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CMI professor, modeler, filmmaker: Animation changes how you see the world

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Animation is something Alex Santiago does as a modeler and filmmaker and teaches as an adjunct professor at New Mexico State University’s Creative Media Institute. It’s also changed how he sees the world.

“Animation is a unique way to tell a story,” said Santiago, 32, who was born in Tucson, Arizona, and grew up in Alamogordo.

And since “everything is story driven,” he said, animators have “more creative freedom” in a wide array of careers that stretch far beyond Walt Disney cartoons to include gaming, filmmaking, health care and many other industries.

Santiago took more than a year’s leave from CMI in 2020-21 to attend the prestigious Vancouver Film School (VFS), where he studied 3D animation and visual effects and graduated with honors. He was one of six “exceptionally promising animators” from the United States, Canada and Brazil selected from among more than 500 applicants worldwide by Pixar animator and director Michal Makarewicz to attend VFS on a full scholarship, according to the VFS website.

Santiago is an NMSU Crimson Scholar with a bachelor’s degree in creative media. He was an adjunct professor at Doña Ana Community College for a year before joining the CMI faculty in 2017.

“Alex is amazing. We are really lucky to have him teach for us,” said CMI Department Head Amy Lanasa.

The rigorous VFS curriculum is similar to what Santiago learned and is teaching at CMI, he said, but more geared toward animation for film and entertainment where CMI offers a more general study of animation.

Santiago said the VFS experience also connected him to professionals in the animation industry around the world and expanded his portfolio as a 3D modeler.

While he thrived in Vancouver, Santiago said he was anxious to return to CMI, whose animation program is consistently ranked as the best in the state and among the tops in the nation.

“I always have liked teaching,” he said.

Santiago loves helping his students learn to “stop and really look at something.”

Part of learning to be an animator, he said, is training the eye to see the specific details of an object, not only its dimensions and colors, but its textures, its play of light and shadow, its background and other qualities.

“You learn to observe your environment and the beauty in it,” Santiago said.

“I love those little learning moments,” he said, when he’s with a student and “you can just see it. The lightbulb went on.”

When his students discover “where they really want to shine and what they want to do, it’s such a fulfilling moment,” Santiago said. “I love helping start students off on their journey.”

Santiago said his passion for animation began in the second grade when he fell in love with 3D art and going behind the scenes to understand how animated cave trolls worked.

He encourages his students to “learn the why” of what they see on a computer screen and in the real world. And he reminds them that, in animation, there are no mistakes – only “happy accidents.”

“If something doesn’t work, you can delete it and start over, or press ‘undo’ a bunch of times,” he said.

“You make it to break it. It’s fun. You can just create. You start to think in 3D.”


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