Whether reliance on computing is integral to the course, or merely one component of several, industry instructors are agreed: art is the backbone of animation; computer proficiency alone does not make for good animation.

Scott Turner, retiring Dean of Sheridan College’s Centre for Animation and Emerging Technology in Oakville, Ont., is emphatic about the strengths of this dual focus.

‘I think the strength of the course that we teach at Sheridan is twofold and it applies to the computer animation program as well as the classical animation program. We have a strong emphasis on drawing and a strong emphasis on using the dynamics of animation and its relationship to performance – on the use of issues around performance and how to tell stories; how to take animated characters and use them to tell a story.’

Larry DeFlorio, co-ordinator of digital media at Seneca College in Toronto, says entry to the 16-week course is usually predicated on artistic talent. ‘We’re usually looking for a really strong art background. Computer skills are not necessary [for entry to the course].’

From there, students choose which animation software program to study and also take classes in traditional animation theory covering topics like squash and stretch, timing and line of action. Once again the course is intensive: ‘It’s 12 hours if not more, seven days a week.’

Art background essential

For graduates seeking employment, artistic background certainly comes in handy.

‘You have to be an artist to build models. [Animation theory] has to be covered before you can use the computer [to produce animation],’ says DeFlorio.

‘The ones that come in with an art background seem to find jobs fairly quickly. Those who are better with the technology tend to have a tougher time [finding work], but a lot of them do go back and take more art training courses and within a year most of our graduates have jobs.’

Paul West, co-ordinator of the animation television department at Algonquin College in Nepean, Ont., says computer training has been deemed of so little value to students’ future careers that the last few years have seen the computing component of the course whittled from roughly half of course content to almost nothing.

‘What we were doing was graduating kids with half traditional skills and half computer skills and one wasn’t complementing the other. The students weren’t getting the jobs that they were seeking.’

He says the needs of both students and studios were the drivers of the decision to cut back on computing.

‘We would be in the studio with graduates realizing that they never touched the computer. And in advisory committee meetings with the surrounding community of animators they’d say [students] lost some aspects. They said ‘We need people to draw. We need stronger artists.’

‘Most of the studios that do digital work are looking for people who know how to animate and they will pay new employees to learn software.

‘About two or three years ago a guy from DreamWorks came and gave a presentation and talked about the kind of 3D animators he was looking for, and he told us that [of the programs they use commercially] 50% of the programs they have they’ll rewrite. They’ll scrap 50%, rewrite 25% and keep 25%. So someone who comes in using the program will only be using a percentage of that program anyway. So what they’ll be using is the animation and acting,’ says West.

The first year of the two-year program contains a mandatory course covering the basic principles of animation. Drama is also an element of the course to get students to accept that they ‘are in fact going to be actors on paper.’

So are the graduates of this course artists or assembly-line workers?

‘A little bit of both,’ says West. ‘Some decide they want to focus in on one job [for example] posing or layout, then they spend their independent time gearing their portfolio to get into layout. Then there are others that want to do animation and they’re good at [many elements of the process].

Digital animation training is also available at the college under the aegis of the Corporate Training department, but cannot be incorporated into an animation course.

‘They wouldn’t learn any more of the basics of animation, they’d learn how to do it with the added complexity of software.’

Mazher Jaffery, director of new media at the Canadian Business College in Toronto, where animation is taught as a component of the multimedia program, says:

‘[Students] should have a creative aptitude, and some arts background is certainly desired.

‘We teach vocational skills for [students] to find jobs in the new media area. It could be Web design, cd-roms 3D or 2D. We do interactive animation as well as straight animation.’

The course, which includes training in Shockwave and Web animator Flash, also starts with a grounding in design.

‘It’s essential that [students] start off by learning graphics and design techniques,’ says Jaffery.

Paper first

Rick Gibson of the Centre for Digital Imaging and Sound in Burnaby, b.c., focuses on the issue of longevity in a rapidly changing industry as a good reason to have a foundation that doesn’t date.

‘Even students who want to do computer animation, they learn animation using paper first. It’s easier and quicker to teach animation with pencil and paper and learn timing and movement that way. It’s harder to learn animation and at the same time learn to use a 3D package.’

Dar Lazdins of Puppets… The Animation School, a recent breakaway from the Toronto School of Business, goes a step further.

‘We didn’t want geeks on our campus. We wanted people who could create.’

With this in mind, Puppets’ curriculum is one-third fine arts, including drawing, color theory, storyboarding, and life drawing ‘to understand the human figure.’

Performance and acting classes are included in the very character animation-driven course to answer questions like ‘what does this pose tell us and what does the body language say?’ Lazdins says.

‘Our focus is on the art of it and students are hired based on the art of it. We focus on how emotional forces move things and how physical forces move things.’

Computers have a place in the course, ‘with the understanding that the course is art-driven,’ Lazdins says. ‘The computer is very much [the students’] art tool. Computers are used to deliver a performance for the students’ demo tapes.

‘We’re not interested in being a huge meat grinder. We are an art school. It’s a very focused program and very exclusive. We need individuals who are very passionate about what they are doing as students.’

Lazdins and fellow instructor Gary Chapple, who recently left the Toronto School of Business franchise to open Puppets, moved the school from the outskirts to the centre of Toronto to take advantage of being where there’s ‘so much going on,’ and they’re already setting up educational collaborations with various animators in the area.

‘We put a lot of effort into planning our studios and have a really nice ongoing connection [with local animators]. I’ve had studios call me looking for animators,’ says Lazdins.

This propinquity also helps with teaching: guest lecturers regularly visit and ‘expand on one aspect’ of their craft. ‘Animators will come in and then come back and critique projects [made using their expertise].’

First Interactive Computer College, which spreads its student population of approximately 200 students over four campuses in the Toronto area, prides itself on an intensely vocational focus, and in First Interactive’s case, this means a focus on computing.

‘We have an intensely focused program,’ says general manager Steve Chernoff. ‘We get people out to work as soon as possible. Our programs are shorter than most schools’. The longest is eight months.’

Fewer weeks, however, are compensated for with considerably longer work days: an average of 30 to 35 scheduled classroom hours are supplemented with an after-hours lab that is open daily until midnight during the week and for eight hours a day on the weekend, with the expectation that students make use of this time.

‘Our animation program is a little more computer-biased than [other colleges]. We bring creative talents to the computer medium, with the intention of melding the two,’ Chernoff explains.

‘We have animation programs for 2D and 3D, video editing, on-air broadcast design, Web design. We have multimedia programs, we teach programs for the Internet. We’re digital media; that’s what we want to do. There’s a lot of flexibility: we designed a lot of the [school] programs so they naturally lead into others, so for someone who takes the on-air broadcast design program, there’s another eight weeks they can add on and get their 2D animation and special effects certificate, and if they want to add another 10 weeks on at the end, they can graduate from the video editing and animation program. A lot of multimedia students have the perfect foundation for video editing. A lot of students take parts of programs.

‘We’re constantly upgrading our [software] programs.’ Within two months, Chernoff says, the college will introduce a program for 3D image manipulation on the Web [see CGI story, p. 29].

www.sheridanc.on.ca

www.algonquinc.on.ca

www.cbstraining.com (Cdn. Business College)

www.theanimationschool.com (Puppets…)