Do you need to study at university to learn animation?

The TAAFI Education Panel

On Monday 16 June TAAFI - the Toronto Animation Art Festival International - hosted a panel talk on the subject of  “An Animation Education”. The sub-title of the talk was “Do you need to go to university to learn animation?”. In other words, given all the opportunities now available to study online, should  students still commit to the expense and time of a full undergraduate education?

On the panel to discuss the question were Richard Arroyo – head of Games at iAnimate.net,  Mark Jones, chair, School of Creative Arts, Aubrey Mintz, Head of Animation, California State University Long Beach, Brooke Keesling, Manager, Animation Talent, and Tony Tarantini, Sheridan College Professor of Animation. The first question was this:

1. Are we living in a Golden Age of animation training? What are the challenges and opportunities for both schools and students?

Aubrey Mintz recalled that back in the 1990s there were hardly any animation schools where students could learn - and now there are hundreds. He was concerned that "we may be saturating the market". As Aubrey put it: "There are so many people studying, and very few students will make it to work in feature films". He recommended that anyone interested in discussing the subject further should join the Animation Educator’s Forum at ASIFA Hollywood. Richard Arroyo agreed, saying there are "too many students."

Brooke Keesling, who works as a recruiter at Cartoon Network as well as teaching at CalArts, said "we accept one out of ten students". As a recruiter at a studio, she targets "certain schools where the quality is high". But "some things", she said "cannot be taught". And she often recruits students who have not been to any university, just by surfing the web. Sometimes she "just looks at Tumbler to look for great artists".

Sheridan College, regarded as one of the best animation schools in the world

Tony Taranti of Sheridan College in Toronto said that for universities there are "Lots of restrictions, imposed by the Government; there is tons of stuff for educators to deal with". He said that often they spend their effort "trying to circumvent the bureaucracy". Tony felt strongly that his students ARE ready for industry. As he put it, "Animation is a team sport – if you want to play in a team, you have to be in a team". You have to "get students together in a physical space to collaborate - it's all very old school". There is pressure from the top - ie: "how much of this can we do online?".

Richard Arroyo of iAnimate said that "kids need access. iAnimate gives access to more kids" in a way that traditional universities do not because of class size restrictions. As Richard put it: "our students hang out, (just like university students do), but they do it online".

Brooke Keesling said that getting internships can be harder for online students. Many companies only accept students from organisations which are "formally accredited". Therefore, online students can’t intern at Cartoon Network. Richard said that this is sometimes true, but it depends on the company. Many companies just want talent. If online students have skills and talent, they will get hired, and they will find internships.

Aubrey Mintz said that to find work, "you must be top of your game". As he put it, "4 or 5 years [of undergraduate study] may not be enough" to get there. He sends many of his students to online schools after they graduate to polish their skills.


The second question was this: 
2: Are schools teaching Soft skills like teamwork?

Aubrey Mintz said that their university do make short films with the students, so they get a "real-life experience". And in fact increasingly the industry is working remotely - even Sony pictures "works with many remote animators". He said it was important for students to get real-life production experience at university, just like working on a real production.

Tony Tarantini asked if it is even possible to treat your students like employees. "Can you treat your students like they are working in industry?" The answer is "No...they can complain. You can’t fire them (like an employee can be fired), but they can fire you. Or, rather, they can get you fired". As Tony put it: "It’s a different environment [from industry]. Some teachers pass people just so they don’t deal with the outcome of failing students. The students paid their tuition fee; they expect to pass.  Production managers have to deal with this when they have hired people under contract who don’t produce, but at university it is a very different environment to industry".

CalArts

Brooke Keesling said that Gnomon in Los Angeles is very good at what they do, as is Lynda.com as an online learning environment. As she put it, learning online, "you get to be a specialist". A full degree is a very different beast. At, say, CalArts "you get a well-rounded education, with an emphasis on drawing. CalArts students have to make a film every single year. They get a chance to fail or succeed four times". As she put it: "making four films at CalArts gives the students vision, and offers them chances to fail. Even if three films fail, one will succeed". In other words, CalArts "trains directors".

