An Interdisciplinary Approach to Teaching Computer Animation to Artists and Computer Scientists

Abstract

Animation has always required a close collaboration between artists and scientists, poets and engineers. Current trends in computer animation have made successful and effective teamwork a necessity. To address these issues, we have developed an interdisciplinary computer animation course for artists and scientists that focuses on contemporary issues in computer aninmation. This course emphasizes collaborative teams for practical experience, cross-mixing of student expertise, and group-based education: the students leam from each other, as well as lhe instructors. Student teams produce a professional aninmation that extends the capabilities of a conmmercial animation package to gain experience in and exposure to the state-of-the-art research in computer animation and rendering, the complete animation process, and the artistic and aesthetics of computer animation. We describe our approach to teaching this course, the structure of the course, the results, and lessons learned from our experience with the first offering of this course (Spring 1999).