Teaching Toons & VFX in a Changing World: Spotlight on Six Popular College Courses Across the U.S.

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An “alphabet soup” of new technologies is coursing through college classes these days: AI, AR, XR and VR are affecting curricula in increasingly interesting ways. At popular U.S. animation schools, teachers are reckoning with those impacts on class work and how to nurture the skills needed for good jobs in the modern world. Spoiler alert: Many emerging skills are additive at this point. Foundational abilities remain essential to succeeding in a collaborative industry like animation.

 

3D Lighting and Rendering

Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York

For the past 25 years, Claudia Herbst-Tait has wrangled the evolving toolkit used in Pratt’s animation curriculum. Her 12-student 3D Lighting and Rendering class combines historical context and aesthetic conversation with technical instruction using Maya, 3D Substance Painter and Nuke. “Our technical instruction asks a lot of our students,” she says. “Starting in sophomore year, we ask them to create an individual animated short in 15 weeks, every semester, from storyboard to finish, along with their other course work. The environments they’re lighting in this course will be used in their films.”

“I see diverse approaches,” observes Herbst-Tait. “Some are cartoonish; some emulate 2D animation and stop motion. Others have a high degree of realism, but that’s not the Holy Grail anymore. I address different interdisciplinary approaches — so it’s not strictly 3D animation, but sometimes 2D or hand-drawn texture maps.”

Before joining Pratt, Herbst-Tait trained Walt Disney Feature Animation artists in 2D imaging and 3D animation tools. So, she’s taking the arrival of new AI technologies in stride. For example, her students can use AI in the development of textures applied to surfaces. “Sometimes students can use AI for look development and bouncing around ideas,” she notes. “I’m trying to think of AI in a way that aids the process without taking over any of the design principles we want them to learn.

“What I try to relate to them is that training the eye and being able to make decisions about aesthetics means really understanding the principles of design. It’s ironic, but the most important skills are the least technical. Because what carries over from technology to technology is whether an image is ‘working’ or not. Can we identify its strengths and weaknesses and where we need to make edits? That’s really based on understanding how light and color interact and how to instruct the technology to produce something we want to look at. I’m talking to students about building skills that are relevant currently, but which will also translate into a future where a lot of these processes will be automated.”

She concludes, “I think there’s an awareness that things are coming that will change the landscape. I try to contextualize that and tell them how the past connects to the future.” She likes to remind them of a quote (often attributed to the composer Gustav Mahler) that “tradition is not the cult of ashes, but the transmission of fire.”

 

Real-Time Animation

University of Southern California, Los Angeles

At USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, Jordan Halsey has spent the past four years teaching Real-Time Animation using Unreal. His 15-person class, which spans 14 weeks, is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. “It’s pretty varied,” notes Halsey. “We have students from games and animation and computer science and even architecture. But almost everyone in the class is some kind of gamer. The ‘gamification’ of so many things has changed the way they look at things.”

To gain entry, students present their portfolios to Halsey, who prefers they have some 3D animation experience using software like Maya. “It’s rare that we take first-year undergrads,” he notes. “But one kid who went to a performing-arts high school came with knowledge of Blender. He was able to take the class because of those skills.”

A primary goal for Halsey is to give students a foundation in world-building. “One thing that’s exciting about Unreal is that it empowers the user to become a world-builder. We end up building large landscapes. One student built an environment using photogrammetry assets and did all the character modeling in Unreal.”

Another key focus of the class is on cinematic storytelling and helping students understand the relationship between real-world cameras and the Unreal camera. “Gaming technology is changing how we make movies and how we look at them,” he believes. “When these technologies shifted and changed in the early 2000s, I was surprised at how the film business was slow to embrace game-development methods.”

Because Halsey himself had worked professionally with real-time applications for live events, he came to understand how the workflows differed from more traditional production methods.

“People didn’t understand the pipeline at first,” says Halsey. “Now these worlds are merging, and there’s a diversity of techniques that are being modernized. It’s changing the way we look at production.”

