Where pros teach aspiring pros: at Gnomon, great VFX come from strong artists.(Gnomon School of Visual Effects)

HOLLYWOOD -- If you're a good visual effects pro, you can work on anything from Transformers to the next Cheaper by the Dozen and anything in between. VFX are everywhere we look, so the Gnomon School of Visual Effects tells you a lot just in its name alone. Digital effects include mastery of modeling, texturing, lighting, rendering, rigging and compositing, as well as animation, and Gnomon (www. gnomon3d.com) covers all that and much more. Gnomon, an accredited and approved non-degree vocational institution here, has all the study areas you might imagine--such as drawing and design skills, animation skills, production skills--with numerous individual courses available in each area. They're all focused on practicality--what you need to know to do your job. That's a big factor in Gnomon's 90 percent-plus job-placement statistics within six months of graduation. "These are jobs that the students want to do," says Gnomon director Alex Alvarez.

"For our students, and the jobs they are looking for, their reel is all about technicality," he says. A jobseeker's VFX reel "is all about, 'does it look real, does it feel natural, is it well modeled and is it photo-realistically textured.' That's what matters when you want to get a job at Sony. We're very selective with portfolio requirements before people get in, and that's why our placement rate is so high. We make sure that people have the potential to be good before they come in."

Gnomon takes about 250 students per term, many of whom are employed studio artists taking extension courses--currently 109 of the total are full-time students. Gnomon has roughly 60 instructors per term. "Our criterion is that all of our instructors are professional, high-level studio artists," says Alvarez.

The school requires applicants to provide a traditional portfolio of art that includes drawing, painting, sculpting and design. "What we want to see is, 'are these people artists?'" Alvarez says. "We consider ourselves to be an art school even though it's a visual effects school." There are successful people in the industry who cannot draw ...