It's what you make of it.

The animation curriculum here at MDS has grown over the past three years, and focuses heavily on the Principles of Animation which were developed in the 1930’s at the Walt Disney studios. ‘Observation skills’ are very important to any animator and the exercises we perform are designed to show students just how necessary those skills are. You need a keen eye to understand and recreate the basics of body mechanics. After you have mastered that, you will push your characters beyond natural motion and into exaggerated poses to emphasize the energy your character has.

As of 2009, the animation curriculum has had an injection of ‘acting theory’ to create more dynamic and interesting scenes. Now students also learn about ‘why’ their characters are in a scene. Understanding why their characters are carrying out an action allows the animator to know exactly how to move and pose them. Further to that, they now develop their character’s emotions before, during and after the scene. Once their character has an emotion, the animator has a clear picture of the body language the character must display.

With a solid foundation in body mechanics and an understanding of character’s objectives and emotions, students at MDS can create short animated sequences that audiences will relate to, and characters that audiences will believe in. Once that happens, the students will have conquered their ultimate goal – creating the illusion of life.