eye’ VHS tape. Terminator 2 then came out (with the chrome CG terminator) and I had to learn more.

To make a long story short, I left Penn, got a Mac, learned a bunch of software, worked as a computer colorist for Malibu Comics, got into the Art Center College of Design, studied Illustration, started teaching myself Alias PowerAnimator, got a job as an Applications Engineer for Alias|Wavefront, put a lot of miles on my car, met a lot of people at a lot of studios, and then started Gnomon at age 24. In hindsight I see that as being ridiculously young to be starting a school... but things were very different in 1997. At the time it was needed and studios were expanding like crazy, with practically no schools teaching 3D. Especially not 3D as it pertained to visual effects.

Over the past 27 years I have worked hard to guide Gnomon's evolution through the expansion of our curriculum, faculty, partnerships and services. Through this time I have tried to stay true to my creative inclinations, by working on personal and professional side projects... but balancing the two is tricky.

I had the opportunity to work as a creature development artist on such projects as James Cameron's Avatar, JJ Abram's Star Trek, Super 8, Green Lantern and Prometheus, but those are now many years ago. More recently I started learning Unreal Engine, made a short film via the Unreal Fellowship, and created 30 minutes of animation for the musician Lustmord, both really fun experiences.

Ultimately, by far the greatest thing about my career has been the people that I’ve met. Many of the industry's top artists have worked with us at Gnomon via teaching, seminars, events and workshops. It has really been a privilege to meet and spend time with artists that I admire, and bringing their knowledge to people via Gnomon is something that I am very proud of professionally. Then, of course, are the students. Gnomon has been designed to be the school that I couldn't find for myself... my dream school. I hope that it has been that for them. Granted we can always make it better as nothing is perfect, but I have seen the Gnomon experience transform people. We have trained so many talented artists and to watch students develop their skills and enter the workforce brings me great joy. It is a responsibility that we take very seriously and whenever I hear about our alumni accomplishing great things, I feel both pride and humility... especially when students come back after a few years to teach. It is a strange experience to see someone who a few short years ago was a student full of aspirations, fears, stress and passion go on to become a successful professional with amazing work. When I visit studios and bump into Gnomon grads... well, it is just really damn cool.

So my site.. a little out of date as time whizzes by, but a nice time capsule I suppose. :)

-Alex

alex.alvarez@gnomon.edu