So where do you send your students for post-secondary education?

Choosing the right post-secondary school is important and difficult for any degree or career, so it is very important to do your research first. Attending the right school really makes a difference in the animation field, not only for quality of education, but also for the contacts you make. With that said, the demo reel is even more important and Pixar puts it this way, “In fact, in evaluating a prospective Animator, Pixar relies very heavily on the demo reel presented by the candidate. You could say that three things are important in pitching yourself to Pixar (the reel, the reel, and the reel).” So you need to find the school that will teach the right skills to create the best demo reel to get the job one want.
There are tons of 3d schools out there, and new ones popping up everyday. It seems like every college, university and certificate school is jumping on the band wagon and has some type of animation program. So where do students go and is every program the same?

Before a student picks a school, they have to start to think about where they want to work, what industry, and more specifically what strand of animation is their niche – modeler, animator, lighter, texture artist, etc. Majority of students don’t really know what they want to do, aside from working at either Pixar, ILM, or Electronic Arts. I don’t know where I found this statistic, but I quote it all the time. They say, ‘3% of all animations jobs are for Hollywood and game design’. There are tons of other directions animators go, including: forensic, engineering, architecture, medical visualization and the list goes on.

I see it as five different main options that students have for a post-secondary school.

Certificate school – Examples: Vancouver Film School
Technical school (Associates) – Examples: Westwood & ITT tech
Traditional Art school (4–year) – Examples: Cal Arts, Savanna
University (4-year) Examples: Texas A&M, RIT

Or

Online Programs which includes all of the above.

There are tons of schools out there and none of them are cheap. One of the things students should look out for, in my opinion, is what I call “Pay Schools”. These schools let anyone attend (paying students) and for the most part provide sub-quality education, but the thing is . . . they let anyone in. I know you have seen those commercials on late night TV . . . ‘I never thought I could make money doing this . . .’

About a year ago, I went to a very interesting panel discussion which turned into a heated debate arguing the pros and cons of an accelerated associate program vs. a traditional program. The panel was made up of six industry professionals from the gaming industry, commercial media, and an animation fields. They all clearly stated that they wanted employees that were well rounded, not just technicians. They wanted them to bring more to the table than just knowing the tool. One mentioned that they were tired of hiring animators who couldn’t even perform basic math, like reading a ruler. At the end, they also agreed that it really came down to the portfolio and what they could bring to the team, almost trumping the degree; which I thought was very interesting.

Part 2 continued later . ..

So what do you look for in a school?

You need to look at the students work first and fore most. Do students graduate with demo reels and do they look all a like?