Chris Somerville

Chris Somerville is an award winning Animator and Art Director who has collaborated with several animation shops in Toronto for the past thirteen years, spending the majority of his commercial career as a Senior Art Director with Alliance Atlantis. Chris is a 3D Animation and digital design specialist, and is a Professor of Computer Animation and Modeling in Maya. His work has appeared on every major U.S. and Canadian Network with numerous television commercials, TV show openings, film titles, and broadcast network branding projects to his credit.

Chris continues to study digital design and animation as he concludes his studies in the M.F.A, Interactive Design and Game Development from the Savannah College of Art and Design. While teaching 3D Animation and Modeling, Chris continues to work as a professional digital interactive installation sculpture artist.

Professor of Animation, B.A Animation, Sheridan College since 2011

Graduate of Centennial College, Graduate Diploma, Digital Animation, 1998.

Graduate of Sheridan College & University of Toronto, Art & Art History, 1993.

Jason Thompson

Blending business and creative experience together, Jason Thompson is an accomplished storyteller who believes in the power of stories.

With over 16 years in children’s television, video gaming, advertising and mobile apps Jason has a passion for visual communication and digital storytelling. He has worked as an animation director, animator, designer and story artist for Cuppa Coffee, The Cookie Jar Company, Radical Sheep, Mercury Filmworks and The Industrial Brothers, among many other studios for productions for Disney Jr., Disney Interactive, Warner Brothers, CBC, Teletoon, National Geographic Kids and the Cartoon Network.

For the last four years Jason has acted as a story and animation consultant for Sago Sago, a mobile app company that produces content and games for children.

He designed and illustrated the children’s book, “A Kids’ Guide to Mommy’s Breast Cancer” and is currently working on a second publication while exploring the development of both publications into interactive story apps.

Jason's The Art of Dad

Florian Jacot - 1st Year Painting

Florian Jacot is a figurative painter and sculptor who works traditionally and digitally in his field.

Florian started his artistic journey in fine arts graduating from the Art Diploma Program of Central Tech School and then studied at the Academy of Realist Art, school of Classical Figurative Drawing and Painting. He went on to Animation and graduated from the Classical Animation Diploma Program of Max the Mutt Animation and the Digital Animation Program at Centennial College. His work has been exhibited on many occasions in shows and galleries and has won several awards. He has worked in the Animation Industry as a 3D artist doing modeling and texturing.

Florian has been teaching since 2004 in various schools and colleges. He presently teaches Painting at Sheridan College, Artistic Anatomy, Figure Sculpture and Drawing at Centennial College, as well as Traditional and Digital Sculpture at Toronto School of Art.

Florian's Website

Tim McCormack - 3rd Year Life Drawing

Tim McCormack has been drawing ever since he can remember. His lifelong interest in landscape painting has evolved into his current images of utopian and dystopian space; an exploration of the intersection of the aesthetics of the Romantic paintings with present day visual culture. His recent work combines play and illusion in search of an expression of the sublime, in ink drawings that are distilled from scientific photographs, found textures and manga. Other sources of inspiration include the human figure, Japanese cityscapes and his favourite pens.

A graduate of OCAD he has had several solo shows of watercolours, oils and pastels. His work is found in many private collections.

Tim's website

Bruno Degazio - Music, Audio, 4th Year Mentor

Mr. Degazio's film work includes the special-effects sound design for the Oscar nominated documentary film, The Fires of Kuwait and music for the all-digital, six-channel sound tracks of the IMAX films Titanica, Flight of the Aquanaut and CyberWorld 3D.

His many concert works for traditional, electronic and mixed media have been performed through out North America and Europe.

As a researcher in the field of algorithmic composition he has presented papers and musical works at leading international conferences, including festivals in Toronto, New York City, London, The Hague, Koln, Tokyo and Hong Kong. He was a founding member of the Toronto new music ensemble SOUND PRESSURE and of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community. He has written on his research into automated composition using fractals and genetic algorithms.

Bruno Degazio is the designer of MIDIForth and The Transformation Engine, a software musical composition system with application to algorithmic composition and sonification.

Brian Hladin - 2nd Year Life Drawing

Brian Hladin is a Visual Artist and a Figure Drawing Partial Load Professor in the renowned BAA Animation and Post Graduate Digital Character Animation Programs at Sheridan College in Oakville, Canada. He also teaches Drawing based courses at the Ontario College of Art and Design University, Canada’s largest Arts University, and has taught at many other institutions including Seneca College. He comes to teaching having worked for many years as an Illustrator / Layout Artist / Art Director for numerous magazines and advertising agencies. Other work includes yearly guest lecturing at Nanyang Polytechnic in Singapore and visual art done for exhibition and commission.

Klaas Hart - 1st and 2nd Year Life Drawing

Klaas Hart has worked as a teacher and a fine artist for the past 16 years. He studied drawing, painting and anatomy at the Ontario College of Art and Design, graduating in 1993. He went on to study in the Netherlands, where he worked with renowned Dutch artist Henk Helmantel in 1999-2000. Along with life drawing and anatomy instruction, colour theory and painting technique are also part of his teaching repertoire.

Seeing painting as a form of traditional storytelling, his art deals with narratives that explore myth, psychology, and allegory in painting. His work has been exhibited in North America and Europe, and in 1998 he received the Mayor's Purchase Award in Toronto.

“Working with the motivated and talented students at Sheridan College is rewarding experience. It’s encouraging to be able to share my experience with students, knowing they will build on it and take it in new directions. In a world where art is becoming more difficult to define, at Sheridan we find real knowledge transfer going on that is directly applicable to an industry. In this sense art is alive and well.”

Klass's website