More than 150 guests filled YES Cinema to see the second annual 3D Animation Showcase for BCSC C4 students.
Alex Whaley, 3D Visualization and Animation teacher, started the showcase last year to give his students the opportunity to see their work on a screen much bigger than a computer screen.
The 38 students had projects displayed on the silver screen at the event which lasted more than an hour and featured a crowd eager to show their appreciation, Whaley said.
“There were projects that wowed the audience, and you’d hear the crowd go ‘ooh,’ ‘wow,’ or projects that were particularly funny would get a laugh out of the audience. So much more vocal than the audience you would expect at a movie theater, where everyone’s usually trying to be quiet,” Whaley said. “I think that was really neat for the students to see how their projects caused the audience to react.”
Whaley said the showcase moved from the smaller YES Cinema theater to a larger one this year to accommodate for its growth.
Whaley teaches four levels of animation classes beginning with an introductory course where students learn the fundamentals of creating 3D models on the computer, applying textures to those models and the overall basics of animation. The more advanced classes meet five days a week and are assigned projects based on different animation topics.
Those could be projects focused on practicing 3D modeling skills, building an environment or animating a character.
However, Whaley knows how valuable creativity is in animation, so he doesn’t want to limit students too much.
“Within every project that I assign students, I always try and leave room for students to express themselves creatively,” Whaley said. “Never are there projects where I tell every student you have to create exactly this, I always try and leave it open.”
Whaley touched on the example of students creating an animated environment.
“Sometimes they’ll choose to recreate their bedroom but in 3D on the computer.” Whaley said “And then sometimes they’ll create a medieval dungeon— whatever strikes their inspiration is what they go for.”
For the showcase, many students submitted projects they had done in class. Others, in Whaley’s animation club, made up of students who want ” to get a little bit more animation practice outside of the regular school hours,” submitted projects that were more like short films, Whaley said.
One project assigned to students is what Whaley calls “the box and ball project.”
“The task is taking a box and a ball—very simple objects— and bringing them to life. So taking an inanimate object and make it animate,” Whaley said
In year one student Priyanka Nair’s project, a ball flys through a window to nudge a box awake as an alarm clock goes off. The drowsy box stops the alarm and climbs its bunk bed to awaken its bunk mate— another ball. But, the box’s enthusiasm for the morning was a little too much for the ball, who is startled and tumbles off the bed, deflating. However, the box, apparently trained for such an occasion, quickly inflates the ball back. The pair then celebrates to some rousing horns.
“I had a lot of students who were really creative with that project, and basically created their own short films, telling a story and showing emotion with the way that the box and ball interact with each other, that really impressed me this year.”
Another project by third year student Anvay Atram shows a sword-wielding knight trudge up a spiral staircase as a glowing-eyed dragon flutters nearby.
A sizeable chunk of students in Whaley’s class say their interest in animation comes from their love of video games, animated movies and the like.
“I have students that really aspire to work at places like Disney, DreamWorks, Pixar, that’s kind of their inspiration,” Whaley said. “And then I have students that are really passionate about games and want to create their own games and work in the games industry.”
But animation is not only limited to entertainment, Whaley tells his students.
“There’s also uses for animation skills outside of that realm for things like advertisements and product design, product visualization, so there’s a lot of avenues you can go with the skill set.”
