Animation Students Sharpen Their Skills
"Animators Train for PC, Paper" (from today's L.A. Daily News) discusses the career options open to student animators and how they're preparing. The article points out that, while computer animation currently dominates (especially in the movie industry), there are still jobs out there for traditional animators and their skills (for instance, most animated TV shows are still hand-drawn). In addition, most schools encourage students to consider other emerging industries, such as cell phone graphics programming, music videos and video game design. Even in these new areas, a background in traditional animation skills is key.
"Indeed, game companies have emerged as a major destination for art students. Ted Price, chief executive officer of Burbank-based Insomniac Games, encourages applicants to develop traditional animation skills before they try and jump into the complex 3-D world.
'We have a large contingent of artists who've graduated from the art schools,' Price said. 'We have more artists than we do programmers by far. Games today require huge amounts of art to create these monstrous worlds that we make up. You need the traditional background that you can only get in a good art school.'"
Definitely worth reading if you're a prospective animation student.
