The best schools for 2D Animation, 3D Animation and Video Game Design

The following is a list of colleges, universities and tech schools with programs that would help someone in their pursuit of a career in the technical direction of the animation industry or the creative side of animation. The list is dedicated to schools that many animation studios feel caters to technical direction and to the more artistic field of character animation

A career in animation is custom made for you. With your bachelor's degree in animation from Westwood College, you'll have the skills to work in the exciting field while doing what you love to do. And your courses are as interesting as your career will be-with classes that incorporate audio/video technology, laws of motion and drawing with general education. Business classes provide you with important skills in critical thinking, logic, communications and problem solving that will help you address workplace challenges. You'll leave qualified for entry-level positions, like web animator, 3D animator/graphic designer, desktop publisher or flash designer/animator.

DeVry University

DeVry's Game and Simulation Programming curriculum prepares graduates to join the private and public sector game software industry in a variety of software development roles across the game programming life cycle, including programmer, software engineer and project coordinator. Applications-oriented, the program provides preparation in the math and physics of games; programming fundamentals; game design; modifications (MOD) and massively multi-player online game (MMOG) programming; two- and three-dimensional graphics programming; and simulation and game engine design. Also included is a full complement of general education courses, recommended by game industry experts as critical for well-rounded development team members.

The Digital Entertainment and Video Game Design program in the School of Drafting and Design at the ITT Technical Institutes can help graduates prepare for career opportunities in a variety of entry-level positions involving the technology associated with the design and development of digital games and multimedia applications. Courses in this program offer a foundation in digital game design through the study of subjects such as gaming technology, game design process, animation, level design and general education coursework.

Graduates of this program may pursue entry-level career opportunities in a number of different digital entertainment and game design companies. Job functions may include working in a team to design, develop, test and produce video games, or create animations and 3D scenes for use in video games.

3D Animation Program

Animation involves bringing artwork and characters to life with such precision that they truly seem real. Animation is part acting, part storytelling, and part visual art - it's a mix of both electronic arts and traditional animation skills. You'll study methods to create realistic movement in 3-D digital environments, and collaborate within a team environment to gain practical experience. Graduates are prepared to seek entry-level employment such as 3-D character animator, modeler, and storyboarder.

Game Art & Design Program

Graduates are prepared to enter the Game Art and Design field as modelers, storyboard artists, animation artists, 3-D illustrators, digital artists, FX artists, video post-production artists, and broadcast graphics designers, as well as game designers. Learn what it takes to produce great art and design and use the skill to create applications used by the business, education, training and entertainment industries.

Westwood College Online offers a diverse curriculum that focuses primarily on the chosen degree field and is enhanced by general education courses. Students receive a truly comprehensive education; our Game Art & Design Program teaches both Maya and 3DS Max, which allows students to work in their preferred format. Many other video game design programs teach only one of these packages. To top it all off, students get exposure to game engines through our program, and this is certainly a benefit to them.

* Conceptualizing and developing ideas for cartoons and animations

* Using life drawing and rendering techniques to develop characters, backgrounds and stories

* Creating 2D and 3D characters and animation for the Web, digital media, television, movies and software

* Utilizing the laws of motion and physics to create life-like motion for the animated characters you create

* Integrating audio and video effects to create animated features

This is just a highlight of our online animation program. Students are prepared for the challenges of a career and provided with skills to navigate the ever-changing trends in animation. Picture yourself in the creative career you have been dreaming of, and work towards that goal with the help of Westwood College Online!

Learn from industry experts from leading companies such as SEGA, ImageWorks, Disney, and more. We're one of the United States' most technologically equipped digital artist colleges. We have the tools and techniques to empower your creative career.

Take classes in artist-designed labs and facilities. Learn from experts in digital artistry. Work with industry-standard animation tools, 3D software, and imaging technologies. All at DMAC.

Bachelor - Computer Animation

An artful blend of creative vision and technology, computer animators work in 3-D to bring their imagination to life. Animators can specialize in motion, feature films, materials, and more. Our new motion capture studio will give you the opportunity to train on the same equipment that's used in major motion pictures. The computer animation program is designed to teach you how to develop drawing skills and combine them with storytelling in the digital realm to acquire the skills you need to help you enter the field of computer animation.

Bachelor - Visual Communications: Game Design
The Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Communication (Game Design) is designed to provide training in principles and techniques used to create interactive 2D and 3D computer games. Students can learn design software; modeling and animation skills, networking principles, level and world editors, and game engines used to design and develop games, and will examine market research and business concepts related to game production and distribution processes. Project management, creative design, and communication skills are integrated throughout this dynamic curriculum to help prepare students for entry-level positions in the game design industry.

Our diploma program in 3D Animation for Film, TV & Games focuses primarily on animating characters for film, game and television production.

