Chapter 3

Education and Training :

The students' perspective.

A number of topics on the agenda of the Symposium were discussed in smaller groups. One of these panel discussions brought together delegates who were themselves graduates of animation courses.

Their retrospective views were personal, and tended to be linked to the wider experience of higher education.

The session was moderated by Colin Young, the former Director of the National Film and Television School, and President of CILECT.

Opening the session, he spoke of the need for schools within the CILECT network to work with other institutions training animators which had already been identified by ASIFA.

He told the graduates:

I am aware that CILECT has had, in general, a very uneasy relationship with the training of animators. The first thing that we did a few years ago was to do a survey of our schools throughout the world. We were surprised how many of them were teaching animation. That awareness emphasised the need to have some coherent attitudes towards this aspect of our activity. Then we had a second surprise when ASIFA completed and published its own survey of animation courses and schools. That survey made us aware that there were schools working in this field that had nothing to do with CILECT, and were even completely outside the normal conservatory system for training in Europe. In many countries they are lodged in universities or in fine art schools, or are autonomous institutes which concentrate on animation. They have no formal connection to CILECT as the body which attempts to co-ordinate all the training activities in film and television at professional level. Therefore we became aware that we were walking on only one foot, and that foot was not well strengthened for the task.

After those two surveys showed that there were two entirely separate worlds that were not communicating, it seemed absolutely sensible that CILECT should join with ASIFA in organising a meeting like this. It is hoped that CILECT can learn a lot and that a role might be found for CILECT to help push this work forward, and to make it a permanent part of the association's activities.

[Colin Young then turned to the work of Cartoon -- one of the projects developed by MEDIA 95.]

Cartoon, as a project, seems to be assuming that animation is an industry or that animation films are made in factories and that the priority for training in animation in Europe is to produce animation assistants.

Reference has already been made at this symposium to the training of animation directors. These two roles -- and therefore their educational needs -- are quite separate. If the two are mixed up, there is enormous confusion. We need to see where the different kinds of training should be located, and how they should be co-ordinated.

If we in Europe and America are going to compete for the production of animation films with low-cost production centres in Asia and elsewhere, are we certain that we are making the right decision when we use low-cost production systems elsewhere rather than solve the problem domestically?

It seems a kind of colonialism to ship the work to Asia, then ship it back again to consumers in North America and Europe. There's something wrong there that we, as artists, producers and trainers, have not fully thought through.

Of course, the quality of work that comes from Asia is extraordinary -- and the speed and cost with which it is done -- all make production there irresistible. However we have to think of the long-term effect it will have on the infrastructure of animation production in the industrial countries.

Colin Young continued:

In my own experience, I would say that those students who spend a great deal of time perfecting their skills and being responsible for the whole process of animating their films, are the easiest to employ.

Those who are lazy about it and want other people to do the difficulty work are those who find it very difficult in the future.

In my own school (National Film and Television School at Beaconsfield), the animators might be continuing some sort of cottage industry, trying to be a Jack or Jill of all trades, but the immense variety of their work, with no one imitating the other, with each finding a personal style, is a sort of testimony to the fact that this generation wants the art of animation to meet the commerce of animation in a satisfactory way.

DAVID ANDERSON (Britain)

Colin Young's observations were taken up by one of his own graduates, David Anderson, who had earlier spoken about the NFTS in the International Survey of Schools.

He told the panel:

I did a variety of things at the film school which I feel greatly benefited my skills as a film maker. I learned and understood about camerawork for example. That route through a general training is very important.

However, we have a problem in how we define and cope with teaching animation. The subject is as wide as the other two main areas in film schools -- fiction and documentary. No one would expect one teacher to handle that range in live action film making. Yet that is often the case with animation teaching.

On one hand, the teacher has encourage the student animator to produce the equivalent of a work of art you would hang in an art gallery, and on the other hand to produce a film you would show in the cinema to a public audience.

Then there is the range of techniques to be taught -- from drawing to pixilation to glass painting to sand.... That is another problem: how to create sufficient levels of expertise in such a wide range of techniques.

Two of the graduates who spoke on the panel were trained in schools of fine art.

