The Basic Philosophy

The purpose of this curriculum structure is designed to prepare 21st century animation artists and filmmakers so that they will be prepared to embrace the future leadership of this medium. As technology and practice with regard to animation production have expanded in the last two decades, so have the opportunities and options for our graduates as well as the necessity for us, as faculty, for constantly re-imagining our curriculum to reflect this dynamic. 
 
Accordingly, to be consistent with the other tracks in SFTV, as we believe a common lower division curriculum allows that us to provide a solid foundation in storytelling, animation, and filmmaking essential to the disparate disciplines, after which we can offer students at the intermediate and upper levels the opportunity to focus their studies around one of our areas of emphasis (i.e. Traditional animation, 3D Computer Animation and Interactive Animation).  This structure not only better meets the needs of our future graduates, but it allows us greater flexibility to offer new areas of focus more efficiently, as technology and animation filmmaking changes.

We propose to institute a portfolio review/advisor assessment of each student’s work at the end of the Sophomore year, prior to enrolling for classes for the Junior year, and each year thereafter.  This will enable an advisor to help better guide their students into courses appropriate for their interests and talents and will help us, as a faculty, better assess the student’s progress in the foundational courses with especial care to retention and matriculation.

Our goal via this curriculum is to foster the unique personal vision of each of our students in addition to supporting the collaborative filmmaking process. Hence, we propose that students create their own personal films during their first year, a group project in their second year, another individual project in their third year, culminating in a final group project during their senior year.

We hope to nurture animation artists to be prepared to assume creative leadership roles in the animation industry – whether it will be in the studio system or as independent artists. We further aspire to cultivate developing artists that reflect the School of Film and Television’s primary focus of new storytelling grounded in humanism, innovation and diversity.

These then would be our pillars. We will provide a curriculum that reflects our desire to instill in young film-makers the idea that industry connectivity is key. And while we choose to be re-known as world-class storytellers, we insist that this be grounded in strong technical/craft ability. Our overall curriculum is to prepare our students to be ready for the real world. The resulting motto would be: “go big or go home…”

As a function of delivering this industry connectivity, we further propose a series of weekend single unit workshops to supplement the already overburdened academic calendar. This is an issue of fitting ten pounds of learning into a one pound bag… Because we are somewhat limited by the 120 unit maximum, we propose that courses such as internships, the business of the business, and industry related workshops will be offered for credit or a pass/no-pass basis to provide such experiences for our students.

This curriculum is not necessarily about channeling students to specialize in one animation topic, at the expense of the others. The essential idea is to provide a solid lower division ”common core” while expanding the horizons of elective availability, within the major, for the upper division course selections. We expect “cross-pollination” and encourage “inter-disciplinary” study via elective options and minor concentrations. Moreover we intend to stress a workshop or team approach to animation production pursuant developing students to assume creative leadership in the industry and the world.