Animation Training
Animation Nation Bulletin Board : Art School, a waste of money? (discussion thread based in the US)
How did we get into animation?
Eddie: How are Art Schools structured these days? When I went to art school, there were no animation-specific courses. I did a Graphic Arts course at RMIT (Melbourne) and learnt that “Graphic Design” wasn’t my thing. I wanted to draw cartoons! I left RMIT after the first year.
Lili: I had always been interested in animation, but back in the early 90′s I had no idea where you would learn to do this. I was doing part-time life drawing classes and that was about it. I went to College of Fine Arts (Sydney) and did a Bachelor of Fine Arts course, and realized that no one cared if you could draw or paint, so long as you passed all the electives – which included sculpture, video, photography, theory. I left art school to pursue my own painting and drawing interests, exhibiting in small gallery shows.
Eddie: The first place I learnt about animation was at Disney (Sydney) as a trainee inbetweener. This was a good introduction to certain aspects of animation but I got my broader education at the next company I worked in as a Layout artist – which was Mr. Big Cartoons (now: Southern Star animation). Because Mr. Big was a smaller company, I became acquainted with the whole process of animation, unlike at Disney where I was stuck in a corner doing one thing.
Lili: I discovered a short course – ‘Commercial Techniques in Animation’ at Enmore TAFE, saved up my pennies and enrolled. This gave me the opportunity to animate, use the school’s facilities, meet people, make industry contacts. I became an intern at a small company – Moving Ideas Animation -for 3 months, tried to pick up as much practical knowledge as I could, without pay, before getting freelance inbetweening work on Lil Elvis, and a fulltime position (layouts, character clean-up, inbetweening) at Yoram Gross.
Eddie: Overall, I learnt the most from Mr. Big, but at RKA (a smaller commercial company), I was able to apply myself the most. At RKA, my position required multi-tasking: – layouts, designing characters, animating, inbetweening, cleaning-up – and doing my own thing. I was able to use RKA’s facilities after-hours to make my own cartoons, which was the most rewarding part.
Lili: I never gave much thought to making my own cartoons/films. My goal was always to keep improving my skills and to “animate”. I picked projects and productions to work on, where I knew I would be able to learn something new or deepen my skills. I was an assistant animator for several years, and was learning the craft working with different animators/animation directors (each with their own style) at different companies.
Eddie: When I established Fudge Puppy Productions, my mission was to make my own cartoons to my own style and not have someone else’s style imposed on me. I had spent several years at RKA working on commercials, so had had enough of that. At Fudge Puppy, I was designing, writing, directing, creating music. My favourite part of the animation process is coming up with the idea and designing it.
Lili: My favourite part of the animation process is the “character animation” part. I enjoy bringing characters to life with movement and expression. Most animators I know work rough, and leave the clean-up/inbetweening to assistants. I prefer to do everything from rough animation to final clean-up, as I am a control freak.
Eddie’s advice to kids who want to get into animation:
Try and develop a style and be confident within your own style.
Lili’s advice to kids who want to get into animation:
Expose yourself to different styles and take the opportunity to work with different animators on different projects.
And because we often get asked this question – Some places you can get 2D ANIMATION TRAINING in Australia are:
- Queensland College of the Arts (Animation course)
- University of Western Sydney (Animation elective as part of the design course)
- Computer Graphics College, Sydney (mainly 3D but small 2D component)
- Enmore Design Centre/TAFE, Sydney(part-time animation course)
- Walt Disney TV Animation, Sydney (they recruit trainees twice a year)
- Moving Ideas Animation, Sydney (Rodney and Jan D’Silva run classes from their home in Lane Cove)
- Rapt Animation, Sydney (Murray Debus runs occasional animation seminars – not a hands-on course, though)
Recommended Books/Websites:
To be continued…
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