After Cal or Ringling

[s3614]

I got a admission calarts-CA and Ringling-CA.
which school is fit for me?
I would be a great, great, talentd stroy-teller and animator, diretor like john lesster, pete docter(director of Monster.Inc), Andrew stanton.
And also make my own short 3DAnimated film.
Ringling-CA's student and alumni's work is incredible peice of 3DAnimation.
What am I gonna do?

[beechdbum]

well im guessing by calarts, CA you mean character animation, well i never looked as much into calarts as ringling but i did apply to both and am pretty familar with each's program,i know that ringling has a very strong focus on being a compelling story teller and that they are also very good at teaching animation as you saw, i personally think it sounds like the right mix for you. I dont know if this will factor into your descions but calarts' program wont let you touch 3d animation only traditional hand drawn, so if you like 3d thats another plus for ringling. i hope this helps some

[furryspork]

CalArts has long had the reputation of being the best animation school in the U.S., but when I was there last summer, some teachers said some things to me that sounded kind of disturbing. It was as if they were trying to defend the curriculum that they have instead of trying to change it in a way that reflects the recent changes in the industry. It's not true that they won't let you touch 3D. They will allow you to focus on computer animation if you so desire, but the equipment in their lab is annoyingly bad from what I've heard.

For traditional animation, CalArts is definately the best. For computer, I'm not sure...Ringling is probably better for computer animation. For me the decision came down to whether I wanted to wait out a year for CalArts (I didn't get in the first time I applied) or go to Ringling. In the end, I couldn't find anything so wonderful about CalArts that would justify me taking a year off from college and applying again. The biggest problem I found was that CalArts is in LA, where you have access to teachers and visiting artists who are working at the big studios, whereas Ringling is in the middle of nowhere in terms of the animation industry. The closest studio was Disney-Florida, which just closed.

They're both really good schools. It just depends on what you're more interested in doing.

Since you mentioned that you want to be a good storyteller, I can tell you that Ringling definately focuses a lot on storytelling, and in my opinion, they do a very good job of teaching it. However, the people you mentioned in your post: John Lasseter, Pete Docter, and Andrew Stanton all went to CalArts. But then Ringling CA wasn't around back when they were in college. :)

[beechdbum]

furryspork i know the let you focus on 3d in expiremental animation, but i thought character was only 2d.... well anyway, you have two great choices to choose from, so you cant go wrong

[furryspork]

It's pretty rare that a CA major at CalArts chooses to focus on 3D, but I have seen it done. I saw 2 or 3 CG pieces in the Producer's Show tapes I watched while I was there. CalArts discourages CG because the studios their graduates most often want to go to (Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks, etc.) will teach you the software if you know how to do good 2D animation, so CalArts skips teaching the software, and focuses on the fundamentals of animation.