ART TEACHER UTILIZES BOTH CREATIVE, BUSINESS SENSES.

Byline: Sylvia L. Olinade Daily News Staff Writer

Sol Dember moves from one of his art students to the next, watching them as they hunch over their work, trying to replicate a holiday greeting card with the same level of perfection that Dember has just demonstrated in the first 20 minutes of class.

The Moorpark College art instructor gently teases them when they make mistakes and praises them when they get it right.

Dember has worked at just about every level of commercial artistry - from art director at Rocketdyne during the height of the space program to teaching travelers to make greeting cards on cruise ships during his golden years.

And in between, he began teaching at local community colleges, preparing several generations of artists to use their talent to create commercially viable graphic designs.

His latest endeavor is a class at Moorpark College on creating background scenes for computer generated and hand-drawn animation.

``They can prepare a portfolio here, to go out into the computer world and get a job,'' he said. ``It's a big field, and it's great if you can hit it right.''

He said that when working with computers, some of the animation background work is done directly into the machine. But many animators use the technique taught in his class because it can often seem more realistic.

The artist first draws the background scene on paper, then scans the picture into a computer. The animator then takes it and places his characters on top.

Although he has taught airbrush techniques for 13 years at Moorpark, and at Pierce College for 25 years before that, this is only the second semester offering Background Illustration Scenes for Animation.

Not one to rest while his students work, Dember juggles two courses every Thursday night. At the same time the animation class is meeting, his Airbrush Illustration Techniques class, the one doing the holiday card, meets on the other side of the room.

Students praised Dember's professionalism and his attention to detail, as well as his teaching style - always counting on him to be encouraging and helpful.

One student said he graduated from Pasadena's Art Center College of Design in the early 1990s when budget cuts forced the college to cancel classes.

``I never got to take (a class like this) in college so I felt like I was stuck on a plateau and I needed to move beyond that if I was ever going to make any money,'' said Russ Spickelmier, a free-lance artist. ``Of all the art classes I've ever taken, this is definitely in the top two.''

Spickelmier, who once worked as an illustrator for Disney's online division, even took the class twice - the second time to really get a handle on the technique.

Dember teaches his students that when they get into the field, they will often not get a chance to express themselves and will have to work within parameters set up by other artists.

But, while he readies them for the business side of the field, he also encourages them to be as creative as they can.

He gives them a set of animated characters to use and a rough sketch of the design he wants to see, and then asks them expand on the theme - from castles to caverns, deserts to outer space.

Spickelmier, for one, took that lesson to heart.

He was working on the last scene of the semester during a recent class session. Instead of creating only the background of a volcano and putting in the stock group of people staring up in wonder at the sight, he chose to make the background the actual picture.

His work not only included an active volcano, it had a dinosaur walking around it toward a cityscape drawn in the foreground.

That kind of initiative is what Dember said he hopes for.

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3 Photos

PHOTO (1--Color in Simi and Conejo Editions only) (Ran in SAC, Simi and Conejo Editions only) Moorpark College art student Michele Grassi paints background for animated productions in one of two classes taught simultaneously by instructor Sol Dember.

(2--Color in Simi and Conejo Editions only) Sol Dember demonstrates airbrush techniques for one of two paintingclasses the longtime commercial artist teaches at Moorpark College.

(3) (Ran in SAC Edition only) Russ Spickelmier works on a volcano/dinosaur scene in Moorpark College art class.

David R. Crane/Daily News