Oh, hey, there you are. Been expecting you. My name is Sean, I lead the freshmen studies here at Academy of Art University’s School of Animation and Visual Effects. Probably the best way of us doing this is letting the work speak for itself.

This is our storyboard lab and this is open access to our students. As 2D artist’s, story development and storyboarding can lead to amazing opportunities in the industry.

Did someone say 2D?

We are in one of our many Cintic labs here on campus. We use this to do both digital hand drawn and 2D cut out puppet animation techniques. One of the projects that we did here is called The Ribbon.

Hi, I’m a producer of Thurbon, we get to get traditional animation, which is hand drawn, is very, very beautiful film.

We worked on lots of amazing artists and I really glad that we actually finished this bill and brought this to the big screen.

I’m about to take you into our main 3D animation lab. Our facilities are second to none. These computers are updated constantly. More importantly, it gives you guys, as the artist, the creative freedom to actually realize your vision. That’s what makes the animation so good.

I came in not really knowing much about any of this. Academy of Art really helped me realize the potential that I had and never in a million years would have guessed that I would be able to produce something like this. The teachers here were really helpful. They got to know me in the way that I learned and the way that I worked.

I’m the director, producer, writer for the student short film “Monsters in the Dark.” This was the first time I was director and management at the same time, which is… Oh boy! It’s a doozy, but it was well worth it.

The fun part about this project was they gave us freedom to do what we had to do and really trusting us to get it done ourselves. It felt like the industry where they truly said it’s yours, you ride or die with this thing.

This is a typical animation classroom where we work on projects. Everybody is giving critique. Everybody is giving advice. [cartoon character] “It looks like we got ourselves a customer.”[End cartoon character]

The students are working on actual commercial projects, and each and every student has a vital contribution. Take a look.

This is filmed in Tokyo. It’s a music video. It’s a type of trend where you have a person dancing and acting like nothing’s going on. And then everything goes crazy in the background being here.

Yang’s the lead, she’s the compositor, she did all of these elements, put them together, worked copiously and making sure that everything looks as if it should be there. How many students worked on this? About 30. At least. It’s all communication. That’s really a producer’s job, is to make sure that communication is clear and that everyone’s getting done what needs to get done according to a supervisor and a client’s notes.

Your faculty at the Academy of Art University School of Animation are dedicated to giving you a world class education and an industry standard portfolio. And I think looking at our alumni’s work, it’s proof of our success.

This is one of our stop motion labs.

[interacting with students] How many puppets are you guys building right now? This is all for one puppet. May I look at the detailing on these? Look at that.

And this is it, where we take the very best student work from every school and then we invite the industry to come and see your work.

If you are determined and you are ready to pursue whatever dream that you have, it’s an open canvas because once you come in, you kind of will create your own success.

You want lifelong friends. And if you want an artistic community who who knows what they want, then I would recommend the Academy of Art. If you’d like to know more, visit us here [displays website URL: academyart.edu]