Category: Education and Training

The NFTS Finishing School, the digital compositing and 3D animation training arm of the U.K.'s National Film and Television School, is running an EU funded 12-week "Masters in Visual Effects" compositing course in Madrid, Spain. Hosted at the Spanish film school ECAM (Escuela de Cinematografia y del Audiovisual de la Comunidad de Madrid), in partnership with Spanish post-production house EnEfecto, the pan-European program was created to help students come up to speed in the booming visual effects business.

ILM animation director Tom Bertino and senior VP Patty Blau head a roster of presenters at Expression Center for New Media's "Insider Day," January 10, 2003. Ex'pression hosts ten Insider Days a year and each includes workshops and seminars featuring technology movers and shakers, famous producers and engineers, musical and digital artists, and other resources to keep students on the new media front lines. The Insider Day experience provides a valuable networking arsenal for students after graduation.

The Art Institutes International Minnesota (Ai Minnesota), located in downtown Minneapolis, is now offering a bachelor's degree program in Visual Effects & Motion Graphics. To accommodate the new program, Ai Minnesota has expanded its facilities to include a green room, a professional-level sound recording studio, several digital video cameras and lighting kits. The Visual Effects & Motion Graphics program utilizes software applications such as Combustion, Shake, Maya, Final Cut Pro and Adobe After Effects.

Discreet has announced an expanded partnership with The Art Institutes, which has purchased 2,500 copies of Discreet's 3ds max 5 for use in its design and art schools throughout North America. Various Art Institutes across North America have recently launched a new Game Art & Design degree to capitalize on the ever-growing game development market. "Enormous industry acceptance and demand by our employers has led The Art Institutes to implement 3ds max 5 as the natural and optimal choice for our curriculum needs.

Oregon3D, Inc. has appointed Mark Noland as educational director and Phillip Guzzo as associate educational director. Mark Noland has worked for over 15 years in nearly every area of digital imaging including Web, print, game, film and video production. He founded Mercury Studios in 1997 where he acted as a producer and director for clients such as Fox Sports and The Golf Channel. Phillip A.

Detroit, Michigan's College for Creative Studies (CCS) Animation and Digital Media department will welcome a group of industry experts in 2002. Lanfranco Aceti, Thom Gillespie and Bill Tomlinson will be guest speakers at a series of presentations hosted by the college. Lanfranco Aceti is a digital artist and a Ph.D. researcher in fine art at Central Saint Martins in London. He has been focusing on the cross-platform media as expression of the contemporary avant-garde. Aceti will be giving an open presentation on November 25, 2002 from 5:00 7:00 pm.

Starting February 2003, VanArts (Vancouver Institute of Media Arts) will launch a new full-time diploma and certificate program in Game Art & Design. Worldwide, the video game industry is worth an estimated $40 billion, out-grossing other traditional forms of entertainment including film and music.

Lost Pencil Animation Studios Inc. has released two new training CDs in their Just Animate series, "Lip Sync" and "Facial Expressions and Body Language." Both CDs demonstrate techniques using Lightwave 7.5, "Lip Sync" offers instruction on how to create multiple phoneme mouth morph targets and an animation of a character speaking.

The Gnomon Workshop has released nine new training DVDs on modeling, dynamics and expressions in Alias|Wavefront's Maya. This series includes three DVDs on NURBS modeling and four more titles on Maya's Dynamics engine produced by Alex Alvarez, director of the Gnomon Workshop and Gnomon School of Visual Effects, and Darrin Krumweide, associate director of Gnomon. Andrew Orloff, head of CG at newly opened visual effects studio Zoic and a new instructor at Gnomon, has produced two DVDs on using expressions in Maya.

Just in time for the start of the school year, Alias|Wavefront has released eight new learning tools -- two books and six DVDs -- that target all levels of Maya user. Beginners will benefit from the Learning Maya / Beginner's Guide DVD, a one-hour guided tour of Maya aimed at the novice user, while intermediate and advanced users can further develop their skills with tools such as the Learning Maya / Dynamics book and the Maya Techniques / Rigid Body Simulations for Visual Effects DVD.

The Oregon3D Center for Visualization Technologies has added instruction of Alias|Wavefront Maya software to its core curriculum. Starting August 26, 2002, Portland-based Oregon3D will offer its first Maya class, a five-day Maya Basics course. Taught by 3D guru Jason Busby of the tutorial Website 3D Buzz, this course is designed to provide a solid foundation to those new to Maya, and allows beginners to explore more challenging concepts such as modeling, animating, texturing, lighting and rendering.

dvGarage has released THE COMPOSITE TOOLKIT, a disk dedicated to teaching production level keying and compositing techniques using Adobe After Effects. The package includes 14 tutorials that cover nearly every aspect of keying and compositing live-action actors into computer graphics scenes. Using a pseudo light saber scene to serve as the basis of the tutorials, three behind-the-scenes movies take viewers through the entire process of shooting a blue-screen scene, while the step-by-step tutorials explain how to composite effectively the entire scene, light sabers and all.