James Trainor

This class introduces the traditional animation techniques of creating movement through successive drawings. Techniques include metamorphosis, walking cycles, holds, squash and stretch, blur and resistance. Students use the pencil test Lunch-Box to view their work . Students complete a series of exercises encouraging a full range of animation skills and a final project. Films illustrating drawn-animation techniques are screened regularly.

This class introduces the traditional animation techniques of creating movement through successive drawings. Techniques include metamorphosis, walking cycles, holds, squash and stretch, blur and resistance. Students use the pencil test Lunch-Box to view their work . Students complete a series of exercises encouraging a full range of animation skills and a final project. Films illustrating drawn-animation techniques are screened regularly.

This class introduces the traditional animation techniques of creating movement through successive drawings. Techniques include metamorphosis, walking cycles, holds, squash and stretch, blur and resistance. Students use the pencil test Lunch-Box to view their work . Students complete a series of exercises encouraging a full range of animation skills and a final project. Films illustrating drawn-animation techniques are screened regularly.

This course covers the history of animated film, from its pre-cinematic beginnings to the beginning of the television era (ca. 1960). It traces the development of the Hollywood studio cartoon, along with parallel developments in European and Japanese animation and experimental and abstract works. Special emphasis is given to the evolution of formal animation techniques and their role in the shaping of the animation aesthetic. Much attention is given to the groundbreaking work of Disney, the Fleischer studio, and the cartoons of Tex Avery and Chuck Jones. European animators are represented by Lotte Reiniger, Oskar Fischinger, and other experimenters. All films are screened chronologically, with a mix of short works and a handful of features. There are weekly readings on the history of animation; a ten-page paper; and a final multiple-choice exam.

This class focuses on the study of film language, shot composition and idea development for time based media. Through the creation of storyboards, animatics, mood boards, character designs, and concept development students gain a thorough understanding of how to develop their ideas in the pre-preproduction process. Students who work in film, video, performance, and animation will learn narrative and experimental methods. Practical, conceptual and artistic topics will be addressed. A variety of short films and excerpts from live action films or animations will be shown in class, like work by Brad Bird or independent filmmakers like Emma De Swaef and Marc James Roels. Reading excerpts on composition, editing and storyboarding will be assigned. Coursework may vary but typically includes drawing character designs and storyboards, making animatics and some reading through weekly or bi-weeklt assignments. The final project involves concept development and a presentation, followed by a final animatic with sound.

Science fiction is cinema's most colorful genre, and is as old as cinema itself. This screening-and-lecture course will consider a range of classic science fiction features, from the campy to the hyper violent, the preposterous to the mystical. Frequently dismissed as formulaic, the science fiction film is in fact remarkably supple, allowing inventive directors to tweak its conventions for their own creative ends - to create existential drama, biting social satire, or simple psychological terror. Films will include Alien, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Fly, and Westworld.