The department head for our program, Calvin Leduc, has over 20 years experience in the animation & gaming industry, including 9 years at Walt Disney Feature Animation. The program also includes regular live web chats with Pixar animators Andrew Gordon and Mike Venturini, direct from their studio in Emeryville California! Together with additional instructors from Industrial Light & Magic and other studios, our students learn to master their craft and produce a professional demo reel for studio recruitment.

Vanarts is a member of the Softimage Education Partner Program. All students graduating from the 3D Animation Diploma program, will now receive a FREE one year commercial license of the computer animation software SOFTIMAGE/XSI Essentials. This will allow graduates of Vanarts 3D Animation to continue using Softimage/XSI to freelance, to set up their own companies to do commercial work or to keep in practice.

Careers in the 3D Computer Animation field include character and effects animators, modelers, lighting and texture mappers, concept designers and storyboard artists.

Bachelor - Game Design

The curriculum in our Game Design Program is designed to equip you with game essentials like C++, Java, 3ds max and AI (Artificial Intelligence) so you can make your quest-driven concept a game reality. Your education in Game Design can take you from game research and planning, character development and storytelling, all the way through level design, modeling programming and project management. It takes more than imagination to be a game designer, and we can help you to take your ideas from concept to completion and beyond.

BA Visual Art w/ Game Art Major
As a student, you can learn to create characters and settings that bring a game to life. You can learn the fundamentals of sound design for game projects and explore the workflow concepts behind the art department of a major game studio. You can visualize a concept and acquire the computer skills necessary to render it in 3D.

Enroll in this exciting Visual Arts degree program with a major in Game Art and you'll take classes such as Creative Visualization, Audio for Gaming, Game Design Project Management, 3D Studio Max® 1, and 3D Modeling. Computer labs, traditional animation labs, photo/video labs, and a photography studio lab are available to students who choose this Visual Arts degree program. In approximately 31 months, you can earn a degree to help you enter today's workforce as a Game Designer.

Digital Visual Media Program

Ex'pression Digital Visual Media Program is designed to enhance your knowledge and skills through an intensive series of courses that cover a wide spectrum of digital visual media including 3D modeling and animation, texture and lighting, compositing, digital film and video effects, creating graphics for the Internet and more. You will gain experiential knowledge through extensive lab time using multiple hardware platforms. A one-to-one (student-to-machine) lab ratio allows you to individually explore the intricacies of a wide variety of graphics software.

The Animation Mentor curriculum has been designed by professionals, working at the top animation studios in the industry, focusing 100% on character animation. This gives our curriculum a "real world" insight into what studios are looking for in new animation talent. At Animation Mentor, students are mentored one-on-one by professional animators from major studios. Our approach prepares students with the skills and attitude they need to take into the studio arena. Our online campus is built with a studio focus in mind, allowing our students to get comfortable with the many challenges and opportunities they will experience when working in a studio environment.

Admissions: (510) 809-1177

3D Modelling Animation Art and Design - Are you passionate about 3D animation? Ready to turn this passion into a fun-filled creative career? In the 3D Modelling Animation Art and Design diploma program at VCAD, you'll learn the tools and develop the skills to succeed in the Computer Generated animation industry.

Career opportunities can be found in a variety of CGI-based industries, including computer animations studios, game development companies as well as post-production and special effects studios. Positions may include 3D modeler, character modeler, technical artist and junior production designer. Employment may also be found at industrial design firms, software producers or other companies that require the production of 3d graphics and animation.

Project Bidding Sites for Web Designers

If you are a freelance web designer chances are you have heard of project bidding sites like elance and getacoder. Before you use these sites you need to make sure you understand a few things otherwise you will get ripped off and left in the dark. There are no better ways to learn than actually dive in and try the sites yourself to get the experiences. The following tips will hopefully be useful to you as a london web designer who just started using these type of sites to find work.

Only do projects you know for sure you can do. Let’s say you bid on a project to develop an e-commerce website but have no experience setting up shopping carts or interfacing to credit card merchant services. While every other aspect of the project may go smoothly, you are bound to hit a roadblock when it comes time to implement the shopping cart. Since you are web developer, you know how to research and figure the problem out but all this takes time and the result can be a canceled project, no payment, and a poor review for all other buyers to see.

Be aware of the bidding site fees. Most of these sites take a fee from you when the buyer awards you the bid (even before you get paid for the project). A few only take the fee when you get paid. But the bottom line is that the fee should be calculated into your bid.

Don’t be a consistently low bidder. You’ll quickly get work but you will also become overwhelmed in the same manner. Although, with the number of other bidders you will be competing with, sometimes a low bid is what it takes to get awarded a job—especially if you are new on the site. This is also called penetration pricing and eventually you’ll have to start bidding at a fair price in order to be profitable.

