During an interview

Networking between students and professionals after the interviews

Each student presented their work during a 7-minute interview with a panel of 18 professionals from the animation, game and visual effects industry. Students selected animations and videos from their production classes and edited them down to a 3-minute presentation.

Eighteen professionals met with ANDA students for internships. The line up included six leading companies in animation, visual effects, TV and game design. The names include Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Double Negative, Lucasfilm. These internships meetings introduce students to a network of people from companies operating on a worldwide scale.

Learn what it’s like to go to Tisch School of the Arts Asia directly from the students themselves.

Also, check out our new Tisch Asia YouTube and Vimeo channels!

Animation & Digital Arts MFA Program presents

“Introduction to Modern Graffiti, Culture, Style & History”

by Didier Mathieu
Concept Artist & Matte Painter, Lucasfilm Animation Singapore

Presentation Summary: Graffiti has been present throughout history, beginning in the ancient Roman empire immortalized in ash at Pompeii, through Viking engravings on the walls of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, to the soldiers of World War I and II with their prints on bunkers, trains and walls. Modern Graffiti started in the late 1960s in Philadelphia and reached an explosive peak in the New York subway transit system from 1969 to 1989. After the publication of “Subway Art” and movies such as “Wild Style” or “Style Wars,” Graffiti took root internationally. Youths from South Africa to Brazil to China embraced the art form as a revolt of the oppressed, a new resistance movement and means of expression. Today, artists who began as graffiti writers have infiltrated every branch of the media and entertainment business (e.g. graphic design, web design, film, music and dance). Digital photography and internet have enabled people to share their work globally. French graffiti artist “blek le rat” has called graffiti “the biggest art movement in the history of the world.”

Didier’s Bio: Didier joined the graffiti scene in 1991, in Belgium, and has painted walls and trains in most of all major cities of Europe like Berlin, Paris, Barcelona, London, Amsterdam, Belfast Vienna, Varsovia, Copenhaggen, Stockholm, Brussels. He has also painted in countries like Colombia, Peru, Chile, U.S.A, Canada and China. In 2005, he joined LucasFilm Animation Singapore working in the digital art group “Dag” as a concept artist and matte painter.

Date: 20th November 2009, Friday

Time: 3:30pm to 4:30pm

Venue: Classroom 1, Level 4

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Please RSVP your attendance to Theeba (tr42@nyu.edu) or 65001715 by 19th November 2009, Thursday.

Jordan Schiele, MFA Film ’11, has been named one of 15 finalists in the Louis Vuitton Journeys Awards in association with Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai. Jordan’s short film depicting “What Is A Journey?” is competing for the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Prize valued at $25,000.

Winners will be determined by online voting beginning November 16, 2009 and ending December 14, 2009.

Show your support for Jordan and his wonderful film by voting here!

Date:      13th November 2009, Friday

Time:      3:30pm to 4:30pm

Venue:      Classroom 1, Level 4

by Brian Connor
Compositing Supervisor, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) Lucasfilm

Presentation Summary: Visual Effects has been around for more than 100 years, but only recently has the creation of visual effects  been considered an art form, or craft, that must be studied and practiced. To succeed, a visual effects artist must understand the visual aspect, the effects aspect and the artistic aspect. Combined properly, an artist can make movie magic. Integrating 40ft Autobots or making a man made of iron fly seamlessly in live-action background plates can be an art form in and of itself. To suspend the audience’s disbelief means not only understanding the way we ‘see’, but the medium and all its wonderful idiosyncrasies.

Brian’s Bio: Brian Connor joined Industrial Light & Magic in 2000 as a digital compositor. In 2008 he joined Lucasfilm Animation Singapore as a Compositing Supervisor. He has freelanced in Los Angeles and worked at various visual effects facilities including DreamQuest Images, Discreet, Disney’s The Secret Lab, and Paramount’s Digital Design.  Connor has received many awards for his work including the prestigious Telly Award, Broadcast Design Award and was nominated for a VES Award for Best Compositing in a Motion Picture. Originally from Chicago, Illinois, USA, Connor earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Broadcasting from Illinois State University, where he was awarded Mass Communication Graduate of the Year 2003. While in San Francisco he also taught his chosen field of endeavor at the Academy of Art University for four years. Brian co-authored a book called The Encyclopedia of Visual Effects. Recently he was the main contributor to Ron Brinkmann’s 2nd edition of The Art & Science of Digital Compositing.

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Please RSVP your attendance to Theeba (tr42@nyu.edu) or 65001715 before 12th October 2009, Thursday.

3rd year cinematography students at Tisch Asia enjoyed a 2 hour seminar with the Arri D-21, the premier high-definition camera in use today. Visiting Associate Arts Professor Sarah Cawley is introducing the cinematography students to all the high-end HD cameras available on the market today, as well as the various choices with 35mm.  Tisch Asia feels it is important to make sure the graduates of the program know the tools available to them in the field.

Three days to shoot. Three days to edit. How would you describe Madrid as a tourist destination in those six days?

Five students from the New York University Tisch School of the Arts graduate film program in New York traveled to Madrid in October to compete in Turismo Madrid’s “Madrid Dares You” short film competition.

The students, Marie Dvorakova, Mykwain Gainey, Fred Guerrier, Neil Orman and Brooke Swaney, were each assigned a thematic area of focus — people, culture, gastronomy, night life, or fashion and luxury — as a storyline for their films.

Monument in Spain. Photo courtesy of Madrid Tourism Board.

Patti Pearson, assistant to the associate dean and assistant director of special projects at Tisch’s Kanbar Institute of Film and Television, told the Washington Square News said she was ‘thrilled to collaborate with the Madrid Tourism Board on the project.’

“The five thesis students selected from the graduate film program have demonstrated exceptional talent and ability in film production and can offer a unique and fresh perspective of Madrid to U.S. audiences,” Pearson said. “Opportunities such as these give students ‘real world’ experience as they prepare to complete their thesis films and begin working in the industry.”

The winner receives $4,400 and will be announced on November 19.

Watch the films and cast your vote at! Visit Madrid Dares You.

Animation & Digital Arts MFA Program presents

“Principles of Animation”
by Patrick Smith, ANDA Faculty Member

What Are Your Principles?
Review of the basic principles of character animation by Patrick Smith.

“Our work must have a foundation of fact in order to have sincerity”
-Walt Disney

Creating the illusion of life and movement can be broken down into basic principles put forth by the masters of the medium. This workshop is a review of those basic principles, and how they can be observed in nature, and applied in animation. These basic principles were introduced by the Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in their book The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation.  Johnston and Thomas based their book on the work of the leading Disney animators from the 1930s onwards, and their effort to produce more realistic animations. The main purpose of the principles was to produce an illusion of characters adhering to the basic laws of physics, but they also dealt with more abstract issues, such as emotional timing and character appeal.

Date:      6th November 2009, Friday

Time:      3:30pm to 5:30pm

Venue:      Classroom 1, Level 4