Thoughts on Sheridan Animation's Hugely Disappointing Industry Day
By Nick
As an animation supervisor, I was asked to be one of the representatives of my studio at Sheridan College's Animation Program 'Industry Day'. It was to be a landmark event, since it was also to include final-project screenings of some 68 graduates of Sheridan's new "Bachelors of Animation Arts" degree program. A four-year animation program that - surprise - comes with a bachelor's degree; a rarity in Canada.
Prior to the Bachelor's screening, we sat through roughly 40 other student shorts from graduates of various one-year computer animation, and character animation programs from Sheridan. The results of the one-year programs were mixed, more on that later. However, I expected the outcomes of the four-year program to quantifiably exceed the output of the one-year classes. After all, these students had invested four years of their life and countless thousands of dollars in order to get that elusive BAA. Besides, four years in an average production environment is enough to get most any animator with a hint of talent ready to start entering the big-leagues of the industry. So at the very least, four years of intensive education would be expected to produce passable entry-level talent. Right?
Wrong.
Very, very wrong.
I sat in a daze as the program's administrators ran short after short in an agonizing, head-splitting, intermission-less three hours, as nearly 70 student films unspooled one after another. What I saw upset me, then confused me. I had been sent to keep an eye out for potential talent for the tv series I was working on. I was looking for animation basics. Acting basics. Any basics. And I kept looking in vain for them as short after short played out. Rather than the basics, what we got were orgies of runaway production design, the odd cubist abstraction, a whole lot of half-finished shorts filled with unintelligibly scrawled pencil tests, the occasional bit of incomprehensible 'something or other', and a lot of stuff that was just plain sloppy.
Four years. Tens of thousands of dollars per student. Sixty-eight students and shorts, and three hours of footage.
Full Article...
By Nick
As an animation supervisor, I was asked to be one of the representatives of my studio at Sheridan College's Animation Program 'Industry Day'. It was to be a landmark event, since it was also to include final-project screenings of some 68 graduates of Sheridan's new "Bachelors of Animation Arts" degree program. A four-year animation program that - surprise - comes with a bachelor's degree; a rarity in Canada.
Prior to the Bachelor's screening, we sat through roughly 40 other student shorts from graduates of various one-year computer animation, and character animation programs from Sheridan. The results of the one-year programs were mixed, more on that later. However, I expected the outcomes of the four-year program to quantifiably exceed the output of the one-year classes. After all, these students had invested four years of their life and countless thousands of dollars in order to get that elusive BAA. Besides, four years in an average production environment is enough to get most any animator with a hint of talent ready to start entering the big-leagues of the industry. So at the very least, four years of intensive education would be expected to produce passable entry-level talent. Right?
Wrong.
Very, very wrong.
I sat in a daze as the program's administrators ran short after short in an agonizing, head-splitting, intermission-less three hours, as nearly 70 student films unspooled one after another. What I saw upset me, then confused me. I had been sent to keep an eye out for potential talent for the tv series I was working on. I was looking for animation basics. Acting basics. Any basics. And I kept looking in vain for them as short after short played out. Rather than the basics, what we got were orgies of runaway production design, the odd cubist abstraction, a whole lot of half-finished shorts filled with unintelligibly scrawled pencil tests, the occasional bit of incomprehensible 'something or other', and a lot of stuff that was just plain sloppy.
Four years. Tens of thousands of dollars per student. Sixty-eight students and shorts, and three hours of footage.
Full Article...
0 comments:
Post a Comment