<p>ive looked for gnomon and vfs but they are way too expensive plz tell me apart from these two universities…
waiting for ur guys reply
SOS</p>
<p>I just had a meeting with a friend who has been in the animation business for quite a while. She recommended that following universities and/or online programs,which are presented in NO PARTICULAR ORDER:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Ringling, 4 year leading to BFA. Very good for 3D animation,but not as good for 2d. Also EXPENSIVE,with little scholarships available. It has tough admission standards and is probably among the toughest animation programs to get into.</p></li>
<li><p>AAU ( Academy of Art University): Has lots of animation concentrations and focuses on traditional art too. Although not as expensive as Ringling, living is San Francisco can make them equivilent financially. However, it is located near a lot of studios.Her only qualm aboiut it is that they take everyone who has a pulse,but does flunk out the less qualified.</p></li>
<li><p>SCAD ( Savannah College of Art and Desig), not that expensive and can offer some good scholarship. However, located in Savannah,which isni’t near any studios.She didn’t feel that they had tough admission standards</p></li>
<li><p>Laguna College of Art and Design, 4 year program that is small and repudably good; however, my contact didn’t know much about the school. Not a cheap school</p></li>
<li><p>Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. Similar to Laguna but even smaller. Admission standards are about equal to that of AAU.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>6,School of Visual Arts in NY (SVA) leeds to a fouir year degree. It has a good reputation in the animation field. Not that expensive tuition wise,but living in NYC more than makes up for that. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>RIT: Seems to have a good program,but my contact knows little about the school other than it offers a four year program and even a masters. They have tough admission standards.</p></li>
<li><p>CalArts, This leads to a four year program and is widely considered one of the better programs in 2D animation, They are not considered as strong as the other schools mentioned here in 3D animation however, Be advised of that. Their admission standards rival that of Ringling and RIT.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>9.Rhode Island School of Design has a four year undergrad only program in animation. It supposedly is pretty good according to my contact ,but is NOT considered to be as good as SCAD, Ringling, SVA, or even Gnomon or Animation mentor. They have very tough admission standards</p>
<p>10 Digipen in Redmonds Washington,which isn’t cheap but does lead to a four year degree and is well respected in the industry specifically for game design.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>University of Colorado at Denver’s Digital Arts Center,which leads to a four year degree and isn’t cheap. They have fairly tough admission standards,but less than that of Ringling, Calarts, RIT and RISD</p></li>
<li><p>Purdue University and Indiana University in Indianapolis both produce four year degrees. Not much known about these programs. </p></li>
<li><p>Pratt University; They have a four year program. Although not cheap, they do give a lot of scholarships out. Don’t know about admission standards for their program,but seems to be fairly tough.</p></li>
<li><p>Gnomon School of Visual Effects: This is a certificate program and doesn’t offer a bachelors degree. Thus, it is a trade school. However, it is considered one of the better programs in the US for getting a very broad-based grounding in all areas of animation taught by industry experts. It has a one year program ( entertainment design) that focuses on fundamental skils such as life drawing , for those that have a weak background in those areas, and has a two year Computer graphics program that cover a wide swath of the animation pipeline. In fact, it is considered the best trade school for leaning a broad based of skills that deal with the full animation pipline from animation, modeling, lighting, shading, texturing, concept art etc. They even have online training and workshops. However, their weakness is that they don’t cover any one area in great depth as with animation mentor. Open admission standards since they are an animation trade school.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Cost isn’t cheap, although it is much cheaper than attending a four year program at a school like Ringling. For example, MAYA intensive is $9,300 and their two year, computer graphics program runs about $45,000. These high costs might be due , in part, to having very small, classes. My daughter, who is taking the MAYA fast track program in the summer, has five kids in her class!</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Animation Mentor: An online program that costs about $17,000 for 17 months of training. Widely considered the best online programs; in fact , one of the best trade schools for teaching solely character animation. However, it’s weakness is that it does teach any other aspect of the animation pipeline such as shading, modeling, rigging, texturing, lighting etc. Thus, you really have to know that you want solely character animation to benefit from this school. In addition, this is solely an online program. Thus, you will get some input for industry professionals, if you want or need a teacher to be there and critique your work in person, you won’t get that,which seems like a weakness in the program. Thus, it isn’t for everyone. OPen admission standards since they are a trade school.</p></li>
