Animation Schools


Choosing an animation school can be pretty difficult nowadays, since there is so much to learn and there are so many different approaches to learning it. Animation jobs used to be a lot more straightforward. There was a standard process that was used for most animations. Storyboarding, sketching key frames, drawing out backgrounds, and filling in intermediate frames were all done by hand. You needed creative head animators and assistant animators who could draw with perfect consistency. There was room for different approaches and different styles, but the skill set was the same no matter what studio was doing the cartoon.

Nowadays, the animation schools reflect the schism in the world of professional animation. On the one hand, there are the animation schools that maintain a pretty traditional approach. At these schools, the artistic skills are the most important part. You have to learn to draw with complete control, and to supplement that control with the various techniques that bring animations to life. Some of these schools still teach little or no computer animation courses, although that is becoming rarer.

On the other side of the fence are the more new wave animation schools. In these art schools, computer 3d animation is put at the forefront. A few of them dispense with traditional drawing techniques altogether in order to educate a class of students who view computer animating as second nature. Other ones use more traditional sketching techniques, but integrate them with computer sketch pads and rendering tools at every phase of the process.

The vast majority of animation schools, however, lie somewhere in between. If you are thinking of going to a school of animation, you will have to choose between a wide range of educational philosophies. Some schools build up a historical approach to animation, beginning with the laborious hand-drawn work and then progressing on to computer-assisted and fully computer-generated animations. Others take a more modern approach, trying to imitate your typical animation job by integrating pieces of both styles all along the way. Anyone with a solid set of art skills and a degree can get a career in animation, but where you go to school will really affect your short term prospects. Find out where the animators you like went to school, and where the big studios are drawing students from. By thinking about your career from the beginning, you will really be able to get into the field more quickly.