Why Students Need to Fail

Jason Thompson

At the recent SAS (Society of Animation Studies) conference in Toronto, Sheridan professor Jason Thompson gave a brief but fascinating talk on "Why our students need to fail". Citing the book by Guy Claxton What is the point of school?, Jason argued that school is important because of eight critical things that students must learn:

Do students need to go to university to learn to animate?

The TAAFI Education Panel

On Monday 16 June TAAFI - the Toronto Animation Art Festival International - hosted a panel talk on the subject of  “An Animation Education”. The sub-title of the talk was “Do you need to go to university to learn animation?”. In other words, given all the opportunities now available to study online, should  students still commit to the expense and time of a full undergraduate education?

On the panel to discuss the question were Richard Arroyo – head of Games at iAnimate.net,  Mark Jones, chair, School of Creative Arts, Aubrey Mintz, Head of Animation, California State University Long Beach, Brooke Keesling, Manager, Animation Talent, and Tony Tarantini, Sheridan College Professor of Animation. The first question was this:

Pedro Cabeleira on the challenges of forging a career in animation

Pedro Cabeleira is an animator and visual effects artist who learned his craft at Escape Studios in London, where he studied the dark arts of Maya back in 2011, tackling as his first project an ambitious, realistic digital sculpture of Bruce Willis. FLIP asked him to talk about the challenges of forging a career in what remains a very difficult job market for recent graduates.