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Wow, an animation thread! I feel a little guilty for not having posted earlier, since this thread hasn't taken off like I had hoped. I'm a 21 year old senior seeking a B.S. in 3D Animation at DePaul University in Chicago. DePaul was the only school I applied to, since it was A) in my state, and B) had a Game Development program. Yep, I came here as a game dev student because what I was really interested in in high school was modding video games--making levels, models, and custom scripts. Well, all it took was for me to take one C++ class and I realized that programming was basically the worst crap ever. Then all it took was taking my prerequisite animation class, and I realized, hey, animation is pretty loving sweet! The DePaul animation program was actually created during my freshman year, but it's pretty drat good, with some great teachers, and it's growing really fast. I honestly never saw myself going this route, and I genuinely question whether I have what it takes to be a good animator, but I love it to death and I want badly to succeed in this industry. I'll echo the sentiment throughout this thread so far that when you go to animation school, you're definitely going to be taking classes with people who don't give a poo poo. But I feel like these people are largely weeded out by sophomore or junior year. Here we have some truly excellent animation teachers who really care about their students. Honestly, some of my teachers are more of my friends than teachers in a lot of cases. Generally, if you don't do the work and don't produce good animation, you won't get the grade. You'll definitely have a lot of lazy piece of poo poo students in your intro classes, but they eventually realize that animation is hard! Eventually these people will switch to Digital Cinema to "watch movies" or to Game Development to "play games." Now as a senior, my classes have narrowed down to the core 15 "good" animators, and it's awesome. Ask away if anyone has any questions about DePaul's animation program! As far as for what software we use, DePaul focuses entirely on Maya and After Effects. You'll definitely get your feet wet in the entire Adobe Creative Suite (CS4) package--I'm more than proficient in Photoshop just by using it all the time. We also have a 2D Animation concentration (B.A.) that focuses on traditional animation as well as Flash animation. I loving hate Flash with a burning passion and I couldn't be hosed to touch it with a 10-foot pole. One thing that's interesting about our program is that you're required to take traditional figure drawing classes before you can take some advanced animation or modeling classes. So that's evidence that we're not stupid. It really does help to have a working knowledge of human anatomy in this field. I feel like the blend of software skills, technical skills, and animation skills I'm learning here is going to give me a huge leg up in searching for a job, as opposed to if I focused purely on animation alone. I would be equally comfortable at a game studio, an animation studio, or some kind of production house where I composited footage and did visual FX. The reason I chose 3D Animation is that it strikes that magic balance between creativity and technicality. I still get to make video games-- right now I'm part of a student game development team working on a DePaul submission to the Independent Game Festival. Digipen can suck it. Here are some examples of animation that I've done: An old-rear end walk cycle I did freshman year in After Effects. God, I didn't know how the gently caress to draw back then: http://vimeo.com/3049447 An excerpt from a 3D animation I did last year: http://vimeo.com/4335067 Here's me dicking around on 16mm film for my "Experimental Animation" class. The first half of this video is the pure 16mm film scanned directly to HD, the second half (starting at 0:50) was edited in Premiere and had some 3D Maya animation composited on top of it. I kind of ripped off Robert Breer: http://vimeo.com/6724753 I wish I had more of my recent work up on the web. I was recently commissioned by my school to do a promotional ad for their Digital Cinema program. It was a one-minute short, and it will be featured in the Chicago International Film Festival! I'm hoping for big exposure. Here are some examples of animation that I like, and that you should watch: Here's some 3D animation by my teacher/adviser. A friend of mine was his animation assistant for this project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSTsApzjSMI Heavily stylized 3D animation. If you're an oldie who thinks 3D can never be as good as 2D, gently caress you. This is one aesthetically significant animation by David O'Reilly: http://vimeo.com/3388129 It doesn't get much better than 1980's Polish animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmuGBgD7Cv8 Some really sweet replacement animation: http://vimeo.com/4637506 Rockin' the Ambient Occlusion: http://vimeo.com/4130735 Fan-made music video for Grizzly Bear: http://vimeo.com/5904993 Great animation in a video game: http://vimeo.com/947190 The Robert Breer piece that I ripped off of for my 16mm film project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlpoppkVeic If you don't know who Jan Svankmajer is you need to educate yourself. He is the absolute master of stop-motion animation. Here is a (terrible quality) video of one of my favorite films by him. It's worth it to buy the DVD to experience his heavily textural films in full quality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdfCOCIv_DU The Quay Brothers-- two brothers who are hugely influence by Svankmajer. This is a (terrible quality) excerpt from their masterpiece, The Street of Crocodiles. This is the film that changed me--introduced me to the idea that animation is an art form. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6xG4Nf9Dh4 .TakaM posted:Just finished this bastard: That's great! This is really well done. I like the timing and follow-through on the sword strike. I like how the two individual forward/back sword strike frames are slightly different. I love the secondary action on his hair. What program did you animate this in? LiquidPropiganda - I don't know what you are talking about because what I see is a great Flash video. Maybe you don't like it because it's not "character animation" per se, but your character design is very clean and well-done. The whole piece is a good example of timing and staging--it's definitely an entertaining and funny piece to watch. Kudos!
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Oct 13, 2009 18:52
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Nah, Alexander Stewart teaches our class. Alexander got his MFA at the Art Institute, so he might know Matt.
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Oct 13, 2009 20:05
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This earned a comparison to Matthew Barney's work: http://vimeo.com/7019488 It was the most exhausting animation I've ever done
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Nov 6, 2009 05:45
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An animation that a fellow undergrad and I were recently commissioned to work on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BntS3dMvmb0 We completed it in about a period of three weeks. The piece was featured in the most recent Chicago International Film Festival, promoting DePaul University's Digital Cinema program. I did the lighting, rendering, and the title slug at the end, my friend did the cube animation. It was screened at the downtown AMC Theatre.
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Nov 25, 2009 20:20
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