Vanessa Schwartz received her Master of Fine Arts in Experimental Animation from California Institute of the Arts. Her awards and honors for her animated films include a 1994 Oscar Nomination in the Animated Short Film Category; Channel 4 Young Filmmaker of the Year 1994, Student Academy Award Winner, The Janitor 1994; Ottawa International Animation Festival: Best First Film by Canadian.
She worked at Pacific Data Images (Now Dreamworks) in Palo Alto CA, as a 3D character animator on the Feature film Ants.
She has taught traditional and computer animation at the Academy of Art College, San Francisco Graduate School; California College of the Arts, Oakland CA; San Francisco Academy of Art, Foundation Program
In additional to teaching gesture drawing and animation at ECUAD, Vanessa has given several life drawings workshops to Pixar employees.
