The Animation Program provides students with a unique opportunity to experience a broad range of possibilities within the world of animation. From fine art to cartoons, this program encourages students to explore their potentials, and bring movement to their artwork through an intense and rigorous curriculum. InnerSpark Animation students learn diverse experimental and traditional animation techniques under the guidance of leading artists in the field. They study the history and work of animators from all over the world, they participate in figure drawing classes, and they learn from professional animation artists. Animation students at the summer program are dedicated, hardworking, and open to new ideas. The competition for a place in the Animation Department is very stiff; typically, only one-in-three applicants each year are invited to become Animation students.

INNERSPARK Animators spend Mondays through Saturdays in workshops and classes on animation, storyboarding, life drawing, movement and other related subjects. They also attend screenings of animated films (historical, contemporary, international and experimental), and a Movement Workshop. Students complete several projects during the program, involving zoetrope, flipbooks, stop-motion and cutout animation techniques. Over the course of the session, each student produces three animated projects. At the end of the program, they have acquired an extensive toolbox for expressing themselves through the art of animation.

Visitors to the program over the years have included French Animator Rene Laloux; Sally Cruikshank, an internationally renowned independent animator whose work includes several shorts for "Sesame Street"; the late puppet animator Helen Hill, Steve Hillenberg, creator of "Sponge Bob" for Nickelodeon; independent animator Craig Bartlett, who is responsible for the "Hey Arnold" series; Conrad Vernon, the director of "Shrek 2" and the late Joe Ranft, storyboard artist for "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "Toy Story II." Guest artists meet individually with every student to critique work and provide personal advice on career and artistic development.

Bobby Podesta, Stephen Gregory, Mark Walsh, and Sanjay Patel, four of the top animators from Pixar, Inc., whose work includes "Toy Story" and "Toy Story II", "A Bug's Life", "Monsters, Inc.," "Finding Nemo," and "Ratatouille" often come to The California State Summer School for the Arts to share and discuss their films. These accomplished artists started their careers in animation as high school students in the California State Summer School for the Arts Animation Program.

The department takes at least two field trips each year. One emphasizes observation and drawing from life; the other concentrates on exposing the students to local museums and/or animation studios. Past drawing field trips have included the Los Angeles Zoo and Venice Beach. The students have also visited the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and animation studios such as Nickelodeon and Klasky-Csupo.

The InnerSpark Animation faculty includes a number of leading artists in the animation industry and independent film world. Lori Damiano, the Department Chairperson, is an independent animator and illustrator whose industry experience includes animation work for director Spike Jonze, and with Nickelodeon's Yo Gabba Gabba, The-N.com, MTV, Nike, Microsoft, and Palm Pictures. Her films and artwork have been exhibited and published internationally.

Sihanouk Mariona, Leif Goldberg, Jodie Mack, Steven Brown and Jon Gomez serve as Animation Instructors at InnerSpark.

Born in El Salvador, Sihanouk Mariona is an Emmy Award-winning stop-motion animator. He made his way from Latin America to New York City where he trained in the animation industry and studied at the School of Visual Arts. He has worked at major studios such as Curious Pictures and MTV. Sihanouk has worked in Italy, South Korea and other foreign locales, creating stop-motion animation. He currently resides in LA and works on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim shows: Robot Chicken, Moral Orel, and Titan Maximum.

Leif Goldberg is a graphic and performing artist whose work is primarily manifested through self-printed and released publications. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design's Film/Animation/Video program in 1997. His film work was exhibited in the 2002 Whitney Biennial and at the RISD Museum. His performance works include a shadow puppet theater called Near Earth Object and a recent tour with Trutheater Theater. Leif's drawings and prints have been published in numerous anthologies including Kramer's Ergot and Hospital Brut.

Jodie Mack is an independent animator from Chicago. She earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007, and she received a Media Arts Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council in 2008. She makes her living by igniting youth's passion for all things created frame-by-frame, and she spends her free time making pop-up cards and occasionally coordinating screenings and film festivals. She teaches animation and history of animation at Depaul University.

Steven Brown is an instructor at the California Institute of the Arts, in the Character Animation Department. He also teaches at Santa Monica College Academy of Entertainment Technology, and the master's degree program in animation at the Tainan National University of Art in Taiwan. He has taught workshops at Disney Feature Animation, Nickelodeon Studio, and at Lioligongfang Studio in Shanghai, China.

Jon Gomez, also an instructor in the California Institute of the Arts Character Animation Department, has worked in feature film as a conceptual artist. He has presented projects to Pixar, Disney Imagineering, and ABC and he is a founding member of A Everything Entertainment LLC, a creatively armed company rethinking the possibilities of all mediums of entertainment. Jon is an alumnus of CalArts who for seven years has taught young artists (age 10-18) through the CalArts Community Arts Partnership Program.