"Every single thing you see on-screen came out of somebody's creativity. It doesn't exist. Nature didn't deliver it to us. Everything had to be dreamed."
- Jeffrey Katzenberg
It is for this reason that we are committed to creating an environment that fosters creativity, collaboration and exciting career growth.
People of all different professional backgrounds are drawn to DreamWorks Animation because they genuinely want to make a creative contribution to the art and science of animated movies. They want to contribute as storytellers, each in their own way, and touch the many people who will see our movies.
Supporting their commitment to us is vital to our future. This is why we continually train, educate and nurture our employees, providing opportunities for them to learn not only the creative and technical tools used in our filmmaking process, but the managerial and personal skills necessary to succeed in a stimulating and challenging “out-of-the-box” environment such as ours.
Our belief in rewarding creativity, initiative and persistence has paid off: many of our most senior team members started as entry-level employees over 10 years ago!
Our employees come to us because we provide a platform for working on exciting, original projects with some of the most talented, expansive and generous people in our industry. They stay because we have created a community dedicated to opportunity, excellence and growth.
Continuous innovation enables us to create stunning and progressively richer visual imagery. It permits our artists to craft characters, environments, worlds and special effects without restrictions placed on imagination. It allows our animators to create the right poses and move quickly between poses. It hands directors creative control to produce stories that can’t be told with live action.
We realize that robust training programs are important to maintaining our ability to innovate. Over the past few years, our Digital Training and Technical Development Departments have grown and developed to offer:
- Training of over 750 employees each year at three studios.
- Five dedicated digital training classrooms providing advanced CG filmmaking instruction on production-ready HP workstations.
- A CG film production training curriculum that includes more than 300 classes from over 200 instructors, and more than a dozen discipline-specific training programs ranging from one week to three months in length
- A cross-site digital training resource library featuring an online check-out system offering next-day delivery, containing hundreds of books and over 150 professional-level training DVDs
- More than 800 classes available electronically
- A robust documentation platform with over 20,000 pages of content related to our tools, processes and workflow.
- VSC (video conferencing system) training capabilities providing hands-on distance learning across our three studios.
- A comprehensive mentoring program that includes specific mentor/protégé assignments, technical rounds for trainees transitioning into production and one-on-one tutoring services
This dedication to ongoing training shows not only in our creative work but also in production capacity - our technology breakthroughs have allowed our amazing range of talent to work across multiple shows. From the stylized realism of Shrek to the outrageous world of How to Train Your Dragon, several films with wildly diverse looks can now be produced simultaneously.
Promoting and nurturing artistic expression and creative innovations has always been essential to DreamWorks Animation’s success. Our Artistic Development program keeps our artistic vision fresh and our artists inspired and energized. A full-time, year-round endeavor, Artistic Development creates targeted instructional programs that address real needs and provide real solutions within departments and on specific shows.
Artistic Development utilizes the knowledge and experience of industry professionals, both internal and external, as instructors for our exceptional classes.
Classes range from small, hands-on seminars in topics such as sculpting, figure drawing, costume design and painting to large-scale interactive presentations, master classes and lectures by experts in film and animation production, plus film screenings, field trips and more.
Artistic Development focuses on areas that round out our artists’ already impressive skills sets and provides further enrichment. Whether refreshing foundational artistic skills or developing new technological innovations, everyone involved in creative team projects like ours can benefit from the power of broadening their creative awareness.
These programs give us the opportunity to get some perspective on our day-to-day routines, recharge our creativity, exchange ideas with our colleagues, and get out-of-the-box viewpoints from innovators both inside and outside of the studio.
At DreamWorks Animation, we not only provide training for our artists and technologists, we challenge our managers to create an environment that nurtures some of the brightest minds in our industry. Supervisors receive ongoing training on topics such as delegation, coaching, mentoring, effective communication and conflict resolution. For show-specific and department development, we have created programs around team-building, management principles, communication and morale building and sharing best practices.
Our production staff also participates in a year-round mentorship program that includes discussions on career advancement, our movie pipeline, leadership development, performance feedback, delegation and presentation skills. These management programs, coupled with our artistic and technical training programs, encourage employees to constantly learn new ways of doing business and working together, creating a culture of collaboration and open communication.
