TOM LEPP ///
KEN ZORNIAK, VICE PRESIDENT, FRANTIC FILMS
“The cost of living in Winnipeg is a huge advantage. You can get the same amount of money for the same work as in Toronto and Vancouver but with lower overhead you can keep your costs under control.”
“The cost of living in Winnipeg is a huge advantage. You can get the same amount of money for the same work as in Toronto and Vancouver but with lower overhead you can keep your costs under control.”
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Tom Lepp
For Tom Lepp, life as an instructor has opened up new doors and new challenges. Lepp, along with colleagues Matt Broeska and Brent Breedveld, teaches in the Digital Multimedia Technology program at Red River College. Of the 18 years Lepp has been working variously as a digital artist, the past four have been with DMT. Most of the preceding decade was spent at CBC with a focus on 3D graphics. Now at Red River, Lepp offers his students a creative marriage of tools and talent. Lepp says that as an instructor, the chief challenge is to vocalize that inner monologue a lot of practitioners take for granted. Instead of analysing, reacting and implementing a technique in a given work, the instructor has to give voice to instincts, lessons and memories picked up over the breadth of his or her career. The craft nestled inside this challenge is that there is no lowest common denominator – too rudimentary and the advanced students are bored; too sophisticated and beginning students lack the time to fully grok the concept. Finding ways to accommodate the spectrum of capabilities inside the classroom has proven to be a whole new dimension in Lepp’s professional development. And that spectrum of capabilities is astounding. From the young savant pursuing advanced training to the seasoned industry vet looking for a career change, Lepp welcomes how his own classes continue to inspire him to tear into an established pipeline, to refine workflow or to explore why a process may be broken, inefficient or simply taken for granted in industry. Since each year’s curriculum must reflect the digital multimedia industries to give its graduates a competitive foundation, learning and updating never ends. New technology means new tools. Guest professionals import and impart their own wisdom. For Tom Lepp and his colleagues, the objectivity required of constant innovation is hard, satisfying work. “Sure it’s tough. But to go in every day and see yourself, to see people finding that spark and seeing everything that’s possible? That’s where the passion comes from. It’s rekindling.” For more information on the Red River College DMT program, visit www.rrc.mb.ca. /// TOP |
 
   
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