I was working as a graphic designer when I finally realized that aligning full stops was nowhere near as fun as my dream of making cartoons. I’d always wanted to be an animator but lacked the opportunities before. That’s when I found out about the classical animation program at VFS.
The course appealed to me because of its one-year duration and impressive body of past students’ work. I knew that it was going to be a grueling year. As it turned out, the job I had grown so weary of, turned out to be the single greatest factor that helped me make the best of my time there. I was already well set up to be overworked, exhausted and somehow still expected to deliver my best under incredible amounts of stress.
The first film is hand drawn and takes about four months from start to finish and the second is done in Flash, and takes about six weeks from start to finish.
The Course
The VFS classical animation program is a course designed to take you through all the production steps in order to produce two short films. The first film is hand drawn and takes about four months from start to finish. The second is done in Flash and takes about six weeks, from start to finish. There are of course pros and cons to the structure. The pros: classes ran the full gamut of a production pipeline, so you got to wet your feet in every aspect of production. On the flip side, we never got in past our ankles so if you’re not careful, you can end up knowing very little about a lot of things, but not a lot about any one thing.
In the first half of the course, we were taught everything from storyboarding, layout, colour theory, character design, animation and then some. In the second half of the course, we applied what we learned and began production on our films. There was a LOT of information to absorb in a really short time and there wasn’t really any time to pause and focus on catching up on anything we might need more time to grasp.
My Experience
While everyone’s experience is unique, I found that one of the best aspects of the course was the balance between classroom and one-on-one instruction. I lucked out with the class I enrolled in as we had an unusually low intake (eight students at the beginning). The average class sizes before and after us were 15-20. For us, this meant lots of one-on-one time with instructors. This was extremely helpful because it meant we didn’t have to sit through many classes where we were either so far behind we were lost or so far ahead we were bored. I felt like each instructor was interested in answering my questions by helping me with my specific problems and weaknesses.
I knew that it would be unrealistic for me to expect to become great at everything in the space of a year.
I was fortunate to know right off the bat that I wanted a demo reel that showed my aptitude as an animator, nothing more. Early in the course I realized that perspective drawing and background design were not my strongest suits. I knew that it would be unrealistic for me to expect to become great at everything in the space of a year. So instead of banging my head on the wall and trying to master everything at once, I focused on animation for my film and kept my backgrounds and layouts as simple as possible. For my second film, I didn’t even have a background! It was just two characters animated on a white background. This strategy paid off because I ended up with a strong enough animation demo reel to land my first job as a Flash animator shortly after graduation.
My year at VFS is, by far, the most challenging year I have ever lived. For the year of craziness I survived, I have all the friends I made along the way, the instructors who continue to support and mentor me long after my graduation and the welcome the school extends to all its alumni. Though I probably wasn’t thinking this at the worst of times, it was definitely worth it.
The Verdict
As many of the school’s graduates have already mentioned, VFS is a private school. The school fees are extremely high, especially if you’re an international student. The good thing is they have the chops to back up their sales pitch because they do have excellent instructors and a solid curriculum. Caveat emptor… good idea to participate in informational interviews and do your homework about the realities of the animation business prior to choosing this career (as it is for any other).
My prior professional experience really helped me make it out the other end with a decent demo reel.
In my opinion, trying to go through the Classical Animation program at VFS without any prior art education or professional experience is like trying to pilot an airplane when you’ve never operated anything more complicated than a pencil sharpener. It’s not impossible if you’re really good at paying attention and learning really REALLY fast. The instruction is excellent and the instructors are always willing to help, but without any inkling of what it takes to use that information well, it might as well be gibberish. After going through the program, I realized that my prior professional experience really helped me make it out the other end with a decent demo reel.
Trying to make a film AND learn Flash at the same time is simply insane… Flash is by no means the most user friendly software and using it as an animation tool is definitely not the most intuitive process. Just getting used to the software alone takes time, and learning to animate in a style that works around its limitations takes even more time. I was already familiar with using Flash before attending VFS but still found it extremely challenging and frustrating to use to produce a film in a few short weeks. I have heard that VFS has since re-structured the program to allocate more time to learning and animating in Flash.
I would highly recommend the VFS Classical Animation program to anyone who knows exactly what they want out of it and is prepared to work their butt off to get it. There is only so much information a human brain can process in a given amount of time and it’s easy to drown in the deluge of information, albeit useful and valuable. Be prepared to listen hard, work even harder and stay true to the goals you set out to achieve.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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I’m not a big Vancouver Film School advocate. I find they’re more concerned with getting people in and then shipping them out. On the other hand I find the teachers are the heart of VFS and make it what it is, especially in the classical animation department. I’ve never met or had teachers that were that willing to support and stay after class to help a student. All of them are extremely funny, talented, and just a thrill to be around, and I consider them great teachers and even greater friends. If I had to say the one thing I disliked the most about VFS is the amount of friends I made there who have moved on to other places, being that VFS is an international school.