PIOTR DUMALA Poland

Piotr Dumala is one of the leading representatives from the young Polish film makers. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He lives in Warsaw, and works as an animator at Studio Miniatur Filmovic. His films have received national and international awards, amongst them "Lykantropia(1981), "Little Black Riding Hood" (1983), "Hair Hanging Loose" (1985, Annecy award), "The Leg in Freedom" (1987),"The Walls" (1987). He has just finished a film about the life of Franz Karka.

I studied animation at the end of the seventies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. At the same time, I studied in the Department of Stone Conservation as well as attending drawing classes. That was more than ten years ago, but those three studies had, and still have, a parallel influence on me. However, the animation studies seem to have been of the greatest importance and have had the greatest impact on me.

Animation had appealed to me ever since I was a child. I watched films made by Disney and McLaren on a black and white television set. My own first attempt at making an animation film with a friend was not successful. We had an argument at the very beginning.

I did quite a lot of writing at that time and continued to do so at secondary school. I was not aware then that my stories resembled screenplays rather than being strictly literary works.

When I was seventeen years old, I began attending the Studio of Film in Warsaw, where I was allowed to do my first exercise in animation. After a year of training, I decided to make a short film from my own story.

The means were very simple. I had only black and white negative, but I managed to make a one-minute film about a man being eaten by worms. It was even screened the following year to an audience of art students. It was well received, and this encouraged me to continue.

I wrote more and more, even though I had begun studying in the Department of Sculpture Conservation. I was also studying in the Animation Department. It was a period of very intense work for me.

On one hand, I studied chemistry, biology, microbiology, geology, and had demanding classes in sculpture, conservation, drawing, and sculpture in clay and stone.

On the other hand, there was film, motion and time, the continuation of my writing, and the best possible way of taking advantage of my drawing abilities.

I'm describing my way of doing things in this manner because I believe that everything that one does has many sources and is influenced by various forces.

I could not separate film making from my other activities. It is my greatest passion.

So, when I began working at the film studio, I already had some experience in animation, so my tutor gave me a lot of freedom. I did not have to go through the regular basic exercises and could start by working on the storyboard for a short film based on my own script.

Work on the storyboard and well as the design of a film are the two important steps in film making..... especially when one is a student. These two steps teach you to think in terms of images, to tell stories in the language of film.

It is particularly important during your studies when you are just starting to make films.

Another important element is to develop the ability to fully express your ideas through motion.

Work on animation, in my opinion, requires an ability to combine very strict discipline with a most outrageous imagination.

When, many years later I began to teach animation, I noticed that the balance between these two extremes is most difficult for some students to achieve.

Work on the storyboard involves eliminating unnecessary things, searching for a communicative way of conveying ideas, creating moments of suspense and surprise, and creating rhythm.

I think it was Freud who said that thinking was a preliminary work, and I agree with him. Eventually, however, you have to begin the realisation of your project.

I chose cut-out techniques and made a two-minute film about an old woman who could fly.

At the beginning of my second year of studies, my tutor suggested that I start preparing my diploma film, which was to be made in a professional film studio. Unlike my first films which were shot on 16mm, this film was to be made on 35mm.

At the same time, I had to complete my graduation work in drawing, sculpture, and art history. It was another year of hard work. It seemed however that everything else was secondary to film. I do not mean that particular film, but to the idea of film in general.

The graduation requirements in the field of drawing included a series of eight large-format drawings on a subject of my choice. I thought of adapting a famous novel into a huge poetic comic strip. I considered Euridice and Orpheus, Crime and Punishment, and Hunger. Finally I decided on Dostoyevsky.

This black and white "comic" strip, which consisted of more than 300 drawings, turned out to be a sort of storyboard. Now, after ten years of work, and having made ten short films, I have decided to make a film of "Crime and Punishment." This "comic strip" is still an important guide for me.

The digestion of the whole novel, scene by scene, was a preliminary work in the process of making this film. But back then, while I was drawing the strip, I was making another film, a symbolic story about wolves, the title of which was taken from Slavish mythology. It had a lot in common with my art history thesis on the symbolic meaning of mountain, the stone and the grave.

Having sculpted a marble bust in Carrara marble, I felt very close to physical work.. I'd had a chisel in my hand and I had felt the stone.

The film I was doing at the same time was set in the mountains amongst white boulders. I tried a new technique, making scratches on a layer of white paint sprayed on glass. There was black velvet underneath, and the scratches revealed the black background. I then shot these images, and then sprayed a new layer of paint in order to scratch out a new stage of motion.

