Welcome to a 13-part special series for Alumni Live: The Podcast.

These are conversations with Grand Valley State University film and

video students, faculty, and alumni about the film and video major.

So animation is something that Grand Valley offers and animation

itself has so many sub-genres.

Julie, can you kind of walk me through animation and what

that means at Grand Valley?

So in our animation one class, you can think of it as an animation sampler.

Um, you work with a range of media from, we start with stop motion, which can be

animating clay or objects in your scene.

And then we move to drawn animation and we are doing animated gifs to start.

And then we move into rotoscoping, which is using live action

footage as a reference.

And, uh, it's a great thing for filmmakers who don't have

a background in illustration.

A lot of people think that you need to be able to draw to animate and,

you know, drawing is definitely a skill that you want to have.

Observation skills are important too.

But there is an entry point for everyone.

And then we also do a lot of computer animation.

That's my specialization.

I've been working with computer animation before Pixar even came out with a film,

uh, feature film, before Toy Story.

We do a computer animation in Maya and, um, in animation two, we

work with pre-rigged characters.

So people are animating characters as if they were puppets, which

is an entry point for animators.

And in a animated environment, there's a lot of things that have to do with

setting up a scene and setting up a set.

So what people learn in lighting translate, and cameras translates

into animation very much so.

And then I bridge a lot of animation skillsets into new media as well.

So we work again with 3d characters.

I have, I teach a concept called virtual cinematography, which is really working

within that 3d interface, um, with cameras and focal lengths and lenses, uh, lights,

omni-directional lights, spotlights, in order to sort of bridge what we do in the

field with what we do in a virtual space.

So I'm really trying to get away from the concept of animation as cartoons, even

though, you know, to Saturday morning.

And I love Saturday, will always love Saturday morning cartoons and

Warner Brothers and things like that.

But, animation is such a big part of our way that we communicate now.

It's sort of like our contemporary hieroglyphs are in motion with animation.

So the tool sets are expansive, we have what are called Cintiq tablets.

It's a Wacom Cintiq tablet, which is an interactive interface, so some of you out

there might actually draw with a tablet when you're working on the computer.

These tablets that we have sort of take it to the next level and they're, uh,

an extension of your screen themselves.

So we try to get industry tools into your hands.

So you can, again, try lots of different techniques and really explore the

possibilities of animation as an, an extension of a documentary film, for

example, or a fiction film to illustrate something, again, with visualize

something that can't be seen or, you know, visualizing information in general.

There's a lot of careers in animation that range from forensic visualization

to medical visualization, to just like I said in general are the sort

of platforms that we communicate on, whether it's advertising, or,

you know, just general storytelling.

Animation's becoming a tool set that also gets hybridized with live action.

So I also do introduce a little bit of visual effects, which we're now expanding

into our new media-- into our lab class, which is when students take new media--

or take media two, which is the basic production course, they have a lab

where they learn about post-production techniques, and I'm honored to be part

of developing the curriculum for that.

So we want to expand on skills with programs like After Effects, uh, where

students really begin to understand 3d cameras and how to combine

computer generated assets with live action footage in a seamless way.

these really are all the skills and tools that are being used, you know,

like you said, from Pixar to the medical field, to, you know, imaging and, and

special effects and things like that.

But I have a feeling that there are also some tools that, you know, if, if

a high school student is watching right now, they might even have access to.

Do you have any, you know, quick tips, uh, in you know, maybe a minute

or so about how students can just kind of get started on their own?

Yeah, so, well, there's a ton of stop motion apps out there, Stop

Motion Studio and things that you can put on your iPad or on your phone.

And, um, again, you want to secure your device to something so it's not moving

around, like your camera on a tripod, and then you can start shooting stop motion.

But the 3d program that we teach, Maya, is made by a company called Autodesk.

And with an educational email, so as a high school student, you

might have an email through your school, or you could let them know

that you're a high school student.

You can actually download the software for free.

So I do talk to a lot of students who work with a program called

Blender, which is also free.

You can start exploring the 3d interface and really start to understand the

concepts which do transcend platforms.

So if you begin to understand geometry and the way it works in X, Y, and

Z space, that's going to help you to progress to other platforms.

And also the game engine that we use is called Unity, which we use

for virtual reality experiences.

And that's free too.

So as a student in high school or where, whatever age you are, I mean,

you, you have to have an educational, you know, connection, but you can

download these platforms for free.

Blender is free for anyone and-- as well too.

Man, what a time to be coming up as a filmmaker.

That is just so cool.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Alumni Live: The Podcast special

series about the film and video major.

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Thank you for listening.