The animation festival circuit: does festival success mean job-search success?(SIGGRAPH Animation Theater)

All schools offering courses or degrees in animation and computer graphics want to launch their students into great careers in digital entertainment. Festival awards are considered by many to be the springboard to such a career. But not all agree--some feel a great reel says it all about a student's potential and there are many more jobs available to those with specialized skills rather than CG "storytelling" experience. Here are three schools' opinions.

DIGIPEN

While you might view success on the festival circuit as an exciting entree into showbiz, cooler heads, like those at DigiPen, remind us that all the hoped for glitz begins with some pretty humdrum administrative duties--the job of getting student work registered and entered in appropriate festivals. Raymond Yan, SVP of operations at DigiPen (www.digipen.edu)in Redmond, WA, says festival success can be "more a function of how organized a school is about getting paperwork together for the various festivals and sending the packets to the different festivals." He believes that festival awards are just the beginning to a good career: "Receiving recognition is a nice thing to have on one's portfolio, but I'm doubtful that this is a key determining factor when it comes to hiring."

Yan says that festival awards are won with excellent storytelling, more so than with adept technical skill, and adds that employers are searching harder for technically adept grads. "Working in the commercial world, an artist is typically going to have to work within the constraints defined by the art style and client's objectives. So it is actually more important for artists to demonstrate that they can take a defined concept and art style and execute it."

DigiPen does not specifically funnel students toward festival submissions but, when they see student shorts that look like "visually strong" competition, they start to look at festival submission.

Yan allows that grads are often hired to fill a specific slot or for a particular talent but, he adds, "ideally the artist should have the ability to work wherever needed. For any art director, having confidence that an individual artist can contribute in a meaningful way on whatever project comes along is really important. One project may have a Disney-style look while the very next project may be something along the lines of South Park."

From Yan's perspective, "a portfolio that demonstrates strong foundation knowledge and skill in all areas of the creative process is key. This means demonstrating a deep understanding of character design, environment design, color, lighting, composition, and of course, character animation. Then there are the tools of the trade, which for 3D artists would include things like Photoshop, 3DS Max, Maya, and more."