I’m apologizing beforehand for the heavy reading, I hope you guys still read it! I’ve narrowed my options down to Pratt, SCAD, and SVA. Does anyone have kids or are themselves planning on going to one of these three schools? For all three schools I’ve applied for the Animation program, specifically 2D.
After doing a lot of my own research this is what my general idea of the schools are… Are any of these incorrect? I’m having a really hard time choosing where to go in the Fall, but am leaning towards either Pratt or SVA.
Pratt:
Great overall reputation, one of the most well known art schools in America.
Actually has a big campus
Haven’t really heard much about their Animation program, not really any notable Animation alumni?
SVA:
Great reputation for Animation department
Rather easy to get into, a bit of a profit school.
Teachers aren’t really in touch with current industry
No campus
SCAD:
Great overall reputation
Savannah is a dangerous place to live in (?)
Very sequestered from major industry in terms of location.
Also a little side digression… I just read a bunch of “Art School Admission 2018” posts and just wanted to say, as a high school senior planning on going into Animation, it was really awesome seeing so many invested and supportive parents on these forums.
I know many art students including myself whose parents are not so supportive; I’m sure your kids feel very grateful.
@ddwang good luck in your decision. As a parent of a theatre kid who is pursuing her dreams by studying that in college, it’s not always easy to be supportive of a child chasing their dreams to make a living in any kind of the arts. But follow your passion and work hard and I’m sure your parents will come around when they see how happy you are! I don’t know anything about any of your mentioned schools except SCAD-we also felt that living in Savannah was a little scary for our daughter and we crossed it off of her list. She attends a small Christian school in Nashville TN called Lipscomb University. Great campus and great place to live. They do have a wonderful animation department, their artist in residence is Tom Bancroft who worked for Disney animation for over 12 years.
While Pratt has a reputation well est. in areas like illustration, it does have an almost equally poor reputation for lack of structured curriculum and guidance. I’ve seen student work from Pratt (third year) and it is fairly questionable. Principles of animation are almost non existent, and for a third year, that’s concerning. SVA has a much more established rep and courses (they even offer a class on pitching an animation to the industry). With that in comparison to SCAD, SVA animation faculty isn’t quite as up to par. (the SVA film chair directed an indie erotica film; SCAD animation chairs come from Dreamworks. Take your pick.) A con of SCAD is fundamental courses that are seemingly useless for your field, but if you’re content with that it should be fine. But SCAD doesn’t only focus on 2D; by your third year you will be learning traditional, stop motion, and computer animation–> then go on to pick your medium of choice to make your thesis film. So if you only want to focus on 2D exclusively, then SVA sounds fitting, as that will be all they focus on. Their 3D curriculum is a seperate major.
(I’m also currently weighing anim schools, so I feel ya) good luck!
Just my 0.2 cents, though I don’t know much about the animation major per se (as I have an Illustration/Sequential Arts kid), but we did spend a lot of time visiting SCAD and my daughter did pre-college there 2 summers ago, and the feeling I got from them was that they were very strong in animation, and very tied to the industry. It seems like there’s always someone there from Disney or Pixar speaking to students, and I remember some crazy statistic like 20 SCAD grads worked on the Disney film FROZEN. And while safety is a minor concern about SCAD, I don’t think it’s cause for alarm, certainly not any more than any other school located in a city setting (though I live in NYC, and I do think NYC is probably the safest location of all of them!). The SCAD bus gets you from place to place, the main dorm areas were very “campus-y” and my daughter never felt unsafe (but knows to use common sense, as always). Trust me, I’m WAY more worried about sending her off to Baltimore (it’s looking like she’s going to choose MICA!).
All that said, I’ll also second what @shasuperzam said above–as this is one of the reasons my daughter is not choosing SCAD–the foundation year curriculum seemed very intense and very broad, meaning she was going to spend a lot of freshman year taking fundamental classes like sculpture and painting, which she has absolutely NO interest in. Another disclaimer: at this point, we did our tour/admissions session a long time ago, and this might have changed (MICA’s freshman foundation year program did change in the time between our tour and now, when she’s been accepted), so I would definitely look into this if it’s a concern of yours.
I am not sure where you got the idea that SVA faculty, " Teachers aren’t really in touch with current industry"
This is NOT true. All faculty, at least in animation, must be current working professionals in the industry. There are a number of faculty members who are with Blue Sky studios. I have a child who got a job with a studio through the contacts with some of her faculty. SVA is very connected and well known and is always ranked in the top 5-10 schools in the nation in animation. Also, SVA students have won a LOT of animation awards including several student academy awards. They win annually many major festival awards too.
Pratt has a good program too. However, they tend to be more artsy and less commercially oriented than that of SVA. I can’t speak about SCAD since I don’t know much about their program.
Do a search for older posts. There is a LOT of in information on many of the top animation programs…
