Animate to accumulate

Students learn how to animate at Cartoon Network Animation Academy.

It may be barely a month since twofour54 and the Cartoon Network Animation Academy announced that its first year students had successfully graduated, but already its second intake is in place and studying hard to carry on the successes of their predecessors, almost half of whom had already secured jobs before their graduation.

To see what all the fuss was about, Digital Studio visited the academy at twofour54’s Khalifa Campus, where we were invited to study for a day with the students on day two of a five-day writing for animation course, presented by California-based Christopher Keenan.

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Keenan himself is a symbol of the quality of tuition that is offered at the academy. His CV reads like a roll call of animation giants, from his early days at a fledgling Steven Spielberg-run Tiny Toon Adventures to stints as Warner Brothers’ animation buyer and director of children’s programming at ABC, with plenty more on top.

Keenan now runs his own operation, Creating4Kids Inc, which creates and supplies content from pre-school to Tweenies to some of the world’s best-known broadcasters.

The day we visited, we found 11 students from diverse national backgrounds – Emirati, Kuwaiti, Egyptian, Saudi, Australian and Pinoy to name a few – wrestling with the notion of story telling.

The class took place in a fairly informal setting, with students encouraged to join in, and a variety of games and activities included in the session to help bring the students’ creativity to the fore.

Key topics covered during the day included the basics and structure of storytelling, the key differences between writing for an ongoing show or a series of standalone episodes and the vital commercial fact that for a show to succeed, its audience must relate to the lead constant character/s and ‘choose to hang out with’ that or those characters for a part of their life each week.

Another key question students were asked to consider during the day was ‘why should we animate this, not film it in live action?’

Explaining the logic behind the course, Keenan said: “What we found last year was that the students had learned the practicalities of animating, but with no training in what do with their characters next they reached something of a dead end, so we came in and ran the course, and I think the students found it really useful.

“This year, we’re holding the course much earlier in the 12-month curriculum – the students have only been here three weeks, so that of course has its own challenges.

Whereas last year, the students already had a body of work and projects in place to refer back to with what they learnt about storytelling, we’re here much earlier this year and they don’t have those reference points or existing projects they might be able to apply the lessons to in place already, but this time they’ll already have this knowledge in place when they start to create more complex animations, which should prove invaluable.”

Over the 12-months of the course, students will learn a host of skills needed to stand a chance in the highly competitive world of animation, from the nuts and bolts basics of ‘making things move’ through to storytelling, choosing the best software and how to pitch your ideas to executives.

The course has been specifically designed by twofour54 Tadreeb, The Cartoon Network and the National Centre for Computer Animation, part of Bournemouth University in the UK. The academy aims to offer “academically intensive animation courses to meet the needs of this unique industry.

Delivered by expert instructors that have worked in some of the world’s biggest animation studios such as Warner Bros, Turner Studios, and Walt Disney, the academy equips students with the animation skills and training to compete professionally across a wide-range of media sectors including gaming, television, film and beyond.”

Beyond the training that takes place in the classroom, twofour54 also held an employment open day at the academy for last year’s graduates to allow students to show their skills to prospective employers, while Cartoon Network Arabia is committed to taking on the cream of the academy’s graduates as interns.

Michael Carrington, chief content officer at Cartoon Network parent Turner Broadcast adds: “Cartoon Network Animation Academy courses give students world-class animation training, and also reflect the culture, values and heritage of the region.

The course equips students with the skills and knowledge required to work across a variety of media sectors. I’m excited that a fresh intake of students (has) commenced classes as part of the second Animation Production programme”

The students themselves were clearly keen to learn, and although some frustration may have been evident at how limited their animation skills are after only three weeks in their new school (one noted with dismay that so far they were only able to make a ball bounce), the work of last year’s class which can be seen on screens around the academy, as well as the quality of tuition on offer should reassure them that 12 months from now they’ll be at a far more advanced stage.

The academy is also considering introducing forms of animation such as stop motion, and seemingly has the potential to become a true world-leading facility in its field.