About LINESURGE
An independent academy built by animation staff who got tired of watching talented students arrive at studio tests unprepared for the paperwork half of the job.
LINESURGE started in 2019 as a weekend critique group above a print shop in southeast Portland. Three of us were doing clean-up and inbetween work remotely for overseas studios; the rest were art school graduates who could draw beautifully and still could not produce a usable turnaround sheet under a deadline. The gap was never talent. It was that nobody had shown them what a studio actually receives.
The academy opened online in 2021 with four classes. There are now twelve, and the structure has not changed: watch the instructor do the work, submit the same deliverable a studio would ask for, then clear the retake list.
Studio partners
Six small and mid-size studios in North America and Japan let our instructors use anonymised production material — timing charts, retake sheets, colour scripts — as teaching examples. In exchange, they get first look at our graduate reels each intake. No partner pays for placement and no partner sets our curriculum.
We do not publish partner names, because several of them work under NDA with the rights holders whose shows the material comes from. Enrolled students can see the redacted source sheets inside the relevant module.
Graduate outcomes
Of the 214 students who completed a full track between 2023 and 2025, 61 reported paid animation or design work within twelve months, and 38 of those were first industry credits. We publish the number rather than a percentage because the denominator matters: most of our students are already working artists adding a skill, not career changers.
We do not guarantee placement, and we are wary of schools that do. What we can promise is that the work in your folder at the end of a track is the work a studio asks to see.
Teaching principles
- Assignments mirror deliverables, never vague prompts.
- Critique is written down so it can be argued with.
- Instructors demonstrate on the same hardware students own.
- A module is finished when the retake list is clear, not when the video ends.
Where we are
The office is at 244 SE Ash Street, Studio 5, Portland, Oregon. It holds four desks, a scanner and a wall of exposure sheets. All teaching happens online; visitors are welcome by appointment if you want to see the reference library.