I do confess to being a ‘workaholic’ but this has to be the most exhausting, time-sapping, hand-shaking period in my life yet.  Not that I’m complaining mind you… but hey, my feet have hardly touched the ground in recent weeks and I’m still catching my breath! Not much time to write blogs, as you can imagine.

"Spirit Moves Through All Things" ~ A DigiPen senior project, 2008. 

I have to say I am very proud of our first year of graduating senior students.  As juniors, DigiPen students are required to produce their own 30-second short film, created by themselves entirely… from initial idea to full final render.  The purpose of this is not so much to produce a ‘great’ film, but more to give every single student a realistic experience of every stage of the production process. That way they will be better prepared for when they eventually enter the professional world and are asked to step into a particular role.  It also prepares them for the greater challenges of the final senior team project. But more about that in a minute.

I would imagine that 30-seconds does not sound very long to most people and that’s understandable when the work looks so smooth and well polished on the screen.  But this is far from the actual truth.  As any professional computer animator will tell you (even the very best of Pixar animators!) only having 2 x 15 week terms to ‘conceive’, ‘write’, ‘design’, ‘develop’, ‘model’, ‘rig’, ‘texture’, ‘animate’, ‘light’ and finally ‘render’ a film... with a ‘main character’, an ‘environment’, a minimum of one ‘prop’ and a story with a ‘beginning, middle and end’... is not a great deal of time.  This is especially so with the high demands we place on the student’s animation quality too. It consequently proves a huge challenge, especially to the first-time student applying all these skills collectively for the first time.  Sometimes it is very much touch-and-go whether they make it or not.  But I am delighted to tell you that this year’s amazing students did make it, and produced some truly fabulous films in the process! I’ll hopefully share some of these with you here as the week’s go by.

When the juniors reach their senior year they are required to work together in teams to produce a more ambitious project.  The core approach of the DigiPen BFA program is … ‘skilled in all trades, master of one’.  This means that over the four (or sometimes 5) years of their time at the school they learn (intensively) all the necessary components of contemporary animation and its production. Initially this has been all 'film' based but with DigiPen’s great, award-winning tradition for game programming and design, 'games' has become an option for the animation students too.

"I.D.A." ~ A DigiPen senior project, 2008. 

Although we live in a very digital world today, and although the school’s name includes ‘Institute of Technology’ in its title, a DigiPen student actually isn’t even allowed to touch a computer for the first year or so!  (Except for logging-in to check on their grades and send emails of course.)  The fundamental foundation work is all in the classical, traditional art field. Students learn to 'draw', and 'draw' and 'draw even more' especially. They are also intensively coached in the fine art skills or ‘anatomy’, ‘perspective’, tone color and composition’, ‘painting’  (digital and traditional), ‘design’ and of course 'traditional 2D animation'. When they have finally learned all the classical art and animation skills they are then allowed onto the digital applications that form the modern world of the professional 3D animator.  It is clearly not an easy program to enter, or survive in!  Many students do not even make it over the four year period. However those that do, effectively come out with a ‘Harvard and Yale’ level of education in the modern digital animation arena... many of which have skillsets even more advanced than professionals already working in the industry!

"Crunch" ~ A DigiPen senior project, 2008.

Clearly the program is a new one.  This year’s graduates were the first ever.  Yet we are mightily proud of the program and of our students’. They did themselves, and the school, proud in 2008.  This first ever cohort of students have had to be a kind of ‘guinea-pig class’ in many ways. They are the ones at the sharp end, with no peers to guide them or precedence before them, that had to turn the theory of a program into practice. The road has been a bumpy on occasions… for us, the faculty, too! But we and they got there, and got there well! This year’s graduates have set an incredibly high bar for the students who follow and we are so amazed at what they have been able to demonstrate.  Their amazing work certainly demonstrates the effectiveness of the 'classical art training before computers' approach, where we first make the artist and then give them a computer to work with. I guess it is hard to quantify this but I genuinely believe that the BFA program we offer at DigiPen… with its fabulous fulltime faculty (many of which are award-winners in their own right, or long-term ex-Disney employers with a passion for art and animation) is second to none… anywhere in the world.

"Harvest" ~ A DigiPen senior project, 2008.

A mighty claim I admit. But to support my view I thought I’d give you just a brief 'taster' of the final senior projects from this year’s graduates. This mute film compilation is just a glimpse of the amazing films that were produced. Sadly, until these films emerge at various film festivals around the world, I guess this is all you can have for now. After this compilation you can view another clip from a senior project of a more experimental nature... “Spirit Moves Through All Things”. This has been an attempt by passionate DigiPen students to create pure digital ‘art’… effectively an animated expressionist-style painting that uses nothing but particles to tell the silent story of a tree experiencing the four seasons at each time of day and night.  But first, the five other film clips that make up the work of this year’s senior graduates at DigiPen…

"Senior Project Compilation Movie" ~ A DigiPen production, 2008.

“Spirit Moves Through All Things” is an experimental piece in digital animation that is more designed to appear on the wall of an office, or an art gallery of the future, than in a conventional cinema or on a standard TV screen.  It is essentially a looped, 2-minute digital work of art that will run infinitely when screened properly. For me it is a true ‘breakthrough piece’… something (to my knowledge) that has never been attempted before and therefore is something the students creating it (Mike Smith, Codie Flynn and Arthur Beausoleil) can be justly proud. Here's a tantalizing glimpse of what they produced...

"Excerpt of Spirit Moves Through All Things" ~ A DigiPen production, 2008.

Now the term is over and we are entering the summer months it might be supposed that I can at last take a much-needed rest.  Far from it!  Over the months ahead, until the Fall term starts at the beginning of September, I as head of the department have to do a great deal of re-evaluing and evolving of the current program, prepare my coming classes for the Fall (I supervise both the junior and senior project… this year it was between 30 to 40 films in all!)... establish new administrative structure for the evolving program and, of course, pursue my own artistic ‘professional development’. If I’m lucky, this will include completing my new book on animation "How To Be An Animator ~ And Make Animated Films" (due to be delivered in August), preparing for our next “2D OR NOT 2D Animation Festival” (in Seattle in November) and develop the new film project that my Animaticus Foundation is planning to produce (hopefully evolving the art of traditional 2D animation to new levels of expression)! But more of all these things later.

I think I need to lie down and rest now!

Tony.   :^{)}=-