Changing careers midstream.

It's never too late to re-think and re-train. Just ask DreamWorks Animation's Mike Stern, who, after a successful career in computer graphics, went back to "school" to learn the art of character animation via Animation Mentor's training site.

One of Stern's hero shots on DreamWorks' Bee Movie features Barry on a tour of the bees' Honex factory. Asked how much he thinks a bee getting roughed up on the job earns, Barry, voiced by Seinfeld, delivers a classic, sarcastic "Not enough!"

"Jerry was specific about how he wanted that done. He looked into the camera and said, 'Watch this video and do exactly what I'm doing with my face in the shot.'" Stern's responsibility was to get that expression onto the character's face from video of Seinfeld's facial inflections. "I used the basics of his gestures, but I acted it all out myself, and what I gave him was a little bit of an amplified version of him on the tape. When you trace something off the tape, it softens the timing and doesn't have that 'animation feel' to it."

Working through Bee Movie to Kung Fu Panda, and then Monsters vs. Aliens, Stern found he was "moving up to more and more difficult shots as we moved along," and that's gratifying--and mercurial--in the character animation business.

In college, Stern took Syracuse University's illustration program for two years, then shifted to CG classes, taking a shine to Adobe's Director, Illustrator, and Photoshop. But young Stern already had five years of Saturday morning cartoon training through junior high and high school--not from watching TV cartoons, but rather from a class he was taking for youngsters with Hofstra University instructor and Disney veteran AI Baruch (Lady and the Tramp, Peter Pan). Baruch had his class hand-draw characters, build story, and, finally, animate cels on acetate in the classic style. Stern still maintains a relationship with him.

ONLINE ONLY

After Syracuse University, Stern found a good job at JWT, where he worked for three years, taking 3D continuing education classes at NYU before finally deciding to go back full time for NYU's master's program.