June 3, 1998
Unique UW animation arts class producing a series of hit graduates
ATTENTION ASSIGNMENT EDITORS: Reporters and photographers are invited to attend the screening of a two-minute animation short produced by students in the University of Washington’s unique animation arts class. The screening will be at 2:45 p.m. Wednesday, June 10, in room 125 of the new Electrical Engineering/Computer Science & Engineering Building on the UW campus.
Tucked away in a computer lab at the University of Washington, 13 students are frantically putting the finishing touches on their final class project: a two-minute animation about an iconoclastic chameleon named Leon. Scheduled to debut at 2:45 p.m. Wednesday on the UW campus, the movie promises to be the most polished project yet to come out of the university’s unique, interdisciplinary animation arts class. But the real hits will be the students themselves, who are likely to be scooped up by top animation studios and graduate schools around the country.
The class has been transformed into a full-blown production studio in which art, music and computer science students blend their diverse talents to produce a movie — from storyboards to soundtracks. This approach prepares students for work in the animation industry like no other university program in the country, says Cassidy Curtis, an animation studio veteran and visiting instructor who is teaching the class.
“You can’t understand the real production process without a team project,” agrees Brad West, a former UW student now working on “Toy Story 2” for Pixar. “In production, it’s rare that one person does it all in terms of building models, shading scenes, animating characters and lighting shots. So, to achieve the necessary level of quality and consistency, there’s a great number of interdependencies fundamental to the production pipeline. That’s why the UW’s team orientation is such good preparation.”
The animation arts class is the brainchild of David Salesin, an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering who worked at Lucasfilm and Pixar before coming to the UW in 1992. Salesin, one of the university’s most decorated young teachers and researchers, recognized the need to approach multimedia as a fundamentally new communications medium rather than as a mix of existing media. Working with colleagues in the schools of art and music, he developed a truly interdisciplinary animation arts curriculum. In addition, he solicited equipment and software donations from Silicon Graphics and other industry supporters to equip a state-of-the-art multimedia laboratory.
Now in its third offering, the animation arts class has grown to a two-quarter sequence that aims to give students breadth of knowledge in the various animation disciplines as well as depth of experience in a full-scale production. The first quarter is devoted to a series of homework projects in which students develop their skills in the building blocks of animation: modeling, shading, lighting, motion and character generation.
“We want to give them a firm grounding in every discipline so they know where to find their niche,” explains Curtis, who spent two years as a technical director for Pacific Data Images, a leading animation studio based in Palo Alto, Calif. “When I interviewed college students for jobs, most of them didn’t know what they were good at or where they could fit into a team. These skill sets are really individual art forms, as distinct as architecture and dance, so most people can only expect to be really good at one of them.”
The second quarter of the class is spent working on the final animation project. Students, based on their interests and aptitudes, break into teams responsible for the various parts of the production process. These include script-writing, art design, editing, character and set modeling, shading, motion, lighting, rendering and sound. As the end of the quarter and the June 10 screening date approach, the animation arts laboratory has taken on the frenzied atmosphere of a real-life studio facing production deadlines.
While the movie will receive a relatively limited release after its campus debut, the students who created it can expect a long and prosperous run at the industry “box office.”
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For more information, contact Curtis at (206) 616-9005 or cassidy@cs.washington.edu Salesin at (206) 685-1227 or salesin@cs.washington.edu.
