Barbara J. Meier
ABSTRACT
We offer this curriculum as a model for a focused animation program that does not require the infrastructure of an animation major, multiple instructors, or many courses. Students who have taken two courses are well-prepared for technical director positions. Many students report this experience as a college highlight.
The success of the program is due to several key practices. Group critiques mimic “dailies” in industry and allow students to improve work in progress. Students are motivated to learn animation basics when they are applied to a final short film. We emphasize problem-solving over recipe-following so students become self-sufficient in learning new techniques. We provide a supportive and enthusiastic structure through in-class activities, TA support, and a well-attended final showcase. We discuss these principles along with course aims and lessons learned as we refined our approach.
Supplemental Material
- Peter Comninos, Leigh McLoughlin, and Eike Falk Anderson. 2009. Educating Technophile Artists: Experiences from a Highly Successful Computer Animation Undergraduate Programme. In ACM SIGGRAPH ASIA 2009 Educators Program(SIGGRAPH ASIA ’09). ACM, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1145/1666611.1666612Google Scholar
Digital Library
- David S. Ebert and Dan Bailey. 2000. A Collaborative and Interdisciplinary Computer Animation Course. SIGGRAPH Comput. Graph. 34, 3 (aug 2000), 22–26. https://doi.org/10.1145/359293.359325Google ScholarDigital Library
- Edmund B. Feldman. 1994. Practical Art Criticism. PrenticeHall, Englewood, NJ.Google Scholar
- Jesse Polhemus. 2017. Toymaker. Conduit 27(2017), 4–10. https://bit.ly/ConduitTMGoogle Scholar
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