Aubry Mintz emphasised that "we are educators, not employers. Our students will get beaten up in the industry anyway" - so they don't need to get beaten up at university as well. However, students do "need to learn how to fail". Passing students who don't make the grade does them no favours.


The third question posed to the panel was: "What do Universities need to do, to raise their game?"

Tony Tarantino made a plea for "less bureaucracy" from government, in order to set schools and universities free.

Aubry Mintz agreed. "The biggest challenge is the academic unit count. Universities want to get students out faster", ie to "teach a lot in a little time". He described how hard it is to get things done in spite of the bureaucrats, and said that educators have to learn to be people who take decisive action, and “ask for forgiveness - not for permission”. He also had some good advice for university lecturers. "Don't give your course specific names. Instead, name them simply 'Animation 1', 'Animation 2' etc. That way you can change the content later on."

Brooke Keesling talked about the importance of networking. She said this was "very important", and that students who study in places like San Francisco and Los Angeles have an advantage because of geography. As she put it: "for schools in distant towns, its is harder for them". She advised students to “go to a school in a town where there is work”.

Richard Arroyo agreed, saying that "your network will help you get work."


The fourth question to the panel was : What makes a studio hire a student?

Brooke Keesling said "It’s not about a school. It’s about the work. We look for students online, we invite them [to work] on the show [Cartoon Network]. For TV work – it’s all about story, because the actual animation is done overseas. Working for Cartoon Network is all about drawing and story telling ability. Our story artists must be writers as well as artists."

Aubry Mintz said that "animation is a big term"; it covers many disciplines. Educators need to "get students away from Google; go to the library. We have to train well-rounded artists". There needs to be "time for students to explore at university".

Tony Tarantini said that students "have to be well-informed. You have to know the industry". Students also "need to know art history. You must be a full artist". Students must not just learn to press buttons but must become "a creative force" in order to succeed.

Brooke Keesling agreed. Some of the best artists at Cartoon Network really know their art history.  JJ Ballard's excellent short film “Son of Satan” has "lots of art history references".

Worth studying?

Tony Tarantini teaches a course in Florence every year, called “Italian Art and Culture”. It is a way of helping students to get a "better background" in general art history. It's all about the "expansion of them as an artist."

Aubry Mintz agreed, saying that he "does not want to teach software in class". Instead, he "wants to teach theory and interesting stuff".

Finally, one student in the audience asked the panel "What advice would you give to a student who wants to make an independent film?"

The answer, given almost in unison was: “Make them”.

Gateway Building at Bucks

Needless to say, here at Bucks we think that a full BA at University still has a lot to offer, especially if you really want to get a proper well-rounded education in the digital arts. But in way, comparing study online with a full three or four degree course is rather unfair. My online school Animation Apprentice is a course designed for students who don't have three years of their life to commit to school.  At Bucks we expect our students to emerge with a wide variety of skills: animation, design, storyboarding, modeling, lighting, texturing, rigging. And, of course, all the soft skills, like teamwork, co-operation, and working on group projects. In the end though, it's up to our students to decide what they want to specialise in, and then it becomes our job to help them realise their goals.

---Alex

For more about what we do at Bucks, take a virtual tour of our animation studio, and also a virtual tour of our other, state-of-the-art media facilities. Best of all, if you are in the neighbourhood, drop in at an Open Day and see us. Also check out what our students think of our course, and see why we're ranked in the top 12 creative universities in the UK.  Click here to find out more about the Bucks Big Deal.

The neuroscience of animation - how your brain's wiring makes you like cartoons

Your brain, but animated

At this year's SAS (Society of Animation Studies) conference in Toronto, a number of presentations focused on the subject of Animation and the Mind - The Neuroscience of Animation. This field of research tries to look at animation from a neuroscientific point of view, asking what it is about the design and structure of our brains that influences how we watch and enjoy animation. It's field that asks not just which cartoons we like, but why we like them, on a level that digs deep below our subconscious.