A prime example that Halsey cites is the award-winning HBO show, The Last of Us. “That was choreographed and shot like a first-person video game.” He tells his students in his real-time class that developments coming out of gaming will reinform how we look at filmic language. “And we haven’t even seen the full hybrid experience yet!”

 

VR Thesis Preproduction

Ringling College of Art and Design, Sarasota, Florida

Being able to craft experiences in virtual reality is a goal for an increasing number of students, and Ringling is forging a path for them to reach that goal. The Florida college began acquiring VR headsets for its gaming students in 2016, and by 2018 it had launched a VR major headed by longtime Ringling teacher Martin Murphy. “Our VR major is the only high-tech major that’s also available as a minor,” explains Murphy, who occupies an endowed chair as the department head of virtual reality development.

Murphy also teaches Ringling’s VR Thesis Preproduction, a 14-person class designed for juniors who are beginning to focus on what their senior capstone projects could be. Murphy, who previously oversaw senior thesis productions in gaming, saw the need for a thesis preproduction class in VR. “Students in this class receive an early opportunity to practice the skills they’ll need, and also to learn how to create an idea within a viable scope.” Two of his students are working on a VR driving game that will be fully immersive, he notes.

The school has acquired the new Apple Vision Pro headsets, and students are now delving into mixed reality. “We have students building ‘portals in the air’ and creating hand gestures to navigate those worlds,” he says. Murphy’s department worked with SIGGRAPH last year to create the launcher for the conference’s VR theater, and his students have crafted a ‘digital twin’ of Ringling’s campus. “They’re mastering the skills to get things into a real-time graphics engine like Unreal,” he explains. “The convergence with real-time 3D engines is mind-boggling.”

Murphy thinks students will be motivated by the growing job opportunities arising in very diverse applications for VR. “I’ve had a guest speaker who’s the XR manager at the jet company Gulfstream, and they’re using the technology all across their design and customer configuration process as well as their manufacturing. Walmart has deployed 18,000 headsets in its training programs, and the technology is being used for things you wouldn’t expect, like the Veterans Administration’s use of VR in mental health programs. I love games, but I’m really excited about all the enterprise applications of VR.”

Ringling’s endowed VR chair was initially funded by health professionals, and Murphy’s students have also worked with the Moffitt Cancer Center to create VR experiences that prepare anxious patients for stressful procedures. “VR isn’t just for entertainment anymore,” he says.

 

Production Resources

School of Visual Arts, New York City

Opening students’ eyes to the professional world beyond the classroom is a driving force behind SVA’s Production Resources class. This required course places third-year students in conversation with a wide range of pros, who share their experiences working with technologies such as Nuke, Unreal and LED volumes. Many of the speakers are SVA alumni who’ve landed jobs at companies like Pixar, The Mill, Insomniac, Riot Games and The Foundry.

“We cast a wide net,” says Joseph Mulvanerty, who is overseeing the class for a second time alongside SVA teacher Richard Hagen. Mulvanerty, who has worked professionally doing “invisible visual effects” for films like Still Alice, explains, “We take a broad view of a pipeline. The idea is to step back and look at the tools in production pipelines as a whole and to humanize the process by using an interview format.” This hourlong class is structured as “A Friday Afternoon Conversation,” he explains. “We don’t want it to feel like a lecture hall with a prepackaged, ‘Here comes the PowerPoint’ presentation.’”

Depending upon the size of the junior class each semester, the class could include between 50 to 80 students. It’s run like a livestream, so students can log in from wherever they happen to be. They can jump online to comment in a chat forum or turn on their microphones to ask questions. Or they can choose just to listen. “This is their conversation,” says Mulvanerty, who adds that some of the pros share their contact information so students can follow up with them in the future.

A valuable aspect of the class, Mulvanerty believes, “is showing students that people working in the field are also facing the influx of new tools. That never ends, even for professional people working in studios which are adopting new processes they’ll have to learn. And that’s OK.”

