Student Animators' Work Pays Off
There's an inspiring story in today's Salt Lake Tribune ("BYU students take an amazing march to finish 'Lemmings' animated short ") about an award-winning, all-student-created animated short film created by BYU students. It took a lot of hard work and countless hours in the lab (and some free software from Pixar) but the short has been a runaway success -- shown at 22 film festivals so far and it will even been shown at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
"After the story was mapped out... the computer animators began working on designing and animating the lemming characters -- not an easy or inexpensive task. 'Computer animation is more like puppetry than like traditional animation,' [the film's director, Craig Van Dyke] explained. 'You animate a puppet going through these motions. Then you apply these processes like light and color, animation and fur. In the end, you composite all of these layers together.'"
In addition to the praise they've received, many of the students have gotten jobs in studios thanks to their efforts on the short. One is working at James Cameron's visual effects studio and another is working on the next Star Wars film at George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic. Wow!