I realised how inter-related things were in the fields of drawing, art history, sculpture, and film.

For a whole year I experimented with this technique in order to master it. I tested the animation and how it expressed my idea. I think my tutor left me a lot of freedom and had trust in me. It is important not to interfere too much with the student's work especially at the last stage -- the making of the diploma film when he should feel fully responsible for what he has done and what he wants to say..

The tutor's duty is not only to convey his own experiences and to teach certain methods and techniques of film making, but to also enable and help the student to expand freely his abilities and his character.

During the holidays I took a fortnight to produce my five-minute debut film, "Lykantropia." I never again achieved in my work a comparable discipline, which had enabled me to complete my project in such a short time. I worked ten months on my twelve-minute film based on a short story by Dostoyevsky -- "The Gentile." The realisation of a 16-minute film, "Franz Kafka" took me nearly two years.

Did I learn to make films during my studies? One can certainly call my experiences in film making gained before and during my studies as "amateurish," if compared to the real skills required in order to make use of the language of film. By "amateurish," I mean unaware of what film is.

Once again, I'll mention the importance of work at the storyboard stage. The initial idea is only the starting point, and the most important question is how to proceed from there. The storyboard determines the rhythm of the narrative, the length of individual scenes, and their sequence, as well as their narrative impact.

Learning to construct a storyboard lets you gain the ability to foresee the final motion and its effect on an audience.

A common mistake made by beginners -- and I think not only by them -- is the incongruence of the final effect with the preliminary idea. This makes the film's intention unclear, boring, and incomprehensible, because only the author knows what the film is about.

The film maker should be aware of this, and be able to draw the right conclusions, instead of considering the film's obscurity as an advantage which makes it unique. Film makers who think like that consider the film's lack of success is the fault of the ignorance of the audience.

I think that this was one of the most important things I learned during my two years of animation studies.

I think it also has something to do with the length of the film: the longer a film is, the more complicated its structure becomes, and the more difficult it is to maintain the audience's attention.

A very short film -- let's say a 10-second one -- requires great condensation of content and a clear knowledge of how long it takes the eye to perceive a scene, and the brain to comprehend it.

Films which are scratched or painted directly onto film are a very good test. McLaren's inventions in this field were unique. He sometimes exposed on a single frame, leaving ten or so black frames around it.

In my tutor's studio, when I was already his assistant, the students were given bits of film and had to draw or scratch their films onto them. It certainly makes you aware of what the basic structure of film is -- that film is composed of single stills on celluloid.

I believe that technical aspects of film making can be very inspiring for an artist. It teaches one to appreciate the work which is indispensable in the realisation of any film.

Similarly, the use of various techniques determines the general character of the film. A cut-out technique will evoke a difference impression than drawing on celluloid or painting directly under the camera. I discovered early on that the techniques of animating directly under the camera were the most suitable ones for me. I have the impression that the images from my head are transferred straight onto the film.

I also like the fact that each stage of the motion appears only once and is changed immediately afterwards. Consequently, the image disappears, and this also corresponds with my sense of what film should be.

This method requires a certain sensitivity -- there is very little that you can try out beforehand. That is why, before making my first film "Lykantropia," I made so many preliminary exercises.

All my later films, with one exception, were made using various techniques of animating directly under he camera. For each of them I did warm-up exercises in order to achieve a better knowledge of what the final motion on the screen might look like. Only after developing and viewing this preparatory material would I begin to shoot the film proper. This is a method that I adopted during my studies.

The first film is very important. It enables a student to make other films -- or it can prevent him/her from doing so in the future.

I remember that I did not pay enough attention to the sound track of "Lykantropia." I do not consider it as a tragedy today, but at that time I was terrified that I had ruined the film and that nobody would be interested in my next ideas.

For a whole year I was sculpting and restoring stone sculptures, which was my second profession. Then it turned out that a studio was interested in my new project. Once again, my former tutor helped me with three of my scripts. Two of them became films. One is still a work-in-progress I referred to early -- "Crime and Punishment." I feel prepared for that now, after twelve years of film making.

I am sure that the time spent at school is a period of intense education, but it also teaches you how to learn, how to develop your skills, how to be your own teacher, how to make use of the knowledge required in other fields in order to work on that which is most important.

