We have a new Admissions Director, Julia Ma.  Julia is smart, generous and she found us! She’s worked before in admissions and had heard about Max the Mutt. She wanted to find out if all the good things she was hearing were true.
At the time I didn’t know Lisa Mamers was going back to school, so I thanked Julia for her interest but told her we didn’t have an opening. Call it fate. Julia asked if she could have a tour anyway, and a few days after her visit Lisa announced that she wanted to return to school herself ! Being around art had made her realize that she was moving in the wrong direction: she wants to be a fashion designer.
Julia stepped right in and has been with us since the end of August. She’s piloting our first January start, and much to our surprise it looks like we’ll have a full class! These students will join the current year one students in September 2010 to begin year 2.  Since there seems to be a need for this option, we will offer it again for January 2011.
The magic of Max the Mutt from the beginning is that somehow what we need, the person or people we need, seem to find us just as we really need them! i can include so many people in that…Carla Drmay, who is our Secondary School liaison, Workshop Director and so much more… I’m thinking of many more, mainly instructors who found us…the list is too long!
The school is feeling very good to me these days. We have a solid core philosophy. All the year one groups seem very focused and hardworking. I work with the Concept Art students, so I’m more aware of what’s happening in their classes.
The second years are busy with all the intro CA courses: Intro to Environment Design, Intro to Animation, Intro to Concept Art, Background Painting ( a double course that starts with the brush and then moves into Photo Shop), Cartooning 1, and of course Intermediate Life Drawing (not an intro course but introducing new concepts). The third years are taking Portrait Painting, and a full day of Advanced Environment Design and Painting in Photo Shop. They also have Advanced Life drawing and a course called Hands and Feet, which stresses anatomy.
The animation students have several new faculty members, including James Miko. He had an extensive career working for major studios, and learned the craft at a time when you learned at a studio by being mentored, not at a school. With that vantage point, he’s bringing some new approaches to learning animation to his year 3 students. (If we were degree granting, by the way, we couldn’t have seasoned professionals like James Miko teaching! We’d be required to hire those with the right “academic” qualifications, most of whom have very little real life experience).
Tina Seemann and I are working hard to get all animation students to realize that they need the fourth year of animation. In fact, we’d like to make it mandatory, a 4 year diploma that includes 3D. To do this, we’ll need to go through the government and that will take time. In the meanwhile, I hope they’ll all be savvy enough to understand that as the studios - unlike Mikko’s day- do less and less mentoring and want entry level animators to be at a higher and higher level, the necessity of spending more time in school is becoming a reality.
We’ve already introduced one beginning animation course into year one, and next year, animation classes will be longer in both years 2 and 3.
We are now asking all animation applicants and current students to think in terms of 4 years of study. The changes in the industry demand that everyone take 3D as well as classical and 2D computer animation. We can help students to fund that fourth year, but, to state it again, everything we are hearing from companies in the industry leads us to feel that year 4 is essential for our animation graduates to remain competitive for jobs at the top companies.
The Illustration for Sequential Arts Program has really blossomed! Thanks to Kent Burles, with an assist from Dave Ross, the year one and year two students are off to an excellent start. The year three students, who will be our first SA graduates, have developed beyond expectations and are doing great work! I really look forward to seeing their graduate show at our first industry evening showcasing both Animation and Sequential Arts! We’ll have to wait until 2011 for the first Concept Art graduates.
I’ll try to post work from all three diploma programs when we get a little further into the first semester. I’ll also try to write more for the blog.
Which reminds me, thanks to one of the threads on www.conceptart.org, I found out about anatomy DVDs that show the body in dissection! They were done for medical students, but I know they’ll be invaluable to all students at Max the Mutt, whatever their diploma program. If these things had only been available when I was young… They should arrive soon.
Please post comments if there are subjects you’d like us to cover. If I don’t have the answers, I’ll gt someone who does have the answers to write! In fact, I really think Kent and Tina should start writing….in the meantime, keep drawing everyone!
This has been quite a ramble. I hope you feel up to date.