<li><p>GOBELINS in France. This is supposedly a killer school for animation that produces strong work. However, it is hard to get into and you must be fluent in French! Also supposedly very tough to get admissed to.</p></li>
<li><p>CMU ( Carnegie Mellon) has a two year graduae program in Entertainment Design. It is expensive and don’t know much about it. Touigh admission standards.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>There are other schools in the US that also repudably have decent animation programs such as San Jose State University, Cal State Fullerton, Cal State Northridge, University of South Dakota,East Tennessee State University, Central Florida University etc. However, these all are considered lessor tiered schools for animation.</p>
<p>There is also an interesting program offered by Max the Mutt in Toronto Canada that leads to an accredited three year diploma in mostly 2d animation that focuses on tradition skills. It is only $10,000 per year. They also provide a diploma which is better than a certificate but not as good as a degree.</p>
<p>I would suggest that doing a search for computer graphics forums would lead you to finding a number of other schools that offer animation in both the US and Europe.</p>
<p>Lastly, let me note that my contact did NOT recommend any schools in NY because she felt that most of the top animators are in the west coast and specifically in California. How true this is, I don’t know.</p>
<p>There are also some Canadian School that are repudably good, but my contact knew little about them. They are Sheridan College and Vancouver Film School.</p>
<p>Lastly, my contact did feel that if a student goes to a decent school, although not necessarily an industry leader, they can do well IF they have a lot of motivation, drive and talent. </p>
<p>Hope this all helps. As you can see, I did a LOT of research in this area.</p>
<p>taxguy: i think one of the reasons why your contact thot that the better animators tend to be in the west coast is just cause the industry is heavily concentrated in that area. </p>
<p>Also as advise some of these schools have different tracks for their animation program. Ringling makes you spend a year of foundation before getting into the actual animation program(happens in most art schools). San Jose wants 2 years before you can major in animation(which is probably the case for most regular colleges that offer animation).</p>
<p>SCAD offers lots of scholarships, more if you have good grades and does not require a portfolio but that will probably give you merit scholarship too. There program is decent however very far away from all the action.</p>
<p>GOBELIN is my personal dream. If you go to their website and see any of their animations you’ll see why. One of the reasons why their work is so superior to american student work is because they work in teams while schools like Ringling and CalArts works solo. However unlike CalArts(best in 2d, sorely lacking in 3d) and Ringling(one of the best in 3d, lacking in 2d… though that’s cause they are a COMPUTER animation major) Gobelin has the best of both worlds excelling in 2d and 3d. Gobelin also has a student exchange program with CalArts and also offers summer programs for quite a pretty penny.</p>
<p>Although if you look at the student work coming out internationally, America is lagging behind Europe. If you guys ever watch Siggraph, it is just amazing what the European schools produce compared to the … 2 shorts american students produced(Ringling and SVA for Siggraph '08).</p>
<p>hey! i am a chinese college student.i wanna go to US to study animation…how can i do???</p>
<p>TaxGuy, Thank you very much. I fully agree with you on this: (quote) As you can see, I did a LOT of research in this area (unquote).</p>
<p>If you are looking for graduate programs, I wanted to add a few to my list that my contact forgot to mention:</p>
<ol>
<li>Texas A and M has a graduate program that leads to both a MA degree and even a PHD is visualization that focuses on computer graphics. See [::Department</a> of Visualization at Texas A&M University::](<a href=“http://www-viz.tamu.edu/]::Department”>http://www-viz.tamu.edu/)
MY contact didn’t know much about it.</li>
<li><p>Ohio State supposedly has a decent program as part of their ACCAD (Advanced Computing Center for their Arts and Design). I don’t know how good it is.</p></li>
<li><p>If you want to go to school in UK, there is one school that is widely considered to be one of the best in the world and especially in the UK: Bournemouth University. It has supposedly a strong graduate program in 3d animation and visual effects. See <a href=“http://media.bournemouth.ac.uk/postgraduate.html[/url]”>http://media.bournemouth.ac.uk/postgraduate.html</a>
Compared to their American Counterparts, it is fairly inexpensive.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>In the US, other good schools that offer masters in animation are:</p>
<ol>
<li>SVA ( considered quite good but limited contacts to mostly NY)</li>
<li>Pratt Institute ( computer arts program considered good,but limited contacts to NY)</li>
<li>RIT ( my contact didn’t know enough about them)</li>
<li>USC (considered good and has a strong film school that has great facilities</li>
<li>UCLA: considered good,but facilities seem a bit worn out.</li>
<li>Academy of Art University in San Francisco: open admission for the most part. My contact felt that they had a decent reputation in animation.</li>
<li>SCAD: open admission for the most part and supposedly decent program.</li>
<li>Check out Seneca College in Canada too.</li>
</ol>
<p>hi i am looking for some cheap animation schools at canada.
