Animation at Bennington
Animation incorporates both the visual and performing arts. Students learn the fundamentals of producing an animation: from using stop motion and single cell drawings, to creating models and objects and erasing drawings, to using CGI and other techniques to create a world.
The software and hardware covered includes DragonFrame, MAYA, Adobe After Effects, Premier, Photoshop, laser cutting for silhouettes and forms, green screen areas, multi-plane set ups, copy stands, and motion tracks. Subjects used as catalysts for the animations range from current affairs, narratives, to poems, short stories, or visual stimuli. Students are encouraged to consider their work in a wide historical context as they work to master technical developments.
Students, at times, draw on and combine their work in other areas when creating advanced projects, whether music, Chinese, French, philosophy, biology, drama, or other visual arts areas. The emphasis is on exploration, bringing life to mundane objects, and giving a voice to a drawing, an image, an inanimate object. At the end of each term there is a public showing of the final animations from each class.
It’s easy to think that in a place where things are cheaper, insanely low-wages can be adequate. Challenge this assumption with this game, where you live 30 days in the life of a minimum wage worker in Madagascar. This might not be completely accurate to their day-to-day lives, but it might help you gain a better grasp of such a life, which is far from being a game for those who live it off screen.
