ariel baron-robbins

The 4 course offering at FIU for the Animation tract could be augmented in a variety of ways. One way is to add animation courses after the foundation courses of 2D animation Frames and the 3D animation Shapes. Those need to stay as-is. Intermediate and Advanced courses currently mix the 2D and 3D animation students. I believe that it is essential to offer a second 3D animation course. This second 3D animation course could be about Art Game development and World building. 2D animation should be a prerequisite for 3D animation. 3D animation is very technical and it is harder when students haven't gone over fundamentals. Fundamentals for movement, timing, storyboarding, etc. are covered in 2D. There are new courses that should be offered and I believe should both be a prerequiste to Advanced Animation. In other words, Intermediate could either be the third option or could be eliminated. The 2 new courses would be "Augmented Animation" and cover the use of AI in animation and machine-human collaboration. It could also be extended to AR. AR animations will become much easier for the public to access because of new hardware offerings in the forms of glasses and headsets. We could be a leader in this section. The second course offering, swapped in for intermediate, should be Analog Animation. This should cover all things physical animation, Stop Motion, Physical animations, flipbooks, zoetropes, etc. The students really want this and I believe it should be offered to offset the heavy focus on digital and because analog animation is very important BECAUSE of the development of AI. It could also be very collaborative with other courses and departments.

How can we add courses if we are struggling with attenance (student sign up)? Storytelling and Character Design is covered in all of the courses and is redundant, especially as this aspect is treated differently in Art Animation. It is confusing to students struggling to understand the differance between Art Animation and Commercial Animation. It can be elimenated entirely. That means we only need to add 1 more course. I also believe that adding Art Games to our course offerings can boost enrollment. It should be offered after the prerequisites of 2D and 3D animation.

Why haven't I suggested these while I have been at FIU? One reason is TIME. Teaching 4 courses and running Loop Art Critique is essentially 2 full time jobs. I realize that being tenure-track is also an incredible amount of work, but at least my work running Loop will be recognized as my research component. Without the physical time spent teaching 4 classes, I can spend more time, even while fulfilling my work as a faculty member, developing and proposing courses.