Unless one adopts this attitude, making further films is, in my opinion, pointless.

EVA HAENTJENS Belgium

Eva Haentjens was born in Mortsel, Belgium in 1970. She graduated in animated cinema in June 1992 at the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts at Ghent. During her studies she made a nine-minute animated filmed, "Poem-makers."

To begin with, when you want to study animation in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, you can choose amongst three schools. The one I finally chose was the Ghent Royal Academy of Fine Arts. I was attracted by what I saw on its Open Day. The work produced by students already there impressed me, and as the other two schools did not offer much information on the courses they were offering, I applied for Ghent. To be honest, I did not have a clue about what I was in for over the next four years.

During art classes at secondary school, even in the specialised art school I attended, nobody, even from the graphic side, seemed to know very much about animation film.

One of the factors that might also have been a reason for applying to Ghent was that my father, who is a television producer, once made a programme about the techniques of animation. In hat programme, he followed the production of "Goldframe" a black and white animation film by Raoul Servais, who is in charge of the animation film department at the Ghent Academy.

So there I was, a newcomer, very fond of drawing, and an enthusiastic movie goer. I must say that I was mainly attracted to designing characters and creating backgrounds. The technical side did not appeal to me very much. However I soon found out that this knowledge is indispensable.

So, at the end of the first year, one is supposed to know how to match different colours, how to create backgrounds how to get accustomed to the specific side of the things one draws for the screen, and the result one gets when it is projected.

We were also supposed to know such essential things as the difference between morning and evening skies, spring and autumn scenes, winter and summer scenes.

During that first year, half the weekly periods were dedicated to acquiring this sort of information I think justly so. In fact, it was a pity that in the next two years that course was discontinued. One was supposed to know everything about such design elements, but it would have been useful to have gone into it more thoroughly and in greater detail. I presume that one of the reasons that it was discontinued was that the film animation course is only four years, whereas a fifth year would have allowed time for such study.

Another part of the first year course was the introduction to the actual animation techniques. That became the "main dish" in the second year of studies. We learned how to make storyboards, how to animate simple movements, and, towards the end of the year, a few seconds of full animation, including a lip-sync character. Techniques of editing picture and sound were also part of the course.

I would like to stress that at the Academy each student is free to create his or her own style. No one is forced into a pattern that does not suit him or her. The good thing about this is that it leads to a great variety of styles and very personal approach. One is stimulated to be as innovative and resourceful as possible. I think that this is a very positive point of view.

In the third year, one is asked to experiment with different kinds of animation -- cell animation, cut-out animation, pixilation and so on. One is encouraged to rely very much on one's own interests. The important element here is each student's eagerness to learn. If we had any problems, we could always ask for assistance from various teachers.

We were supposed to make our own one-minute film completely independently. This also ensured that that our technical skills were trained thoroughly.

In the third year, there were courses presented by professors from other countries. They came to do short demonstrations or lectures on their personal work. We even had the opportunity to work with them on limited projects.

These contacts enriched our experience because we were confronted with new ways of approaching certain problems.

The third year was quite a demanding time because apart from the normal course work, involved we were involved in a very time consuming project -- the production of a ten-minute animation film for Belgian schools television. This took time away from our personal projects.

The purpose of the fourth and final year is the production of a personal animation film of not less than three minutes duration. It is a year of stress and fighting to meet deadlines, especially because we also had to attend several courses and sit examinations at the end of them. These courses ranged from computer science, history of music, the theory of editing to the study of social and financial law.

In spite of these negative remarks, the first film of one's own is an informative experience. One is confronted with lots of practical problems. There is only one person who can solve them, and that it oneself. That does not mean that the academic staff are not there to help with advice and assistance.

I think that one o f the drawbacks of the system is that animation students are not fully prepared for life in the profession after graduation. At the Academy, one is educated more as an individual artist who is going to make his/her own film, rather than as a flexible professional who can find a job in an animation studio and is able to cope with the day-to-day work there. By that, I mean having the ability to adapt characters designed by other professionals, animating them and designing backgrounds to order and so on.

In my opinion, too much importance is given at school to animation films which are experimental and original. I think there should be a better balance between that approach and the so-called "classical" animated film which the industry supports.

