A Degree in Animation is a Degree in Absolutely Everything

To be honest, when I first found out about the Digital Arts program at my university, I thought it might have been just all fun and games in a really laid back industry. After all, how could the entertainment industry truly be difficult? All you are doing is making things that make people happy! In some respects, I was right; animation is indeed fun. Though, for the most part, I was dead wrong.

I find that when I tell people I am in school studying animation they have one of two reactions; either they react like my Fantasyland attractions trainers at work last week with a shocked and excited look and start yelling out a thousand questions about animation with a, “Wow! Oh wow! How cool! You can draw then? Do you want to work at the studios??” or they react like most people at my school when they see me wandering around on main campus with my animation table. They think it’s useless and pointless and the easy way out (and I’ve been blatantly been told by a random girl I should major in something ‘practical’ like business).

Last week famous Disney producer, Don Hahn (who produced such films like Beauty and the Beast, Who Framed Rogger Rabbit?, and The Lion King) came to our school to speak. He brought up an interesting point that I can’t really stop thinking about. He said that animation, in its entirety, is the highest form of art. It’s the culmination of every aspect of being human.

The more I have been thinking about the possibility of animation being the “highest” art form I find myself agreeing. Now, that is not to say I believe that all other art forms are useless and not nearly as important as animation. I am a firm believer in supporting all aspects of the arts and think each holds it’s own importance. However, as a student who is fighting her way through college and trying to absorb as much as I can from animation, I have begun to realize it is indeed one of the most well rounded forms of art and requires so many different talents from an individual.

I realized recently, while looking at a list of majors offered at Chapman, that animation covers so many different fields!

Psychology

My professors always make a point for us to be highly in tune with emotions and how people think and feel. I think the aspect of identifying how a character would react, what their personal experiences would be, and what their personality is like is one of the things that have drawn me to animation. I am surprised how important human psychology is in animation. My professors always seem to cite psychology experiments. And I have noticed that the best animators are the best storytellers and the best at capturing human emotions. You can thank knowledge gained from psychology for that!

Science, Math, and Medicine

Ever heard of a thing such as inertia? How about timing charts? And the laws of physics? Animation uses all of these things to make the character or object appear real. After all, unlike things found in live action, these objects are all made up and don’t exist in the real world. And math? There are programs such as Maya that have complex codings to navigate around. This has been the most difficult thing for me to grasp so far in college, but the greatest animators have a fantastic understanding of the foundations of science and math. That’s not even covering a working understanding of the human body! Animators such as Glenn Keane know anatomy inside and out. You might not see the muscles in simple cartoon characters like Bugs Bunny, but rest assured, it’s there.

Public Relations and Advertising

The entertainment industry is all about selling a product, an idea, a film, or a game. The main goal for anyone in the digital arts field is to make the end product as appealing as you can to the audience. Like those advertisers in Mad Men, animators pitch ideas all the time. “Maybe we can have Rapunzel scoot down like this since she is a feminine character” or “Maybe we can have Sully as a rectangle and Mike as a circle”. Storyboard artists pitch constantly. And to top that all off, just like those in advertising, animators have an innate highly in-tune eye for design.

Business

There’s no business like show business! Aside from having to sell the product (it has to be fun and look good), animators are businessmen. Sure, their offices are a lot different than the stiff twentieth floor office space with floor length windows, suit and ties, and a name plate (most animation studios have colorfully decorated cubicles and Hawaiian shirts galore), but in the end they are selling a product. They know how to budget money, budget time, and sell the product to the client (the audience). It will be a rare day to see some animators in a suit and tie, but in the end they get the job done!

Art

It goes without saying, but animation encompasses art (after all, it is an art related field!) But animation isn’t just animation, its sculpting (Maya modeling), painting, drawing, sketching, graphic design, interior and exterior design, and architecture. Aside from drawing artists from all aspects of the fine arts, it also encompasses artists from the performing arts as well! Animators are really the actors. They act out scenes, draw their facial expressions, watch how people move and act, how they talk and sing, how they dance. Animators are dances, theatre performers, singers, and musicians. Animation is the culmination of all forms of art and it brings together artists from so many different backgrounds into one space. Much like they brought Howard Ashman and Alan Menken to the animation realm as music geniuses.

Students studying in animation aren’t just studying animation, they are studying everything. They are studying life, and everything that makes us human and every area of business that defines our lives. It truly is a fascinating field, and a fantastic fit for anyone who is interested in learning a bit of everything. A degree in animation isn’t just a degree in one thing; it literally is a degree in everything.