As college-level digital media programs grow in number and sophistication, more educational institutions are looking beyond their hallowed halls and creating partnerships with real-world companies to bring expertise into the classroom and to market learned skills, creating more practical experience for students and revenue for the schools in the process.

Sheridan’s new media program

In its continuing efforts to maintain a high degree of relevance, Sheridan College, home of the storied computer animation program which feeds the insatiable, colorful needs of animation studios the world over, has developed a cooperative program that provides grads with new media work and the school with an additional source of revenue.

Arts Sheridan Productions was formed about a year ago as part of Sheridan’s School of Arts and Design in an attempt to establish production partnerships with private sector media companies.

To date, the program has spawned a number of new and traditional media projects including work on the cbc Web site and an upcoming multimedia project for the cbc series The Nature of Things.

asp executive producer David Tucker has been involved in producing The Nature of Things and has had a long affiliation with the college. He conceived the idea to produce a cd-rom companion to the series, which led to a larger initiative to forge other partnerships with industry and the public sector to develop projects with a strong educational focus.

asp’s traditional media projects have included a three-part video series on astronomy for the National Science Foundation.

On the new media side, asp was recently responsible for the retooling of the cbc English tv Web site for which the college was contracted to provide design and navigation work. The cbc Web site project was completed on a fee-for-service basis, but Tucker says he is primarily interested in forming production partnerships to create an ongoing revenue stream.

‘Both the cbc and Sheridan, like all colleges, have been hit with economic downsizing; these kinds of partnerships make sense,’ says Tucker.

The Nature of Things project, now in the contract stage, is a partnership between asp, the cbc and Toronto-based distributor Millenium and will involve a hybrid cd-rom, Web site development and possible future interactive tv ventures. Tucker says production is set to begin in the new year pending the dotting of legal i’s.

Seneca Digital Media Centre

Meanwhile, Toronto’s Seneca College recently officially launched its new Digital Media Centre, home to a new 12-week 3D digital animation course.

The new complex includes $3.5 million in hardware and software and represents a partnership between Seneca, Silicon Graphics, sgi software subsidiary Alias/ Wavefront, Montreal’s Softimage, owned by Microsoft and Toronto’s Side Effects Software, maker of Prisms and Houdini 3D animation software.

Seneca dean of technology Tony Tanner says the technology partners are contributing their respective expertise and have helped make the 22 SGI IndyStudio R5000 XZ workstations and 22 of each of the software licences used in the course affordable.

The course is directed at professionals who have previous experience in the graphics or animation field. The first 15 students of the inaugural session will graduate this month, and Tanner says each subsequent program will accommodate 20 students.

Tanner says prospective students come from a number of different disciplines, including those with jobs in the industry wishing to upgrade skills to professionals from various arts backgrounds seeking a career redirection.

With evolving technological capabilities, creative and artistic skill is assuming primacy in the requirements of effects and animation companies casting their lines into digital imaging schools for fresh talent.

‘Fundamentally, the people have to have the creative skills to get into the program,’ says Tanner. ‘We teach them to apply that creative skill to these particular tools.’

A large part of the thinking behind course delivery is providing students with practical demonstrations, hence the inclusion of workshops and seminars by current industry players in the hardware, software and content creation fields.

Beginning in January, the center will also offer two-, three- and five-day courses in 3D animation production, also using Alias/Wavefront, Softimage and Prisms/Houdini. The short training cycles are aimed at individuals and companies interested in upgrading skills.

East Coast initiatives

Two East Coast colleges will be expanding their influence beyond their walls next year with a new software application and a new digital imaging program for Toronto.

The Virtual Reality Lab at the University College of Cape Breton was established three years ago to do pre-commercial contract development for private sector clients who lacked the resources to develop computer application ideas. The lab began work on a virtual reality game application 18 months ago to allow development of online interactive games by those not fluent in code.

The project was originally developed for Sydney, n.s.-based McKenzie College to expand its digital imaging and animation curriculum to gaming and vr applications. The program has gone into Beta testing at McKenzie and the college is now looking at marketing and distributing the software internationally. A number of distribution scenarios, including a deal with a u.s. distributor, are currently being considered.

McKenzie vp Donnie Snow says the program will likely start distribution in the spring and will be priced at around $200 for entry-level users.

McKenzie also plans to expand its 3D Studio Mac-based digital imaging program to Toronto next September. The program will have 60 available seats and will be located downtown. The college has also instituted a distance-learning program in conjunction with ibm, Sympatico and TD Bank.