Bugs Bunny. Copyright: Warner Bros

Stephane Colgnon from Belgium argued that “Animated cartoons are caricatures in motion”. He looked at the Neuroscience of caricature, suggesting that cartoon characters are essentially a caricatures of human babies, designed to eleicit an “aww…. cute!” reaction among adult humans. In other words, the design of bugs bunny (for example) is created - no doubt unconsciously - to provoke an exaggerated neurological reaction. In other words, in neuroscientific terms, "exaggeration works".

Stephane argued that "Studies have shown that humans like babies that are caricatured and more “babyish” than real babies. It’s like women who have a boob job – it speaks to our wiring. Cartoon design works because its how your brain works".

Baby Herman - exaggerated cuteness

Ann Owen, of Falmouth University, in her talk "Seeing the real. A neuroscientific perspective on stop motion animation", argued that Stop motion animation in particular "provokes a nostalgic simulation of childhood ativities".

Films like James and The Giant Peach "provoke nostalgic emotions" in the audience. Hence stop motion films are "full of toys, and other old-fashioned things". These items "provoke a sense of pleasure" in adult audiences, remembering their own childhoods.

Stop motion: "uncanny"

Ann went on to talk about "The Uncanny" in Stop Motion films, such as Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas. She quoted Sigmund Freud, suggesting that this kind of work "reminds us of the mortality of our own bodies". For example, "remove a character’s eyes, and we can no longer simulate...we cannot predict their intentions...we feel the mutilation in our own bodies."

However, Tim Burton's work is more "faux uncanny", than real uncanny. The audience gets it - it's just a joke. We're "not really spooked".

So now you know. Our enjoyment of animation is just an extension of the wiring of our brains. So next time you want to design a cute character, don't go to a character designer - just ask your nearest neuroscientist.

---Alex

Jason Thompson explains why students must fail, and why professors should watch video games

Jason Thompson

Last week at the SAS (Society of Animation Studies) conference in Toronto, Sheridan professor Jason Thompson gave a brief but fascinating talk on "Why our students need to fail". Citing the book by Guy Claxton What is the point of school?, Jason argued that school is important because of eight critical things that students must learn:

1. Curiosity
2. Courage
3. Investigation
4. Experimentation
5. Imagination
6. Reasoning
7. Sociability
8. Reflection

Jason then posed the question "Why are our students not more engaged in school?"

Maybe school should be more like this

Answering his own question, Jason argued that students are engaged – but with video games. Game players love it when they get “The Epic Win”, that feeling of success that makes them feel great. Games like World of Warcraft gives us chances to be tested not too much, not too little, but "just beyond our abilities". Game players "get challenged on the tipping point of our ability".

Jason went on to apply this to education, arguing that students need to feel the thrill of a "Level Up!" in the classroom.

He then cited a book by Jesper Juul titled  The Art of failure. Juul argues that successful video games give us “a fair chance” to get past the monster, and that it is this that makes them work. In order to succeed, we have to fail first. Coming back to education, Jason argued that in school today both educators and students are now too afraid of failure.  Hence, "Girl Guides all get badges", and everyone passes the test. Educators have become "afraid of failure". Students ask "what if I fail?", and educators respond by passing everyone.

According to Jason, the author Seth Godin says that we should ask a better question: "After I fail, what then?" After all, successful people don't necessarily succeed initially. Many fail, "and then overcome their failure". Success in life is less about succeeding first time and much more about failing, trying again, and succeeding he next time, or the time after that.

After all, Disney failed – he lost Oswald The Rabbit, and then created the famous mouse which made his name. Steven Spieflberg was rejected by film school three times. Jason quoted Winston Churchill as saying that : “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm”.

Spielberg - a failure?