In spite of some of the negative elements I have mentioned, I don't regret my choice of school. My four years at the Academy taught me a number of essential things which one cannot do without. They also taught me how to rely on myself, which is important for anyone seeking a career in a creative environment.

ALEKSANDR PETROV Russia

Aleksandr Kostantinovic Petrov was born in 1957 in Pretschitoje, Russia. He completed his art studies at Jaroslawl Art Institute, where, as a young student, he realised his first animated film. In 1976 he entered Vsesoyouzny Gosoudarstvenni Institut Kinematographiy (VGIK) in Moscow and, after obtaining a diploma, he started working at Sverdlovsk film studio. In 1989 he made "The Cow", a ten-minute long ecological and satiric film that gained many international festival awards.

My knowledge of the Higher Courses for Film Directors and scriptwriters began far earlier than when I joined them as a student. I finished my first education at the high-level State Institute for Cinematography in Moscow in the former USSR. After graduating from VGIK, I met with the graduates of the Higher Courses and helped them with their productions. I saw that the level of work amongst friends of mine who had finished these courses was more accomplished as a result of their studies.

One advantage of these courses is that a student must already have a high level of education before applying. The actual subjects studied is not important. It could be humanities or technical subjects. We even had a nuclear physics graduate in our classes.

The entrance examinations came as a surprise. The applicants felt hit by another system of thinking.

Those of us who were accepted had a short period of acclimatisation, then we had to propose our own short projects. It was to be a one-minute film that we had to make entirely on our own. The deadline for completing it was the middle of the first year. The aim of the exercise was to demonstrate that we had learned all the first steps in animation -- the movements and so on.

After this first film was completed, we were set a new project which we found quite difficult. It was less of a film making exercise than a exercise in making stories. We had to take a well known story and make three versions of it -- a comedy, a tragedy and a melodrama.

Although I had already spent six years in animation studies, I felt that this was too difficult for me, so I did only one version out of the required three.

The third project was to make a three-minute project working as a group. We had to work in roles -- animators, directors and so on. Looking back, I can see that our teachers did not know exactly how this division would work. It was not exactly war, but there were some deep struggles. I understand now that they were struggles of personalities, conflicting ways of thinking and of different aesthetic positions.

During this project I began to understand how different each of us is. In doing so, we all learned to see ourselves more clearly. We learned to see how we each can change in our mind and soul.

After these higher courses, some of us went on to make our own films. Some never made another film.

After his presentation, Petrov was asked for more details about the techniques taught during the course. He said there were no specific "approved" techniques.

A student could bring along his own technique and use it to make his film. I used the technique of painting on glass. For my later film "The Cow", the technique is oil painting on a cell. I feel that this technique is appealing to artists. It is a question of what he can do with his senses, with his art, and with his hands.

MAURIZIO FORESTIERI Italy

Maurizio Forestieri was born in Palermo in 1961. A student of Giulio Gianini at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, he is one of the most active authors of the Italian "new generation" in the best "artist-craftsman" tradition. Among his films: "Passion - A Short History of Love" (1986), "Orpheus," and "Pastasciutta" (1987), "Amoroso" ( 1991).

EDITOR'S NOTE: The transcription of this delegate's presentation has not yet been translated. It will be included in the final edition.

Problems -- as students see them.

The panel discussion inevitably broadened to consider shared problems -- with some local differences.

Maurizio Forestieri spoke of the need for courses to be balanced, so that training and experimentation could go hand in hand.

David Anderson saw one of the problems in teaching as the separation between animation and film making: where the two activities meet and where they separate.

He identified another problem area within animation -- the vastly different disciplines of drawn animation, and model animation or 3-D animation.

He pointed out that there has been a rising vogue for model animation, but it has very different and specific requirement. With 3-D animation, in his experience, it was difficult to find sufficient back-up.

You have to make sets, you have to make armatures, you have to make puppets. You have so many things to do. The students tend to fall into the trap of wanting to do it all, or of feeling that they are expected to do it all, because help is not available.

It is this "doing it all for themselves" which gets them side-tracked into the mechanics of the art. This can often be to the detriment of the concept of the film, and its story.

If a school is going to offer the opportunity for 3-D animation, it is necessary to provide back-up, with supporting workshops. If the course is based in an art school, there should be connections to the sculpture department.