Questions raised by students are often provocative, and Mulvanerty cites as an example their conversation with people from The Foundry, marketer of Nuke. “There are lots of tools with Nuke that are neural network-based — trained on artist data,” he says. “The students could raise ethical questions about that, and nobody shied away from answering!”

 

Animated Capstone Film Production

Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, Georgia

The “capstone” of an animation education at SCAD is, literally, a capstone film made in a student’s senior year. The fall semester is preproduction; the winter is production and the spring is devoted to postproduction. “The students have deliverables they have to hit each quarter,” says teacher John Webber, a SCAD professor since 2008 and associate chair of animation since 2017.

Webber describes this 20-student production class as “intense.” He says, “We have a process where they pitch ideas for us to greenlight. At around Week 6, everyone must make a five-minute pitch of an idea for a three-minute film. Not one second over.” Then everybody votes on the two films that will be made by groups of 10. “We find that quality rises to the top.” (Although, he adds with a laugh, “Maybe we’ll have just one cat film this year?”)

As a Disney character animator for 10 years, Webber amassed credits that include Pocahontas, Mulan, Hercules and Lilo & Stitch. “I was working around giants and trying to keep up,” he recalls. So, he knows the stress of creative competition firsthand.

Webber notes that students make small individual films along the way to their senior capstone project, but the drama begins when they must organize themselves into collaborative teams. Each student presents a PowerPoint that demonstrates their strongest work. “There’s always somebody who’s a fantastic compositor or lighter. Some are great using Blender, or they can program a bit. They have a week to recruit 10 people. They can’t just choose their friends. They have to find people with the right skill sets. It’s a scramble. Not every artist is great with every aspect of the pipeline, even at Disney.”

As the process unfolds, Webber has noticed that “students start training each other. Collaboration is huge.” When the process works well, as it did for the capstone class last year that produced the film, The Sun Is Bad. Webber believes it provides students with a mirror of what the industry is like. “The closer we can get to a studio model, the better,” he says.

Webber’s students are keenly aware of how important this film is to their chances of attracting job recruiters. “There’s so much competition today that you can be a jack of all trades, but you’d better be a master at something!” adds Webber.

 

Professional Prep: Industry Skills

California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California

Launching students from school to work is a challenge taken seriously at CalArts, where Professional Prep is a required course. Although recruiters have long been drawn to seeing student work at the college’s famed Producers’ Show, preparing the students to face the scrutiny of professionals is the focus of Dawn Yamazi, who’s taught at CalArts for over seven years. “It’s professional prep, so we’re talking business and getting ready for job interviews.”

“I teach third-year students,” she explains. “In their first two years, students are working on their craft. Their third year is when they start thinking about their professional ambitions. Most of them are focused on feature film work, so I highlight some of the trends that are happening.”

Of the 40 students in Yamazi’s current class, there probably isn’t a single one who’s unaware that Pixar’s “brain trust” began at CalArts, but today the waves of change have created a different professional landscape. As Yamazi observes, “The evolution of the industry is a reality they need to understand. Several companies that were steppingstones for some graduates have dissolved over the past few years, like JibJab. Even four years ago, no one would have said they wanted to work at Netflix. Today, it’s a top choice.”

Another change is the influence of social media. “I noticed that pre-pandemic, my students knew everything. They didn’t know why they needed to be in my class. They had so much information from the web. But I think the pandemic did make a change. They’re eager to hear about the business today, because what they’re going into is very different.”

Yamazi sees today’s students as “internet savants,” and she gets them to focus on their social media presence. “What they’ve done with their Instagram or LinkedIn accounts prior to this moment may not be appropriate for the future,” she says.

In a collaborative field like animation, the ability to “play well with others” remains crucial, and Yamazi uses role-playing exercises to prep her students for the crucial interviews that lie ahead. “This industry is not very big. The person you’re sitting next to may be your boss in the future, or the person who gets you a job…or who beats you to a job! So don’t be a jerk. Even though there are brilliant jerks in our industry, don’t be one of them!”

 

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Animation Magazine‘s 2024 School & Career Guide is included with the April ’24 issue and will be available supplementally at select trade shows and festivals throughout the year.