Cal Arts Character Animation

Once upon a time, you wanted to see Cal Arts students' animated work, you trekked out to Valencia during the Spring presentations and watch it. But times have changed.

You look scary from Xiya Lan on Vimeo.

CalArts Character Animation Program’s online channel scored its millionth viewer [a few days ago]. The 2016 channel went live on April 24 and received one million views on Sunday, May 15.

Since 2010, at the end of the academic year, undergraduates in the world-renowned Character Animation Program at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) post their new films to a channel on Vimeo. The first channel was posted in April 2010. Over the last six years, the annually produced channels have garnered 15 million combined views. Totals are quantified by views of each film. ...

Back when Animation Guild staff (me) drove out to Cal Arts to look at new films by new, young talent, the major studios were raiding the department like crazy. Disney Feature was growing its staff hand over fist as it developed Beauty and the Beast, Alladin, and Lion King. Television animation was rocketing along. It wasn't unusual to see second-year students get snatched up and spirited away to the San Fernando Valley, all of twenty-three miles away.

Today things are different. Movies are digital and on-line. The tidy little animation industry that was nested snugly in Burbank has gone global. CG has taken over; board artists and animators work in far-blung parts of the globe, with pictures developed in Southern California but produced in other geographic locations where the Free Money cascades into eager corporate hands.

Time, she marches on. But Cal Arts continues to produce talent that creates new television shows and movies.