SAN DIEGO - If you run a curriculum for a school for DCC
professionals, you would naturally be quite interested in knowing what the top
Hollywood studios were looking for in the way of hireable, trained talent. Same
if you were a student. From DreamWorks Animation's perspective it behooves them
to make sure that the top schools are training young talent in disciplines that
they want and need at their studios.
Hence the DreamWorks Educational Symposium, held for the
fourth consecutive year at SIGGRAPH and aimed at a roomful of educators and
trainers from around the country. DreamWorks brought out an array of
specialists during a three-hour conference that covered a wide spectrum of
animation issues, including creating CG films in "3D" - stereoscopic CG that is. (This is the
next big thing for animated films and, in the future, DreamWorks plans to
release its features in stereoscopic, with all the monumental additional
rendering that entails.)
John Tarnoff and Marilyn Friedman, two DreamWorks stalwarts
who have spent years on the mission of making sure schools are properly
preparing students for professional CG content creation, presented at the
SIGGRAPH symposium. Friedman says that DreamWorks and the various schools
"are in touch all the time; we're on the road, presenting, critiquing and
telling the schools 'This is what we're looking for.'" Tarnoff says that
DreamWorks' educational outreach program is an "ongoing dialogue - stuff
happens - we change, the world changes, and we want to be a part of all
that."
Mike Scroggins, director, computer animation labs, at
CalArts attended the symposium and says, "There's been a big change in how
films are made." At CalArts the emphasis is on a soup-to-nuts curriculum
that emphasizes everything from drawing and maquette-making to, ultimately,
rigging CG characters and more.
Michael Hosenfeld, a professor at the Center for Advanced
Digital Applications at NYU, concurs. He says that the industry has grown so
complex and has such diverse needs that it's important that today's students
show interest in various career paths in the CG world. That is, not everybody
is going to become an animation director. "It's a pyramid," as
Tarnoff puts it, and not everyone winds up at the tippy top, so be prepared to
master a craft in any of the wide array of CG disciplines.
Shelley Page, a London-based DreamWorks employee in charge
of education outreach, says that students in Europe, especially France and
Germany, are turning out very sophisticated work that's finding success in
unexpected places. One student's short film was accepted by a European TV
network as a pilot for a series. Another she describes as a student-made ride
animation that went on to be used at a Japanese theme park.
Tarnoff says that a big reason DreamWorks has been
conducting continuing outreach is that the "bar" of quality keeps
being raised and potential new hires should know how high that bar is at
DreamWorks. Friedman adds that today's young people grow up surrounded by
technology and they are not intimidated by new technology. CalArts' Scroggins
says students should be able to write their own filter, but stresses that his
program is focused more art than technology.
NYU's Hosenfeld notes that a younger student's parents also
have a stake in their son's or daughter's desirability to the CG industry as a
graduate. A studio like DreamWorks, he says, emphasizes talent and a good
school sets that talented applicant up for the hire. Tarnoff says that about 15
percent of new hires are newly graduated from schools. Although not all can be
animation directors, if they are talented, "they will find a path into the
industry; there are multiple paths."