How Chaos Cloud helps Gnomon students thrive

We were curious to find out how their school year was going, so we had a chat with Beau Janzen, education lead for the VFX program. He told us how he taught through the pandemic and shed some light on his impressions of working with Chaos Cloud. 

It took a bit of scrambling to funnel our entire program of classes into the LMS and train our faculty to use it, but, in hindsight, we made the transition remarkably smoothly. 

What were some of the things that you found most helpful in overcoming the challenges of fully transitioning all of your courses online? 

BJ: Although I had never run a distance learning class, I have spent years supervising teams at remote studios. Many of our instructors as well as myself have been in the trenches of production with team members in other cities. 

What made Chaos Cloud a great fit for Gnomon?

BJ: Our upper-level texturing and lighting classes are mostly V-Ray-centric, and we knew that it was unreasonable to expect our students to produce a demo reel that meets our standards with a single loaner machine. Having Chaos Cloud readily available allowed our students to maintain the quality of their work during lockdown. 

How do you think computer graphics education will evolve in the next decade or two? 

BJ: Gnomon has been in existence for over twenty years, and while the technology in those first lessons we taught is now a bit outdated, the professionals that we helped build are still thriving. Gnomon is fully aware that we are preparing students for a moving target.