So maybe if students worried less about failing a test, and educators were less concerned about passing all their students, we would be doing everyone a favour.

Here at Bucks there is, just as at any university, a grading process which takes place over the whole course of our students' three years of study.  Grades matter, because the university says they matter. However, we emphasise to our animators and digital artists that what really counts (in the real world of work) is not their grade, but a continually improving body of work that can eventually be turned into a killer demo reel. A great demo reel helps our students find work in the industry of their choice - which grades, no matter how stellar, do not.

----Alex

Why Should Animators Watch Charlie Chaplin? Nancy Beiman explains...

The Little Tramp. Photo: Wikipedia

Why should animators watch Charlie Chaplin films? Nancy Beiman, former supervising animator at Disney Feature Animation and now one of the key professors at Sheridan College in Toronto, thinks she has the answer. It's because animators are, in the end, pantomime artists, and Chaplin was the greatest pantomimer of them all. At the 2014 SAS (Society of Animation Studies) conference in Toronto, Nancy explained how animation and silent film comedy developed together, inspiring one another to perfect the art of physical comedy.

Nancy Beiman

Nancy Beiman, who worked for many years at the Disney Studio, is a huge fan of Chaplin's work, as are many of the finest animators. Her talk at SAS was essentially about the history of Chaplin's influence on animation and - vice versa - .the history of animation's influence on Chaplin. Her talk was titled: “The Animated Tramp".

Felix the Cat

From the beginning, animators copied Chaplin's work. Felix the Cat, the original cartoon super star (he was as big as live action stars like Chaplin himself) was based on Chaplin’s timing. At the Disney studio, Walt recognised the importance of having animators base their work on real life action analysis, and he pioneered life drawing classes at the studio. In effect, art classes became mandatory. Good animators are actors, and learning how the body works was vital to giving a great performance.

Thus it was a short step to look closely at Chaplin: - “the greatest pantomimist in the world”. Look closely at Chaplin's work, says Nancy, step through the images frame by frame, and you will see that "it's the little things that make his work great". The timing of even tiny gestures is vital, all carefully rehearsed and worked out in advance. Not for nothing had Chaplin honed his craft on the notoriously tough music hall stages of London, developing the character of The Little Tramp long before he went to Hollywood.

Some good examples of his stunning pantomime work include “Easy Street” (1917). Art Babbitt, one of Disney's pioneering animators, idolised Chaplin, and Chaplin's work influenced Babbitt's superb animation of the drunken mouse in the Academy award winning short "Country Cousin".

According to Nancy, Chaplin "was jealous of animated cartoons because their timing was perfect". Why? “because they never need to take time to breathe”. Some animators were so fascinated by Chaplin that they would go to screenings and watch him watching their work, to see how he reacted to what they did. Curiously,  Chaplain tended to laugh at the wrong times – not when the audience laughed. His own sense of humour was unique and individual.

Chuck Jones. Photo: Wikipedia

At Warner Bros, Mike Maltese was a Chaplin fan. Director and animator Chuck Jones “grew up with Chaplin”, and idolised his work. He asked Chaplin about comic timing of a scene, and Chaplin told him: “you can make comic business out of anything”. After seeing The Gold Rush (1925), Jones told his artists to “steal from the best” - and Chaplin was the best. Some of the best work in Jones' short “Rabbit of Seville” is borrowed from scenes in Chaplin's “The Great Dictator”.

In the modern era, Pixar's Ralph Egglestone said that the team on Wall-e watched all the Chaplin films before they made Wall-e, because their film was essentially a silent film, and they needed to understand the secrets of Chaplin's success. Good animators "learn to make films read well without sound", because "the best animated acting is expressed through pantomime".

Here at Bucks, we work hard to make sure our students understand the important of learning pantomime animation long before they are given audio scenes to animate. Even when we animate shots with lines of dialogue,  the first exercise is always done with a character who has no mouth - to force the animator to use body language alone to bring the shot to life. Mastering the art of pantomime is still the foundation upon which any successful animator will build their career.

