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▲ Students at SCAD in Georgia, USA. Consider carefully whether you need generalist or specialist skills as you choose the right course to launch your CG career
Your journey towards your new animation or VFX career starts here. Find out how to choose the school that will give you the grounding you need
School spotlights
Media Design School
Dave School
Wacom at Sheridan College
Although you can get started with CG animation and visual effects and develop your skills with the help of training DVD, online courses, books and magazine tutorials, there’s nothing quite like the experience you get from going back to school. Schools immerse you in the art and craft of CG, giving you access to film-making facilities and software pipelines based on those of professional studios. They use teaching staff drawn from the industry, plus guest lecturers who remain active today. And perhaps most importantly, they enable you to live the life of an animator for as long as you’re on the course, sharing your experiences with other students learning in the same way.
None of this is a substitute for you doing the hard work, of course, but the best animation schools make sure their students are equipped for a CG industry hungry for new talent. “We make students employable,” says Marty Hasselbach, managing director of Vancouver Film School. “Since the school replicates a studio environment, graduates hit the ground running. We also stack the deck in their favour by making sure they have an effective reel, and by bringing in many talent-hungry industry representatives to assess student work.”
WHAT TO LOOK FOR
There are hundreds of animation courses to choose between, and even the local college down the road – never mind a top-flight academy in another city or country – represents a significant financial commitment. So being sure you have chosen the right faculty has never been more important.
Think carefully about whether you need a general grounding in 3D alongside other disciplines, in case a broad multimedia course is just the ticket; or whether only the deepest CG-only experience will satisfy your thirst for learning. Either way, you’ve immediately ruled out a large number of possibilities.
Next, form a shortlist and research each school. Ask each school about its connections with the industry. Find out what experience the staff have in the industry, and how recent that experience is – if you view the school as a route to employment, you need to be learning the latest practices.
Use YouTube and Vimeo to check out showreels and shorts produced by both current students and graduates at your target schools. Obviously you want to assess their technical quality – but more crucially, use the shorts to get a flavour of the type and variety of work a school’s students are producing, and ask yourself which school is making the work that you want to create as well.
Although your school of choice should be well equipped, the intangible qualities and culture of a school matter more than whether they offer Cintiq touchscreens to work from. “If you focus on what you love, rather than follow industry trends, you’ll find the right program,” says Marianne Reilly, who heads Vancouver Film School’s one-year 3D Animation and Visual Effects course. “It’s all about where your passion lies!”
Passion is also the key word for Peter Weishar, dean of SCAD’s School of Film, Digital Media and Performing Arts. “When you go to art school, you really have to love what you’ll be doing, and be willing to work on it day and night,” he says. “That passion has to be there.”
LANDING A JOB
Most people applying for animation school view it as bridge to employment in the CG industry, so you also need to find out what your target schools do to help you get that first job. If a school doesn’t publish its graduate employment rates, ask for them. If they can’t provide those figures, ask them why not.
More intangibly, try to get a sense of how well each school might prepare you for work. For Peter Weishar, it means equipping students with the right attitude and approach to their craft, which goes beyond knowing which keyboard shortcut to use. “Different studios do ask for different things, but usually what they’re really after is a great aesthetic and an understanding of animation. VFX is a little different, in that the reel needs to demonstrate problem solving, whereas when it comes to animation it’s really all about story and character. However, I think the days are gone when they would hire somebody based on raw talent, and then teach them how to use the computer later.”
If you want to get into the best animation schools, you need to be ready to give as much as you receive – and for the best students, that hard work starts before they complete the application form. Marty Hasselbach stresses how important it is to do your homework. “Ask questions; talk to students, graduates and industry,” he advises. “No two schools are alike, and a student needs to find the one that best suits their learning style and career objectives.”