Animation
The award winning undergraduate animation program at KCAI provides students with a creatively designed and comprehensive educational experience. Students learn to fully realize their artistic potential and to take charge of their careers upon graduation. The department is committed to the exploration and celebration of all facets of the art of animation.
Experienced animation faculty provide intensive instruction in classical, experimental and digital animation with a special commitment to historical context and professional practice. One approach or point of view is never prioritized over another. Instead, the foundation of our method is to emphasize the hybridization of established methods with advances in current technology and inspired new approaches.
Our three-year animation curriculum is organized into a suite of sequential courses that progressively nurture the creative process through combining aspects of animation principals, concept modeling, production methods and history into each project. Classes within the major have planned synergies which develop all of the essential skills necessary for students to successfully create work within both personal and professional contexts.
In order to fully celebrate the diversity of the medium and to allow students the time required to develop a significant personal work, senior level majors are offered studio courses devoted to producing a short graduation animation project that exemplifies their mastery of the medium to date. This approach fully prepares students to enter the field with a strong portfolio and a well-rounded sense of artistic and technical confidence.
Professional practice is a compulsory component of all instruction and every animation major benefits directly from interaction with world-renowned visiting animation artists, scholars and professionals. These generous mentors present their work and engage with students in one on one critiques and group workshops.
Upon graduation, students are fully prepared for entry-level work within the animation industry or to seek and create opportunities as freelance independent artists. Professional opportunities may include animation studios, feature film and television production, independent short-form film festivals, museum exhibition, teaching and corporate media.
Many of our graduates have gone on to further their studies at top graduate schools such as Cal Arts.
Current software applications being taught include Adobe Photoshop, After Effects and Flash, Autodesk Maya, Final Cut Pro and Dragonframe.
Jobs and internships
In addition to an ever-growing list of screenings in national and international film festivals, such as the Ottawa International Animation Festival, three of our graduates won a silver Student Academy Award in 2010 for their film, "Dried Up." Visit our YouTube channel to see the film.
KCAI Animation majors have worked or interned for the following studios and institutions: Disney, DreamWorks, Digital Domain, Nickelodeon, Hallmark, Shadow Machine Films, Bill Plympton Studio, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Bazillion Pictures, T2, MK12, Intake Studios, Encyclopedia Pictura, Dream Studio, Fuzzy Duck Design, Titmouse Inc., Panda Panther, Grasshorse and Threehouse Studio.
Check out the animation blog
Animation Faculty
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Doug Hudson, associate professor and chair of animation
Douglas Hudson is a multimedia artist, musician and educator. Hudson is associate professor and chair of the...
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Douglas Hudson is a multimedia artist, musician and educator. Hudson is associate professor and chair of the Student Academy Award-winning animation department he established for the Kansas City Art Institute in 2004.
His minimalist approach to animation ranges from stream of consciousness abstraction to short narratives using hand drawn, digital and stop motion techniques. He also produces and composes all the sound and music for his films.
At Warner Brothers in Glendale, Calif., he animated for the online Flash-based cartoons Gotham Girls and Lobo and was a member of the first team of animators to produce original Looney Tunes shorts for the Internet in 2000-2001.
Hudson earned a B.F.A. degree in animation from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and an M.F.A. degree in experimental animation from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia under the mentorship of Jules Engel.
Hudson is currently working on a new film about snakes, tall grass and one very unfortunate bird. Entitled “Tale of the Naïve,” the film's expected release date is January 2012.
Douglas Hudson on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/doughudson
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Christoph Steger, assistant professor
Christoph Steger is an animation director whose films explore the grey areas between traditional animation and observational...
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Christoph Steger is an animation director whose films explore the grey areas between traditional animation and observational documentary. His animated films are subtle studies of characters, places and events.
Steger believes that animation can access aspects of reality that lie beneath the surface of what is visible. By using animation, he highlights the subjective nature of all kinds of documentary work.
His work has been screened on television in the United Kingdom and Europe and was shown at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, the Ottawa International Animation Festival, the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival and numerous other international film festivals.
In 2007, the Arts Council England and Channel Four funded scheme Animate! commissioned his film "Jeffery and the Dinosaurs," a mixed media documentary that explores the work and struggles of outsider science fiction artist Jeffery Marzi.
As part of the London animation community, Christoph has worked on a wide range of commercial and cultural projects for BBC, Channel Four, Amnesty International and other British and European clients.
Christoph holds a B.A. degree in visual communication from the Hochschule RheinMain in Wiesbaden, Germany. In 2004, he received a scholarship for postgraduate studies in art and design from the German Academic Exchange Service and went on to earn an M.A. degree in animation from the Royal College of Art in London.
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Liz Van Verth, assistant professor
After graduating cum laude from Syracuse University in 1995 with a B.F.A. degree in illustration, Liz Van Verth moved to Brooklyn, NY...
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After graduating cum laude from Syracuse University in 1995 with a B.F.A. degree in illustration, Liz Van Verth moved to Brooklyn, NY. Soon after arriving in the city, she established a position in network news at NBC. After demonstrating excellence in learning and implementing digital technology, Liz progressed from still graphic artist for the Nightly News to 3-D animator for Dateline.
Much of her commercial work encompasses reenactment and medical animation as well as freelance design for clients that include MTV, Manhattan Transfer, Inc., Team V Creative and Writers and Readers Publishers. In 2005 her animation was featured in the Pratt Manhattan Gallery show, "Cut and Construction," demonstrating a complicated dress pattern by Madeline Vionnet.
In May 2007, Van Verth received an M.F.A. degree with distinction and honors in outstanding merit in digital arts from Pratt Institute. Her thesis animation "Par Avion" won best concept at the Pratt Show. It has screened at the Brooklyn International Film Festival, Rhode Island International Film Festival, NYC ACM SIGGRAPH METROCAF, San Francisco Women’s Film Festival and Kansas City Filmmaker’s Jubilee.
Today, Van Verth continues to create freelance commercial animation as well as her own personal work in her spare time. In 2009, she participated in Art Sounds at KCAI with musicians from the Pangea Piano Project, Blas Gonzalez and Ya-Ting Liou. She also hopes to help promote and feature animation and technology more prominently in the Kansas City art community. Her main focus, of course, is to teach digital animation and technology to her students and help them pursue the many diverse career opportunities in animation.
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John Baker, lecturer
John Baker joined KCAI in 2010 and teaches courses in digital media and animation. Previously he was an animator with MK12, a Kansas...
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John Baker joined KCAI in 2010 and teaches courses in digital media and animation. Previously he was an animator with MK12, a Kansas City-based motion graphics firm, where he was responsible for generating concepts for clients from storyboards to final animation and worked as editor and data manager on national and international film and video production. At MK12 he was responsible for shooting footage, including client work and internal short films, and he handled filming and processing green-screen footage, rotoscope work and various visual effects. Before that he was an animator with Video Post Productions in Kansas City, where he worked in 2-D and 3-D animation for national and international clients. He has worked on projects for the Salvation Army, Oregon Lottery, Microsoft, BBDO, Harmonix, Swiss Air International, Fox Television, Mastercard, Universal Pictures and Budweiser, to name just a few.
