Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/16269
Education Supplement We believe there are more career options for people trained to work for a studio than there are for people trained to direct their own fi lms.” Full Sail also delivers the production studio experience in Project LaunchBox, a Full Sail initia- tive that provides all students with Apple tech- nology to help them create music, fi lm, game, animation, and design projects. “Project LaunchBox complements Full Sail’s Educational facilities, such as Vancouver Film School, realize that the key to learning animation requires far more than a class focused on using the latest software. Here, students learn acting fundaments to help them with character modeling and animation. through each step, from preproduction to postproduction and completed assets. During the degree program, students get access to Full Sail’s on-campus motion-capture studio, Motion Analysis system, and Autodesk MotionBuilder, similar to what they will be required to use in the industry, notes Pete Bandstra, director of Computer Animation and Game Art at Full Sail. In addition to the simulated production environment, the Animation & Visual Eff ects programs at VFS place a strong fo- cus on individual results. While students may gain help from their peers—such as a modeler assisting an animator in the creation of models—the fi nal projects are not group-based. “The end result is an expression of each student’s individual abilities, as demonstrated in [his or her] mastered demo reel—the ultimate calling card.” Production Projects A large and important aspect of the Game Design curriculum at VFS is the fi nal project, Warfi eld admits. Guided by a proj- ect mentor drawn from the industry, Game Design students at VFS collaborate in a production studio space and develop a playable game from concept through to completion. In doing so, students have access to a motion-capture studio, where they can track various moves and learn to work with motion-captured data. “At the end of their year,” he continues, “they have the opportunity to present this polished game to an audience of recruiters, designers, and other game-industry insiders. It’s not only a chance to receive valuable feedback, but a chance for students to get noticed by the industry as they’re about to graduate.” Students at The Dave School make four fi lms each year as part of their curriculum. “The Dave School is ‘The School that makes movies,’ ” says Jeff Scheetz, founder of The Dave School at Universal Studios Plaza in Orlando, Florida. Instructors, who serve as producers and directors, “lead the class through a production as though the students are working at a studio. 6 • Education Supplement • July 2010 programs by providing students with access to a complete mobile studio for use throughout their school career and after graduation,” Band- stra describes. “With Project LaunchBox, students of all levels will be able to utilize their own per- sonal MacBook Pro notebook computer loaded with Apple’s complete line of creative software tools, as well as degree-specifi c sets of pro-level applications.” The initiative enables students to have not only uninterrupted access to the tools they need, but also their portfolio conveniently at their fi ngertips at all times, he adds. New Tools and Media The eff ective use of and ready access to industry hardware and software tools are part and parcel to a comprehensive education in digital content creation. “An education at an Art Institutes school in a graphics- related fi eld—such as Media Arts & Animation, Game Art & Design, and Visual Eff ects & Motion Graphics—in part, relies on technology as a tool to support educational out- comes,” imparts Josh Blazer, assistant vice president and regional director of technology at The Art Institutes. “We strive to get industry-relevant tools into the hands of the students and to maximize the time spent with these tools.” In teaching 3D animation, The Art Institutes deploy dedi- cated rendering clusters. Some schools even pool all the desktop workstations at night to deliver between 500- and 1000-node render clusters, according to Blazer. “We believe in the desktop systems and the software tools as enablers of quality outcomes.” Warfi eld adds, “As technology is always evolving in the game industry, our curriculum and tools are constantly changing to refl ect that. This includes new game develop- ment tools, such as Unity [from Unity Technologies] and UDK [Epic Games’ Unreal Development Kit], as well as looking at new and emerging gaming platforms, such as the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad.” More and more, students are expecting to work with multiple tools and not a single tool set, admits Matthew Maloney, associate dean for the SCAD School of Film, Digital Media, and Performing Arts. “It used to be that Motion Me- dia worked mainly in Adobe After Eff ects and Maxon Cinema 4D. Now, we’re adding courses like Alternative Methods and Digital Form, Space, and Lighting to their toolbox. In addition to the traditional software, a new Motion Media student ex- pects to be able to work with Modul8 [from GarageCube] for non-traditional surface projection, Autodesk Maya for more