Drawing board to computers

By ADAM GIFFORD

Auckland's Freelance Art School has launched New Zealand's first computer-based animation course to train animators for the motion picture, television and video industries.

General manager Rose Woodman says the national certificate in computer-generated imagery will qualify graduates for work as animators in major motion picture studios such as Disney and Universal.

The school, started nine years ago by former Disney animator John Ewing and Barry Pearce, has trained animators in traditional pencil and paper-based methods.

While that will continue, "computers have sped up the production process, and they've also made animation more accessible," Ms Woodman says.

"In the past, an advertising agency might have baulked at using animation because of the time and because it couldn't be changed easily. Now, the computer can change colours or backgrounds at any stage in the production.

"People can use more shadows, mix 2D with 3D and mix animation with live action."

Much of it is now hybrid, with pencil drawings being scanned into computers to be coloured and manipulated.

"The basic craft of good animation is still at the pencil stage. While computers and other media offer more creativity, if your characters aren't good design no one will watch it," Ms Woodman says.

She says the new course, fully subscribed for this year, has taken two years to develop. The school bought 15 SGI (Silicon Graphics) workstations costing $12,000 each.

The students will use 3D StudioMax software, which is considered a relatively easy-to-use and cost-effective bridge to the high-end Maya visualisation software used by film and TV production houses such as Peter Jackson's Weta Digital.

Ms Woodman says the 10-year-old local industry was fuelled by contracts to do half-hour animations for mainly United States-based production houses.

The school has 70 first-year students doing classical animation. Of 45 in year two, 15 are doing computer animation.

Big-screen animated movies are 1440 frames a minute, at one drawing per frame. A 90-minute movie uses 129,600 drawings.