Frontiers in Education

This panel will focus on the future of learning and the emerging issues of career development and mobility as well as the impact of ubiquitous access to learning materials.

Are traditional educational and training institutions really necessary in a reality focused on immediate access to information and learning materials through mobile deliver platforms? If so, what should be the focus – hard skills or soft skills? What are the core skill required for success?

Opportunities in the future may not be with the major animation and visual effects production houses so where are the jobs and how does one prepare for an unknowable future of rapid change and the shifting demands of an attention economy. These plus other questions from the audience will be put to our panel members for discussion and debate.

Robin G. King
DeTao Masters Academy, Director of the Institute of Animation and Creative Content

Robin King is currently Director of the Institute of Animation and Creative Content at the DeTao Masters Academy in Songjiang, Shanghai as well as President of Imagina Corporation, a global consulting company based in Ontario, Canada.

For over 40 years his research into creative process has been published and applied to a variety of ground breaking programs starting with the computer animation program at Sheridan College in Ontario. The graduates from Sheridan have won and been nominated for many international awards and their influence continues within companies such as ILM, Disney, Dreamworks, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Blue Sky and many other production leaders around the world.

King’s global consulting expertise has been applied to a diverse of range of projects around the globe for governments, institutions and educational clients. In additional to designing ground breaking projects at Sheridan, he has contributed skills and training to projects in Canada, the US, Portugal, the UAR, India, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India, The Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and the People’s Republic of China.

In addition he has lectured and presented at numerous events and conferences around the world on aspects of creative process, animation education as well as related topics. In recent years, Professor King has concentrated on developing projects in the Far East with emphasis on main land China where he has served as Chair at Peking University as a consultant to the Communications University of China in Nanjing and has lectured at over 25 universities across the country. He also cofounded a private school in Beijing for several years.

At DTMA he has designed and developed an Institute for animation, visual effects and gaming that is implementing novel and creative projects in training and production. The Institute has brought together over fifteen of the world’s top experts including Academy and Emmy Award winners, senior corporate trainers, educators and production specialists who will be providing expertise for senior executives, production specialists and early career professionals.

Peter Chanthanakone
Director, Executive Producer/ Assistant Professor, School of Art and Art History, University of Iowa

Peter Chanthanakone is a short film director specializing in 3D animated shorts. He won numerous film festival awards from the Top Emerging Artist (Souriya Namaha), the Best Animation Short film (Winston’s Shuttle) and a Gold Pixie Award (Junkboxx). His works has played on a giant screen @ Times Square in NYC, Germany, France, Canada, China, Belgium, S.Korea, Pakistan, Australia, Italy and as a retrospective at the VIEW Animation Video Festival. Cumulatively, his work has been selected in over 50 international juried
competitions.

Peter has been teaching at Brock University (Canada), Grand Canyon University (Phoenix), Stanford, Villanova and is currently an Assistant Professor in Animation at the University of Iowa. His research involves animation production and accelerating the animation pipeline for independent short films.

He was born in Niagara Falls, Canada and obtained his BFA at McMaster University (Canada) in Fine Art/Multimedia and completed his MFA at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco in Animation.

In his spare time, he operates RizingZun Animation, an award winning animation studio.