You’ve heard us say this before: The thing we love about inspiration is that it can hit you anywhere and anytime. Its source can be a person, place, or thing. Big or small. Meaningful or remote. Inspiration is all around us. And nowhere was that more proof positive than throughout 2012. Join us as we relive just a few highlights from the year past — and give a big Animation Mentor thank you to 2012.

Student Showcase 2012: The Power of Inspiration. Why do we do what we do? Take a look at the best student work from the past year, and you’ll discover the answer in the most inspirational way imaginable.

Mentors and alumni success. Mentors joined alumni (and in some cases, mentors worked for alumni) for a range of public projects, including Flat Frog, Union Pacific, and Partysaurus Rex. We couldn’t be more proud. 

New workshops. We released not one but two new workshops this year — Maya Workshop: Animation Basics and Lighting Your Shot. It was all part of our plan to help you begin your animation journey and elevate your work to stand out (talk about inspiration).

Events. What can we say? We get around. We hit the road and stayed in-house for a few events … anything we could do to share the Animation Mentor experience with all of you. And it was great to see the Animation Mentor community as strong as ever as we hosted Breaking Down the Animated Shot: Live & Uncut, aired a live Webinar: Improve Your Reel with our friends from Industrial Light & Magic … and ended the year at the CTN animation eXpo (with some amazing workshops, too). 

Graduation. We wanted to send this year’s graduates off in the most inspirational way possible. Enter graduation speaker Andrew Stanton, the Oscar-nominated writer and director from Pixar Animation Studios. Inspirational doesn’t even begin to tell the story. Graduating Classes 25, 26, 27, and 28 — mark your calendar and get inspired for Graduation 2013 on Saturday, August 3, 2013.