This semester, you'll be working in the Art Department. If you're interested in animation for the commercial industry, FIU also offers programs through the Lee Caplin School of Journalism & Media. Both departments offer valuable paths, they're just focused on different goals.
In the arts, many people use the term "Artist" to describe different kinds of creative work. A commercial artist (or designer) and a fine artist both make meaningful work, but they approach it differently. In this program, you're earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts, which means your focus will be on personal vision, concept, and artistic inquiry rather than commercial application.
A lot of students come into this program inspired by pop culture, anime, video games, and YouTube animations. That is great and it shows you love the medium. However, liking pop culture does not mean that copying its forms is appropriate for a college level art course.
Think of it this way:
Commercial animation studios need Line Cooks. They need people who can execute a "Big Mac" exactly the same way 500 times a day because that is what the customer bought.
Fine Art is being a Chef. You have to invent a new flavor. If you come to my class and make a "Big Mac" (Fan Art or Art using a specific Genre Style), you will not pass. Not because Big Macs aren't tasty, but because McDonald's already invented them. We want to see what doesn't exist yet.
There is content throughout this Discord about jobs, but that is only because being a Fine Artist is tough. Many Fine Artists have jobs that help them make the Art they want to make. The Artists on the Boiled Over podcast make it clear that they do commercial animation to support their Art. They do not believe the commercial project they were hired for is "theirs." It is another person's idea, script, and IP.
In this class, you also can not use another person's idea, script or IP. You will work on your own ideas while experimenting with different processes and aesthetics. In upper-level classes, the concept of the animation guides the choice of style. You are expected to figure out how to use the software you need (via tutorials, documentation, and LLMs). I will not spend hours doing step-by-step tutorials because tutorials are a waste of time if you don't have an idea.
After years of teaching art and animation at the college level, I have seen students arrive at the same ideas again and again without realizing it. What feels original often comes from the same shared pool of references, shaped by anime, games, YouTube, and streaming platforms. In this sense, you are working like human AI, producing the most likely output from a common dataset. One of the fastest ways to break this pattern is to actively seek out work, writing, and media that fall outside what you already know.
Much of contemporary pop culture is built on repetition and recycled intellectual property, driven by commercial safety rather than artistic risk. In a fine art context, this often results in work that repeats existing forms instead of questioning them. In this class, I will point out when work leans too heavily on fan culture or recognizable sources. The goal is to help you see when an idea has been exhausted through overuse and no longer offers space for inquiry. At that point, effort and refinement alone cannot make the work meaningful.
These guidelines are meant to guide you away from pop culture dependence and toward original, process driven artistic investigation and genuine creative problem solving.
Audio: You are never allowed to use someone else's audio in your animations. This includes popular songs, sound effects from libraries, or viral audio clips. Create your own sound or work in silence. We may also animate to uncomfortable, textural audio, things like ice cracking, construction noise, or ambient recordings, to force you away from familiar rhythm and sync patterns.*
* There are instances where using found audio from the internet may be necessary for conceptual reasons, for example, if your work critically examines memes or remix culture. In these cases, be prepared to defend your choice in critique and explain why the found audio is essential to your concept. Simply repeating a popular meme is not acceptable unless your animation is interrogating the nature of memes themselves.
Bodies: Do not use mimetic anime or cartoon-focused body shapes that were invented by another person or another animation studio. No Disney bodies. No Pixar bodies. No Sony DreamWorks bodies. No anime bodies. If you've learned to draw by copying a commercial style, this is your chance to unlearn that reflex and discover what your own visual language looks like. The next part of this website will show you why.
Materials and Process: Fine artists develop their own ways of working rather than following preset workflows or rules. Commercial models often emphasize steps, principles, or correct methods for building images or animating bodies, but those systems do not apply here. Try to set them aside. We will work in ways that are specific to each of you. You are encouraged to use found materials or materials you create yourself, and to work with real marks and textures like charcoal, ink, paint, or collage, where control is limited and mistakes remain visible. In digital tools, turn off auto smoothing and easy fixes. Let the material push back. Imperfection, accident, and discovery are central to the artistic process.
If you're reading this and thinking, "But I want to work for Nintendo/Pixar/Cartoon Network/Anime something/commercial studio _____!" please understand this: The industry does look for people who can be creative while also fitting an established production structure. If working in that environment is your goal, it is important to research studio websites carefully and understand what they value and require.
Many of these studios do not require an undergraduate degree and are equally open to candidates from technical programs or self taught backgrounds. There is another program offered at FIU in the Lee Caplin School of Journalism & Media that is for Industry Animation. You can also look at Miami Dade College's MAGIC program. Those programs are specifically designed to train you for commercial production pipelines. If you approach this class hoping to build an industry portfolio or learn industry-standard workflows, you will be disappointed and your grades might suffer if you turn in work intended for commercial application rather than artistic inquiry.
Important: Every semester I see a few students upset that the Art Department's classes didn't prepare them for an Animation Industry career. I will again repeat: if you want to work for a commercial animation company only, you will be disappointed in the Animation classes in FIU's Art Department. This class cannot and will not be useful or work for students interested in the industry-focused animation programs.
To the students who are ready to make Artwork, WELCOME. Let us have fun, challenge ourselves, and think far outside the box.