wondering if someone could help me</p>
<p>Tentrin, the cheapest animation school that also has a great reputation is Max the Mutt in Toronto. It is about $10K per year in tuition and is a four year program.</p>
<p>thanks taxguy,
now max the mutt is on my list but i would like to have options
actually i dont care about the reputation but it got to be cheap</p>
<p>Does anyone have any feedback about CCA’s art/animation programs?</p>
<p>
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<p>Because RISD’s program is an undergraduate program, is it more likely to receive any form of financial aid (loan or scholarship) from the school if your family is not rich (say < 80K annual income) if you are admitted?</p>
<p>Although RISD will give some need based aid, they really aren’t well known for that. Don’t expect much aid from them.</p>
<p>Well i go to SCAD currently and my major is animation… so do u think that it leaves u unprepared?</p>
<p>tax guy,
In your previous post you mentioned the USC animation major in the School of Cinematic Arts. A new addition to SCA is in the planning stages. It will be a $50 million dollar facility with the latest technology and state of the art equipment. </p>
<p>An interesting new major which may interest creative students is a BA in Performing & Visual Arts Studio. It is under the Thornton School of Music, but is an interdisciplinary program involving the School of Threatre, School of Cinematic Arts and the Thornton School of Music.</p>
<p>hi all, i have completed my B. Arch. (Architecture) degree, and wanted to do Masters in animation, i am looking forward to start my studies in January 2011.
i have gone through the reply of related post but most of them are not offering Masters degree. I have my portfolio ready, just looking for the best University for the same. any suggestion will help me.</p>
<p>Thankx</p>
1 Like
<p>If this person wants to do traditional to modern animation and work at Pixar then would want to do his first two years at De Anza first and do an intern at Pixar. They could go to Expressions but they would learn MUCH more and pay MUCH less at De Anza. If at that point wants to stay in California they want to go to CalArts or Laguna which are located in so cal not the Bay Area where Pixar is based. If wanted to move to Canada then VFS has the best animation students and program in N. America but does cost 50k a year though.</p>
<p>" De Anza Animation Program was listed as one of the top 15 classic-degreed animation programs in the country, according to Animation Magazine. Also ranked in the same list were programs at New York University, UCLA and USC."</p>
<p>I have lived and worked throughout colleges in NYC and California for years and De Anza’s Animation program is by far the best for a student starting out. If a student wants to spend the big bucks to learn Maya or After Effects they could take classes anywhere and it wouldn’t make an ounce of difference. If they want the best mix of classic (actually drawing!) animation, history of animation, and cutting edge technology De Anza (1 block from Apple) is the best choice. The snabs can sit here an pump overpriced design schools all they want but rarely do I see such people working in the industry here in California.</p>
<p>FYI. This is a mega list of Digital Media programs, some undergrad, some masters programs compiled by a dedicated person at Purdue.</p>
<p>[Untitled</a> Document](<a href=“http://www.iupui.edu/~j21099/nmschools.html]Untitled”>http://www.iupui.edu/~j21099/nmschools.html)</p>
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<p>San Jose State University’s program isn’t lesser tiered and isn’t on the same level of the other public schools you listed. It’s the top animation/illustration program in a public school and it’s one of the best schools for a/i in the U.S. They only let students take upper division courses after passing a portfolio review. Speakers and recruiters from major studios often visit SJSU because it has a reputation for turning out great animators. For about $5k/year SJSU is a bargain compared to private schools. There’s not a lot of program classes (maya, zbrush, etc.) but you can easily learn a program from a book anyway. SJSU’s goal (and what they’re known for) is to have skilled and humble animators/illustrators, so they will straight up tell you everything that’s wrong with what you did with no sugar coating. I just transferred this semester, but I hear that As are next to impossible in most of these classes and in some a B+ is the A. The teachers are great, but they really could care less for your ego. Another advantage to SJSU is that they aren’t an art school, so you can take and they recommend/require English classes that focus on storytelling, acting classes, script analyzing and writing classes, film classes, lighting and stage design classes, and even a physics for animators class. It may not be #1 or have any “wow” factor, but it is a great school and graduates get internships and jobs at major studios.</p>
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<p>CalArts doesn’t except transfers. If you want to transfer from a CC to CalArts you’ll have to start off as a freshman.</p>
<p>good to note. I wouldn’t go to CalArts for animation anyways and would just go to a Canadian animation/film/art college any day over any US one. If I was to stay local I’d go to SJSU for animation but just don’t like the way they run the school nor a fan of Man Jose. I think Foothill-De Anza is a much better school than SJSU but do admit the Engineering, Meteorology and the Art departments at SJSU are by far the only interesting and quality programs that SJSU offers while the rest is stale Sillycon Valley corporate BS.</p>
<p>ok… anyone out there want to weigh in about the animation program at California College of the Arts?</p>