---Alex

DreamWorks Animation Supremo Rex Grignon reveals the Nine Secrets of Animation Success

Rex Grignon

Rex Grignon is the HOCA at DreamWorks. That is to say, he is the Head Of Character Animation, and therefore holds one of the key leadership positions in the studio. He has worked on some of the biggest DreamWorks hits of the last decade, including ANTZ, Shrek, and all three Madagascar movies. Born in Canada, he came home to give the keynote speech for The Toronto Art of Animation Festival International, aka TAAFI. Rex talked about some of the key lessons he has learned over the past two decades, and most especially from his years at PDI, Pixar and DreamWorks.

Rex was born in Canada, and he started out in animation as a kid in the 1970s by animating Lego bricks, one frame at a time, and bringing life to his Lego spaceships. Later, he started doing computer animation in the 1980s, when the CG industry was just beginning. He studied animation at Sheridan, just outside Toronto, a school which is now recognised as one of the best (some say the best) animation schools in the world. What did Rex learn at Sheridan?
 
Lesson Number One: “If at first you don’t succeed, try try again.”

In other words, as he put it, you have to "keep banging on the door". As a graduate, he was rejected by Disney, but did not let that stop his career. At Sheridan he worked on group projects and "learned to be a great collaborator". As he put it, part of the job of being a film-maker is "helping other people to be great". In other words, you have to "play well with others".

In 1985 Rex went to NYIT ("The Lab"). He got a $10,000 “scholarship” – which was actually a kind of slave labour since he was expected to work 10 hours a day on an animation project. As he put it, $10,000 sounded great as a scholarship, but pretty bad as a wage.  Still, he learned a huge amount, including:


Lesson Number Two: “not all leadership is great leadership”.

In other words, if you find that your boss is not supporting you and mentoring you…go elsewhere.There are plenty of bad bosses out there - so find the good ones. He also learned....


Lesson Number three: “take advantage of any opportunities that get you closer to where you want to be”.

Opportunity knocked in Frankfurt. Photo: Wikipedia

In other words - be prepared to move, to travel, to take a job that sounds interesting even if the pay is terrible. It might be a “real turning point in your career”. Rex went to Frankfurt, Germany, to a company which had "lots of startup money and a beautiful office". But it had too few artists, too much management, and the animators had to work super hard to support the rest of the organisation. However, he learned the value of teamwork, working hard on fourteen productions, and he also learned:


Lesson Number four: “take care of the people you work with. There is no room for petty grudges in the workplace”.

Rex explained that in Frankfurt he He fell out with one of his colleagues, but did not (as he put it) "have to skills to resolve the situation". He was trying to be creative, but was in an unpleasant dispute, and he described this as "the wrong energy" for a studio. So, learning from his mistake, he "worked hard to make sure that the same thing never happened again". And, he says, he has been successful.

PDI was later bought by DreamWorks

Rex Built up a portfolio to apply to PDI in 1988. Pacific Data Images was a pioneering studio in the Bay Area of San Francisco which mainly animated flying logos, but had also pioneered some early digital character animation. He joined the studio (at the time they had about 30 employees) and he learned from Jim Henson’s Muppets how to bring a character to life. The Muppet puppeteers had few resources at their disposal, but they made it work, and created great acting and personalities.

Then, when ILM said no to a big project, which they had described as  “impossible", PDI snapped it up, and proved that CG character animation could be made to work. Of the team that pioneered this, all them "went on to do great things later on". His friend Glen went to Pixar where they were making Toy Story and he said to Rex “you gotta come here”. So Rex followed Glen to Pixar and was blown away by the ambition of Toy Story. And that was where he learned:


Lesson Number Five: “Think big. If no-one else is doing it…that’s where innovation starts. That’s where you want to be."

