<p>Hello, I'm interested in pursuing animation as a career. I'm interested in working at dreamworks, disney, or pixar. Or possibly a video game company in the u.s. or in Japan. </p>
<p>I heard that Cal arts is good but I'm not sure if learning just 2d animation is good for the job market. They do some 3d but not a lot. </p>
<p>I heard good news about SCAD but their curriculum looks weak.</p>
<p>Please jot down any thoughts about this. What about Gnomon? </p>
<p>What college is best for getting hired for work? </p>
<p>Thank you. ANY help is appreciated.</p>
<p>LMU’s School of Film and TV has an excellent animation program. It’s received a lot of $$$ recently and has state-of-the-art facilities. They have an excellent and aggressive internship office that gets the students into all the top companies. Same with job placement after graduation. My youngest DD was admitted EA and spent a day last week shadowing one of the animation students, attending classes, labs, meeting professors, etc. She was bowled over. All of them said, “You’ve already been admitted? Just come!” </p>
<p>laplatinum - did your D get significant financial aid? The tuition at LMU is pretty prohibitive. Do you think the animation program is comparable to CalArts/Laguna? Was your D accepted at either of those? Just starting to look into this stuff for my D who is a junior and looking mostly on the East Coast, though her dream is to work at Pixar or Disney. </p>
<p>My son is studying animation at LCAD, Laguna College of Art + Design. It’s a small jewel of a program, modeled after the Disney/CalArts approach of intensive foundational work (draw, draw, draw) and one-on-one mentoring. He’s studying under energetic, brilliant Disney animators and loves it–he’s really being challenged. LCAD is surprisingly affordable for a private art college and has strong ties to the industry, with successful internship and job placement. My son wanted an intensive foundation in fundamentals and he’s getting it at LCAD. Background: Son was accepted at USC SCA, LMU, and Chapman Dodge. He went to Chapman, had a great year, but felt the drawing foundation wasn’t intensive enough. So he left a giant scholarship at Chapman to hop over to an art-school based program. LCAD awarded him a generous scholarship, too, and all is well. Son has no regrets and is getting the hardcore, all-out animation training he wanted in an extremely creative, stimulating environment. LCAD is a hidden jewel among animation schools. There’s very little about LCAD on CC…now that I’m back here after a hiatus, I may start a thread so others can learn more about the program. :)</p>
<p>Thanks for that info @gladiatorbird! My daughter just added that to her list. It looks like a great program! Glad to hear about the aid - all the schools with good animation programs are SO EXPENSIVE! Which I guess is common knowledge, but she’s a junior this year so we’re just starting to look at all this in earnest. It’s hard to find many “safety schools” for animation. Our state schools don’t have good programs, and the private OOS ones are just so over-the-moon pricey. And difficult to get into. Between the high cost and the low acceptance rates, I’m already starting to bite my nails! </p>
<p>Good luck to your daughter!
Here’s an example of what the students at LCAD get up to. Two LCAD seniors (Gabe and Alex) were lead animators in a collaboration with John K. (creator of Ren & Stimpy) on Miley Cyrus’ new music video. The project contained lots of animation with a very quick turnaround to be ready for Miley’s opening date in Canada. You can see and read about it on the Laguna College of Art and Design FB page (or John K’s blog). </p>
<p>LCAD ANIMATION STUDENTS ARE LEAD ANIMATORS ON BANGERZ BY Miley Cyrus
From John Kricfalusi
“Gabe Del Valle and Alex Salyer were my main animators on the video. They did some wonderfully wacky scenes and also trained and supervised a bunch of students to assist them at LCAD. Thanks also to Dave Kuhn for helping set it all up.”</p>
<p><a href=“John K Stuff: Miley's Bangerz”>http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2014/02/mileys-bangerz.html</a></p>
<p>Whoa! SO COOL! That one is definitely moving up on the wish list! I’m really impressed with what I’ve seen about LCAD so far. And my D likes the size of the school/town. Sort of like LA-lite, LOL. I think for us, like so many people, it’s going to come down to cost. We should (Hopefully? Maybe?) qualify for a decent amount of need-based aid, and D is a high-performing student so hopefully merit-based will factor into it too. This is all so nerve-wracking, and she’s still just a junior!</p>
<p>HonestMom, yes, my daughter got significant FA with her acceptance to LMU. She did not apply to CalArts, Laguna, RISD, or any other program that did not offer a liberal arts education in addition to the animation focus. She believes that she needs a well-rounded education that includes courses in a lot of fields. Several LMU alums worked on Frozen, which just got the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. LMU’s animation program emphasizes art classes w/in SFTV and also those taken in the art department. You likely understand that with animation, everything is in service of the story, so they encourage English classes for both the study of literature and composition. Whatever direction your daughter chooses, I strongly recommend visits to the programs and spending time with students, faculty, and the facilities. Here’s SFTV’s link: <a href=“http://sftv.lmu.edu/”>http://sftv.lmu.edu/</a> </p>
<p>LMU’s program is all-kinds of awesome and, as laplatinum notes, story-telling is definitely the foundation of good animation. </p>
<p>It’s funny how our son’s path unfolded. He came out of HS VERY strong in academic areas–he’s a voracious reader of history and literature, brilliant in the sciences, etc., 2300 SAT. He is a natural intellect and a gifted writer and story-teller. He did not pursue much technical art education in HS, however, and so felt relatively weak in foundational drawing skills. Full immersion in an arts-based animation program (LCAD) turned out to be MORE challenging than a university and, for him, the better choice to developn the skills he needed. So, ironically, our academically-minded son realized the best path to animation was an art school, even though he applied to none, initially, and was <em>certain</em> that he wanted a university-based program. </p>
<p>Storytelling is foundational at LCAD, as it is in all good animation programs. And LMU’s program is really exciting–there’s a lot of great stuff happening there! For a student who wants a full university, it’s a great choice. </p>
<p>We learned that it’s not always entirely clear what a college-bound, aspiring animator needs or wants going in. But it becomes clear soon enough. :)</p>