Meet An­tho­ny Bap­tiste, a 21-year-old walk­ing, talk­ing in­spi­ra­tional sto­ry wait­ing to be told. His sto­ry is dif­fer­ent and not one told of­ten enough. How­ev­er, com­pa­ra­ble to any oth­er in­spi­ra­tional tale, An­tho­ny's mes­sage car­ries that small but il­lu­mi­nat­ing light of mo­ti­va­tion. Bap­tiste was re­cent­ly ac­cept­ed in­to a world renowned com­put­er an­i­ma­tion pro­gramme at the Sheri­dan In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy and Ad­vanced Learn­ing, which has been gen­er­at­ing Hol­ly­wood an­i­ma­tors since the 1980s. Re­put­ed for its use of the lat­est com­put­er tech­nolo­gies and its con­tri­bu­tion to launch­ing fa­mous ca­reers, the Sheri­dan pro­gramme is marred by fierce glob­al com­pe­ti­tion vy­ing for once in a life­time gate­way po­si­tions in­to the en­ter­tain­ment, ad­ver­tis­ing and gam­ing in­dus­try. Rewind to the mid 90s and en­ter Pixar's Toy Sto­ry. One of the most suc­cess­ful an­i­ma­tion pro­duc­tions out of Pixar An­i­ma­tion Stu­dios to date, this leg­endary clas­sic block­buster cul­tured an un­wa­ver­ing pas­sion in An­tho­ny for com­put­er an­i­ma­tions. A pas­sion that was chal­lenged at times both aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly and fi­nan­cial­ly, but nev­er­the­less burnt deep with­in him.

Bap­tiste grew up at the St. Do­minic's Chil­dren's Home where the val­ue of ed­u­ca­tion was in­stilled in him from an ear­ly age. It was here that he was so­cialised in­to a cul­ture of work­ing hard, chas­ing dreams and achiev­ing goals. He at­tend­ed the Bel­mont Boys' RC School af­ter which he fur­thered his ed­u­ca­tion at the Mu­cu­rapo Ju­nior Sec­ondary School be­fore be­ing trans­ferred to the Cunu­pia High School. Post-CSEC qual­i­fi­ca­tions, Bap­tiste at­tend­ed mul­ti­ple film fes­ti­vals where he in­ter­act­ed with lo­cal as well as for­eign ex­pert an­i­ma­tors, gain­ing valu­able in­sight in­to the lo­cal in­dus­try and its po­ten­tial for de­vel­op­ing a ca­reer. It was here he heard about the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go's (UTT) Diplo­ma in Dig­i­tal Me­dia Stud­ies: An­i­ma­tion, with an in­tro­duc­to­ry course to 3D an­i­ma­tion that peaked his in­ter­est, push­ing him to pur­sue this pro­gramme as an ide­al start­ing point to com­put­er an­i­ma­tions. The UTT diplo­ma was the strong foun­da­tion Bap­tiste need­ed to­wards build­ing his dream. The ex­pe­ri­ence he gained while in­ter­fac­ing with the soft­ware fu­elled the de­sign, an­i­ma­tion and pro­duc­tion of his first an­i­mat­ed film, 'The Short­cut'. How­ev­er, he un­der­stood that the in­dus­try was a bot­tom­less pit of tech­niques and skills and as such, goal ori­ent­ed Bap­tiste be­gan ex­plor­ing his post-grad­u­ate op­tions. With the sup­port and as­sis­tance of his lec­tur­er, Mario Lewis, and his sis­ter, Ju­liana, over an ex­haust­ing six-month pe­ri­od, he pre­pared his gold­en tick­et to Sheri­dan; a first class port­fo­lio which clear­ly whet the ap­petite of the se­lec­tors. A tor­tur­ous two months lat­er he re­ceived the life chang­ing re­sponse.

Fast for­ward to 2012. With his eyes set on Sheri­dan and his dream com­ing to life piece by piece, Bap­tiste hopes to gain pro­fes­sion­al ex­pe­ri­ence abroad by work­ing in the in­dus­try af­ter which he wish­es to re­turn home to con­duct work­shops and lec­tures for all ages in­ter­est­ed in the field. Per­son­al­ly, he looks for­ward to es­tab­lish­ing a home stu­dio from which he hopes to con­tribute to both live ac­tion and an­i­mat­ed films in the lo­cal film busi­ness. He fore­sees the Trinidad and To­ba­go an­i­ma­tion sec­tor of the larg­er film in­dus­try, gain­ing sig­nif­i­cant mo­men­tum and urges all an­i­ma­tors, es­pe­cial­ly the am­a­teurs, to get their films out and to be heard and seen. Bap­tiste's mes­sage is one which has been re­it­er­at­ed by every pro­gres­sive, proac­tive dream­er hop­ing to make some­thing of them­selves. Stick to your dream. Sim­ple yet force­ful, those few words car­ry the mean­ing of com­mit­ment, per­se­ver­ance, de­ter­mi­na­tion and pas­sion. De­spite the cir­cum­stance, no dream is out of bounds, even for a hope­ful an­i­ma­tor from a chil­dren's home, now set to an­i­mate his own sig­na­ture on one of the fore­most com­put­er an­i­ma­tion pro­grammes world­wide. A fund rais­ing event will to be host­ed for Bap­tiste on Thurs­day May 10th at the Medul­la Art Gallery, 37 Fitt Street, Wood­brook. At the fundrais­er there will be a screen­ing of one of Bap­tiste's 3D films and lim­it­ed edi­tion prints will al­so be on sale.

A bit of in­fo on the Sheri­dan In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy and Ad­vanced Learn­ing

In the 1960's and ear­ly 1970's, the Cana­di­an an­i­ma­tion in­dus­try was small vir­tu­al­ly non-ex­is­tent, ex­cept for an­i­ma­tion pi­o­neers of the Na­tion­al Film Board. In 1968, Pres­i­dent Porter or­gan­ised the school's first course in clas­si­cal an­i­ma­tion, even though at the time there was lit­tle ev­i­dence of de­mand for grad­u­ates. In 1984, Sheri­dan stu­dent, John Min­nis, cre­at­ed the short an­i­ma­tion piece 'Cha­rade'. The five-minute film was an­i­mat­ed by Min­nis with Pan­tone mark­ers on pa­per dur­ing a sin­gle three-month sum­mer term at Sheri­dan Col­lege. The film won the Acad­e­my Award for Best An­i­mat­ed Short Film at the 57th Acad­e­my Awards. As Sheri­dan's an­i­ma­tion de­part­ment con­tin­ued to grow, it pro­duced hun­dreds of an­i­ma­tors in­to Cana­di­an and in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dios, at one point in 1996 be­ing called "the Har­vard of an­i­ma­tion schools" on "a world­wide ba­sis" by an­i­ma­tor Michael Hirsh. A sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of grad­u­ates have held key po­si­tions at Walt Dis­ney An­i­ma­tion Stu­dios, Don Bluth Pro­duc­tions, and Pixar An­i­ma­tion Stu­dios, both for tra­di­tion­al and CGI an­i­ma­tion. Sheri­dan grad­u­ates in­clude five Acad­e­my Award nom­i­nees and two win­ners, and in 2005, an­i­ma­tion pro­fes­sor Kaj Pin­dal won an Em­my Award.