So Rex went to Pixar, where he "took a big pay cut", but got to work on Toy Story. The studio was having "trouble with footage", ie struggling to get the animation done. Rex was fast and he worked on Toy Story for twelve months, animating a "huge number of shots" on the film. It was at Pixar that he learned Lesson Number Six.

Lasseter: Inspiring. Photo: Wikipedia

Lesson Number Six: “How a director can inspire a crew”. 

Rex described director John Lasseter as being “lovely to work with”. He was always "clear about what he wanted, and had a "natural way of working with artists". Meanwhile, working as an animator, Rex learned Lesson Number Seven.


Lesson Number Seven: “40 hours is a lot of time if you learn to focus”. 

In other words: "Learn to concentrate". Rex described other animators as "watching TV" while they worked, or "listening to music". If you can really focus, he said, "you’ll be untouchable". If you can’t, "you’ll be wondering whether you get sent home at the next round of studio layoffs". So a good artist has to make the hours count, and really focus on their work.

At Pixar, Rex also learned Lesson Number Eight.


Lesson Number Eight: “work with visionary artists when you can. Then be one yourself”.

Of course, this is easier said than done. But, after working at Pixar, he got to do ANTZ at PDI. As he put it: "If you get the chance, grab it" Taking an opportunity "does not mean you are taking someone else's job away". You should feel bold and grab the opportunity.

After ANTZ he worked at PDI on the feature film Tusker, an adventure comedy film that never got made. It was, as he said, "an awesome project", but it did not get into production. During the course of it he developed a trunk rotation system for the elephants, using sliders, which helped to realise many of the blend shape tools which 3D animators take for granted today.  Meanwhile, Shrek won an Oscar. Soon, the studios were shifting towards 3D animation, and many of the great 2D animators began to learn 3D, such as James Baxter, Simon Otto, Sergei Kouchnerov. James Baxter in particular "learned 3D animation in a few days". He is “from another planet”, as Rex put it.

Then Rex did Madagascar. And here, working at DreamWorks, he learned Lesson number Nine.

Lesson number Nine. “If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got”. 

In other words, you have to keep pushing yourself, to make things better. "Something has to change". Before Madagascar he "talked to lots of 2D artists and asked them how they would approach the film in 2D". After that, working with them, they "changed everything about animation". Rex wanted "something far more fluid and snappy" than they had been able to achieve in the past. They wanted a "new style for DreamWorks". The facial rigs in particular "got much more flexible", which a much greater range of expressions. The new shapes were "much broader." They did "Lots of tests for the Madagascar animals, pushing the new broad cartoony style.

In Madagascar, Rex wanted the animation to carry more of the film. In Shrek and ANTZ it had really been all about the writing, but now he wanted the performance to be as important as the script.

Recently, Rex has been working on the "Next Gen" software for DreamWorks, upgrading the studios animation tools. The latest results can be seen in “How to Train Your Dragon 2” which, in traditional Hollywood style, he urged everyone to go and see.

---Alex 

For more on the experience of studying at Bucks New University, come and visit us at one of our Open Days,  take a virtual tour of one of our animation studios, check out what our students think of our course, and see why we're ranked in the top 12 creative universities in the UK. Find out why we're giving free laptops to all our students, and why we give all our students free access to videos at Lynda.com. Also, see what financial assistance might be available to you. Learn which is better for animation, a PC or a Mac? Get hold of a copy of a map so you can find your way around campus, and learn about motion capture at Bucks.

For practical advice on making it as an animator or digital artist, read about what our graduates had to say at the recent Graduate Panel. Check out this post on how to set up an small business. Also learn about your first client project, read out our post on Portfolio Careers, and read this piece on Survival as a Freelancer. Study the nuts and bolts of freelance life by reading our guide to invoicing clients, and our guide to freelancers and taxes.  For more on careers in general, check out our guide to animation careers here, and also take a look at this map of digital studios - a great place to start your search for work in the business. Finally see our article on the jobs page at awn.com.