Close-Up on Hollywood's Creature Teacher

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"Fume," a personal project by Gnomon School founder Alex Alvarez | Courtesy of Gnomon

Neville Page, one of Hollywood's top creature designers, hired him last year to work on James Cameron's upcoming Avatar. Page says they sat in a room together over the course of a year, animating Page's 3-D models. "There was a shot on Avatar where Neville had this background painting of a forest, just a static painting, and I was asked to bring it to life," Alvarez explains, fingering a Tibetan charm (to ward off evil spirits) dangling from his neck on a silver chain. "So that was a lot of particle-effects animation -- fireflies flying around, insects zooming in and out. That's not modeling at all, but all particle systems, dynamics, and fields." Alvarez had a profound impact on J.J. Abrams's Star Trek prequel, too, says Page, who asked him for help in animating a concept for the "Red Snow Monster" emerging from ice: "I said, 'Can you help make it walk across the floor?' He came back with animations that way exceeded my expectations. He did the entire immersive scene and made it so bloody cool."

With the new craze for stereo 3-D -- with its manna-like promise of pumped up revenue (tickets cost $3 extra on average) -- Alvarez has expanded his initial idea for Gnomon into the foundations of a geek empire. He's a guy who thinks big picture from the start, says Page: "If we spoke to NASA on the chance we could all go to the moon, I would be designing the rocket ship and Alex would have a business plan." Alvarez has built a line of Gnomon downloadable tutorials, created online classes, and produced hundreds of training DVDs by iconic artists such as Syd Mead (Blade Runner, Tron) and Iain McCaig (Star Wars episodes 1, 2, and 3). Everyone from LucasArts to Microsoft collects the DVDs, as do art schools across the country. "The DVDs are truly visionary," says Page. "A lot of artists think you don't share -- you developed this technique, so it's yours. Now you can get great artists on your computer and watch how they work, even if you're in India or you have only 50 bucks. The community of artists has changed across the world because of these DVDs."

Alvarez's empire has also expanded to commercial projects outside the film world. He recently created a caricature-style, 3-D animated short on the economy for Berkshire Hathaway. "The short features 13 people, including Warren Buffett, and the GEICO Gecko," says Alvarez. "Each delivers a line of dialogue, promising that everyone at Berkshire will work their hardest to make sure we get through these tough times." Alvarez and his partner at Gnonom, Darrin Krumweide, along with Tefft Smith, spent months creating a 3-D animated blueprint for a large-scale project by singer Marc Anthony. Gnomon is also finishing work on a music video for Lolly Jane Blue's "White Swan," directed by in-house resident artist Sil van der Woerd.

Alvarez often asks his students to work on those real-world projects. "Sil wanted CG cotton candy that's growing out of pools of water. We put problems on students' plates that don't already have a solution." That's why when McCaig needs fresh blood to work on a feature, he calls Alvarez and asks for folks to add to his team. "I can only do that if they're trained a certain way -- professional and skilled -- so I pull heavily from Gnomon," he says.

Thanks to Alvarez, students at Gnomon aren't just production drones. They have a sense of how to make "images that are part of the larger story," says Michael Fink, CEO of Frantic Films. As Alvarez tells his students, it's all about their ability to fill in the blanks.

Diane Mehta has written for The New York Times, Elle Decor, and CNBC European Business. She lives in Brooklyn.