Computer Animation Arts

As anyone who teaches will tell you, the process of equipping young people with the skills and attitude by which to accomplish great things and realise their potential is no Hollywood-style montage of quick-cut, quick-fix gratification.  It's an uglier business than that, involving pushing, prodding, coaxing and no small amount of arse-kicking!  It is a battle of wills between past behaviours and future potential, between demons and destinies (which is already sounding a bit too Hollywood for a process that is often indescribably prolonged and frustrating). The rewards, however, can be huge - and this edition of the PWTM, which showcases the end results at the close of the academic year, is always a favourite of mine - not least because it reminds me of why we bother and why we need to go on bothering. First up, a small sample of completed films devised by first year students in response to their Fantastic Voyage brief, challenging them to pre-produce, produce and post...

I had a conversation recently with a visiting academic from another university who asked me about our course title - Computer Animation Arts . "Why not just Computer Animation?" he asked me.  The conversation took place as we stood outside the CAA baseroom, our backs against the vivid parade of character designs from Heidi 'Class of 2016' Grover's 'Legends Of Grimm' project . Meanwhile, in the baseroom, visiting lecturer, Dan Snelgrove , was putting a group of our year two students through a series of increasingly improbable improvisations in their 'acting for animation' classes. A few doors down, CAA first years were working with Jordan Buckner on the art direction and production design for their current Fantastic Voyage project.  Elsewhere, third year students were continuing to put their various CG assets through their paces for animated shorts derived from their own original poems and scripts. My answer to the visiting academi...