Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/565118
6 2 0 1 5 E D U C AT I O N & R E C R U I T M E N T S P E C I A L Broken Wand T he animated short film "Broken Wand" tells the story of an aging magician who fails to impress his sullen pre-teen grandson with his failed magic tricks. However, the same cannot be said for the film itself. The digital magic created by Michael Altman and Anne Yang, then students at the School of Visual Arts (SVA), is quite impressive – so much so that the short won a second-place award at the 2015 College Television Awards, also known as the Student Emmys. Altman and Yang created "Broken Wand" as part of their thesis film required for graduation, with both serving as directors. For the most part, the work was divided according to each filmmak- er's strengths, with Altman serving as animator and rigger, and Yang as modeler, texture artist, lighter, and compositor, as well as designer. While the pair did the majority of the work, they received some assistance time to time from a handful of classmates, as is often the case with complex student projects. In preproduction, Altman and Yang brain- stormed ideas, with Yang drawing most of the storyboards and Altman editing and timing the animatic. It took several months for Altman and Yang to complete the film, starting with the con- cept in August 2013 and finishing in March 2014. Both came up with the story, but it was Yang who developed the overall visual style and character designs, while Altman developed the cartoony animation style. Throughout the curriculum, students at SVA learn step by step the rigors of creating a film. In the BFA Computer Art Department, this is broken down into various classes, including required Autodesk Maya classes, where they are taught the basics of each step in the 3D pipeline, to classes covering specific skills. Later, the thesis production classes focus on the production and organization needed to make a short film, and involve critique and review of thesis projects by the instructors. So while the basics were learned in the class- room as part of the curriculum, the majority of the actual hands-on work for the short occurred outside of class but within the school's facilities. It's impossible to watch "Broken Wand" without thinking of another animated short film about a magician whose tricks are thwarted – not by his own hand, but rather by a hungry rabbit: Pixar's 2008 "Presto." "I am a fan of magic tricks. I watched 'Presto' a lot while animating – I really like the animation style and the use of magic in that film," says