Use freelance bidding sites to get you started. But have a plan to gradually move away from them and start dealing face-to-face with clients directly. It’s easier to build trust and strong customer relations when you can see the person you are dealing with. Communication is far easier in this way too. Not to mention that you will not have to compete with people who are offering web design services for peanuts.

28 Principles of Animation

This article was given to me by Mark Kennedy (storyboard artist on Hercules and Tarzan). Thank you Mark for all those handouts!!

Often times animators and storyboarders in the industry are able to get handouts from some of the artists who are great teachers. This is an example of such kind of handout that gets circulated among the artists gradually. It took me quite a while to retype and scan the images from this handout. Please don't reproduce this on the internet without permission. (if you'd like to print it out and give it to another animation student, however, PLEASE do!) The entire article from here on out is by Walt Stanchfield (sp?) I included the images in approximately the same spot as they were on the original hand-written article.

This is a wonderful article for not only beginners but also for practiced animators. Please read it.

---

28 Principles of Animation

There are some principles of animation that can be consciously used in any scene. We should familiarize ourselves with them for both animation and animation-cleanup.

To illustrate these principles, I have chosen a supposedly simple scene. When the scene is analyzed, it is apparent how far one may go in using these principles.

The action in this scene is quite broad, making the principles easy to find, but they should be applied to subtle scenes also. Rarely in a picture is a character doing nothing- absolutely nothing. Snow White and Sleeping Beauty spend a short time in complete inactivity, but even then certain of these principles were used.

The use of held drawings and moving holds can be very effective, but only if they contain the vitality of an action drawing. Again, the use of these principles makes that possible.

28 Principles of Animation

The purpose of studying and analyzing a scene like this is to acquaint oneself with the possibilites in the use of the principles of animation. I have listed 28 principles, though there well may be more. At first these will have to be used consciously, then hopefully in time will become second nature. These are the tools of animation and should be incorporated whenever possible. Some of them are accidentally stumbled upon while animating in an emotional spurt, but when the emotions are lax, knowing these principles will enable the artist to animate his scene intellectually, logically and artistically as well as emotionally.

28 Principles of Animation

Here is a list of things (principles) that appear in these drawings, most of which should appear in all scenes, for they comprise the basis for full animation

-Pose and Mood -Shape and Form -Anatomy -Model or Character -Weight -Line and Silhouette -Action and Reaction -Perspective -Direction -Tension

-Planes -Solidity -Arcs -Squash and Stretch -Beat and Rythem -Depth and Volume -Overlap and followthru -Timing -Working from extreme to extreme

-Straights and Curves -Primary and secondary action -Staging and composition -Anticipation -Caricature -Details -Texture -Simplification -Positive and negative shapes

28 Principles of Animation

An example of the observations that might be made by flipping and studying just these two drawings. By shifting your eyes from one drawing to the other you can see these things happening. Watch the negative shapes also.

This drawing would be called the "push off". Note that every line and shape on the drawing helps the upward thrust. Even the tail, which is still following the path set up for it by its primary force, the rump, helps by way of contrast and followthrough. Pick any shape on the figure and compare it to drawing #6 on the preceding page. Note how each shape changes to enhance the overall shape and action: the neck, the chest, the legs, the back, etc.

Even though this is just one drawing, there is no doubt about the action that is taking place in this part of the scene. This should be true of any drawing in any scene.

Consider Anatomy Alone:

Aside from its purpose in the scene each drawing can be analyzed for different aspects of drawing. The whole body is a caracature of an animal, but all the parts of a real animal are present i.e., head, neck, back, hips, tail, etc. And each of them work and move in a plausible way.

Anatomy Continued

Anatomy, of course is essential to any drawing whether it has a direct reference to nature or is completely imaginary. Though a character and/or its action may be greatly exaggerated or caracatured, anatomy in a sense remains fairly constant. An elbow is an elbow and only bends in a certain way, and has its limitation. Liberties may be taken but the "reality" of even a cartoon must be kept or it will lose plausibility or credulity. It is not an easy thing to convert one's knowledge of structural anatomy to the cartoon medium.

It has been said that the location of a joint is more important than the joint itself. For instane if an arm shape has been established, it cannot have an elbow bend in an improbable place, no matter how well the elbow is drawn. Compare tiger's arm to that of a real tiger.

Consider Weight

The pull of gravity is one of the most important principles to deal with in animation. Everything has a certain amount of weight and will act and react accordingly. One easy way to lose the attention of an audience is to have feathers falling like bricks or bricks falling like feathers.

A certain humor can be gotten by bending the rules but should only be used where humor or special effect is called for. In shorts cartoons defying the laws of gravity, weight, speed, squash and stretch, etc., is a the rule of thumb. In Disney feature cartoons such flamboyant abandonment must be handled more discriminately.