The third major problem Anderson identified was one which was repeated many times throughout the symposium -- the need to produce a sufficiently high level of ability to enable a student to be employable after graduation. Anderson called it " commercially useful."

He said: "Certainly model animation, which is the area I worked in, often tends to be led by art direction, rather than actual animation with its quality of movement. There has been a great vogue in the last few years for what I would term "art-directed" animation films. The actual technique of model animation, its timing and so on, is an area which is tangible, which can be taught.

Problems -- the teachers' version.

Amongst the participants listening to the graduates was Yoresh from Israel.

He saw other problems, not only in the present, but also lying ahead. He told the panel:

I'm afraid that in the future we will face another world. The youngsters will be more eager to make shortcuts. They will not have the patience to go through all these methods and processes which give him culture. They will have to compete with others who will skip all those processes. They will be people who have on learned only how to deal with computers which provide them with access to effects.

I am not sure that future clients will be able to comprehend, or even be interested in little differences between a story and a tendency to animate. They will be satisfied to merely have moving jokes which have no artistic values.

This was a theme he expanded upon in another presentation. It is relevant to quote from his paper in this context:

I think it is typical of this generation that we are dealing with young people whose egos were encouraged so much. I feel that youngsters of today, at least in my country, judge qualities according to their personal taste.

I feel that the present generation has a narrower cultural background than in former times.

A teacher today has to become a sort of acrobat, to entertain their audience, to do death-defying leaps in order to attract their attention.

The youngsters are eager to achieve effects but not really to go into depth with ideas. The computer, unfortunately, is encouraging this phenomenon. It is not to my taste, although I am not against the computer. I think it offers a kind of solution for a lot of other things.

The question that each one of us, or every institution has to face and answer is whether we want to educate our students, or if we think that we should train them. These are completely different approaches.

If we decide that we want to train youngsters, it is one way. If, on the other hand, we want to teach them, want them to be independent, it is more complicated, and other methods must be used.

I see that problem with my students. Do not forget that Israeli students come to us after three years of military service and have the feeling that the nation or destiny has taken three years from their lives. So they are looking for shortcuts.

While mentioning the computer, which I call a kind of supermarket of effects, I think that the young generation now has access to so many possibilities.

The problem is that nobody has taught them how to be selective.... how to make decisions..

So, in this supermarket of effects we should educate the youngsters, keeping in mind the phrase: "Creativity is a process of selection, not of collection."

We must teach students to be selective, to make decisions according to the problems they need to solve.

I am sure that if there is one quality that we all agree on, it is that we like to teach. We think teaching is important. I think that we should stick to the commitment that academies, all institutions of higher education should deal with qualities that have no direct connection with whether or not they are practical. We should stick to quality.

In another discussion, John Eyley of Australia also looked at the teacher - student relationship. He said:

Although originality and creativity are both expected of a student, the highly structured nature of the programme may actually inhibit the freedom that is necessary for the creative process.

Certainly, time is a key factor when teachers are trying to fit all the requisite skills and knowledge into the three years, or even two years, in designing the array of courses that prepare a student for the making of a film. The tyranny of time has forced us into a programme that is perhaps too condensed.

John Eyley was speaking of his own school, but his words had resonance in many quarters. He continued:

Another problem may be our endeavour to be all things to all people. With limited resources in equipment, staffing, and funding, we are spreading ourselves too thinly into areas that cannot support student expectations e.g. computer animation and experimental animation. Teachers should not be expected to be technicians as well. The lack of technical support can affect the effectiveness of the teaching programme.

Wayne Gilbert of Canada also spoke of the time constraints facing the teacher. He referred to a point made by Bob Godfrey.

During this symposium, Bob Godfrey was talking about the needs for students to read, experience dance, cinema, the circus, as much of life as possible. Here is explained the difficulty of teaching animation or any type of art form.

Teachers cannot give all these experiences to students. The students must experience life for themselves. Time constraints and facility limitations mean that the teacher must do the best job possible with these restrictions and at times must stretch these confines. It should be within the teacher's ability to give the student the best possible start to their education. That education will be a life-long undertaking.

We can only help to build that foundation in the short time we have with them. In doing so, our personal foundations will be naturally strengthened.

We hope that our students will recognise the fact that their studies are all encompassing and do not stop with animation, in the classroom or with artwork, but are part of all that it to come.