Career opportunities strong
Animation, game design, and video added as new majors A lot has changed in the decade since The Cleveland Institute of Art first established its digital arts major, T.I.M.E.-Digital Arts (for technology and integrated media environment). Among the most compelling developments has been the extraordinary growth in career opportunities in animation, game design, and video. In response, faculty in the Integrated Media Environment spent more than two years developing a detailed plan to create new majors in each of these areas. In May the National Association of Schools of Art and Design, one of the Institute’s key accrediting bodies, approved this plan for the three new majors. The first students will enter these majors in fall 2011. “These new majors draw on the current strengths of our faculty and our facilities to offer students new options in the areas of animation, game design, and video which are in line with contemporary developments in digital arts,” said Associate Professor Kristen Baumlier, chair of the Integrated Media Environment, which includes the T.I.M.E. Department.
Highlights of the new majors
animation
%The animation BFA will focus on areas such as character design, the study of
Teresa Crockett ’10 and Technical Assistant Jeff Mancinetti ’09 test the green screen setup for a video shoot for her T.I.M.E.-Digital Arts BFA project, “Medianoia.”
2D /3D computer animation, stop-motion animation, acting, choreography, motion-capture mechanics, lighting, texture mapping, background plate and set creation, rendering methodologies, voice recording, and video and sound design. Students will also be able to work with CIA’s new motion capture system, which will be accessible this fall.
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game design video
Students majoring in game design will work with innovative production processes including 3D modeling, animation, programming, visual design, audio, interactive storytelling, and game production while exploring theory, criticism, and contexts of videogame culture and digital media.
majors will focus on using the entire linear media production pipeline, including using digitally-based art and design strategies, storyboarding, sequencing, concept mapi Video ping, acting, pre-production, and post-production. The curriculum will provide historical context to film and will explore the cultural and social effects of video and digital media. In addition, video majors will enjoy using CIA’s new 40-seat, HD, surround-sound screening room, which will be named in honor of Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel. The T.I.M.E.-Digital Arts major will remain an option for students, as a more interdisciplinary and less specialized approach to time-based media.
McCullough building transformed after productive summer
The Joseph McCullough Center for the Visual Arts was a hive of activity this summer, with construction workers reconfiguring space by tearing down some walls and constructing others, replacing windows, recreating historic molding; and installing the last of the ductwork that allows the entire building to be air conditioned for the first time in its 96-year history. To keep students up-to-date on construction as it is completed during the fall semester, the Institute’s marketing and facilities departments will post messages on a special Facebook page. Faculty and staff members receive weekly e-mail updates, and the CIA website will feature monthly updates at cia.edu. The Facilities Department also hosted tours of the McCullough building during the first week of school. Facilities Director Howard Weiner said some sections of the building will be completed as “shelled spaces” by the end of the year, with final touches to be added when the Institute is ready to move the appropriate departments into those spaces. For instance, a large portion of the ground floor on the Euclid Avenue side will house the library, once CIA has vacated the Gund Building, where the library is now housed. Until that major transfer of the library collection takes place, the future library space will remain empty. The McCullough renovation, which is Phase I of the overall campus modernization and unification project, will be completed by the end of December. Phase II, the construction of a visually distinctive new building immediately west of and fully interconnected to McCullough, is slated to begin in 2011.
Studio spaces for glass (left) and painting (above) have new, energy efficient windows, lights, and air conditioning.
Windgate intern explores museum’s glass collection
Glass major Robert Coby spent an illuminating summer researching the studio glass collection at the
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Cleveland Museum of Art in a highly coveted Windgate internship. His assignments were to use the museum’s library to research glass art from around the world; study the museum’s collection of 20th and 21st century glass; compare it with public collections in Toledo and Pittsburgh as well as two prominent private collections in Greater Cleveland; and complete a report with ideas for acquisitions, exhibition display, and interpretation of the museum’s glass collection. Funded by the University of North Carolina’s Center for Craft, Creativity and Design (CCCD), Windgate internships are open to graduate and undergraduate students nationwide. “I was thrilled when it worked out that Robert was from CIA but that wasn’t a prerequisite,” said Coby’s supervisor, Stephen Harrison (pictured at left with Cody), curator of decorative art and design. “We received applications from all over the country; so it speaks to the quality of CIA that Robert rose to the top. It’s been extremely beneficial to us. I think it’s worked out really well for Robert too.” For Coby, the opportunity was golden. “I’ve learned a lot and seen a lot of glass. I’m supposed to be getting a finger on who will be the famous glass artists of the future and I’ve found hundreds.” Asked whether his research sparked any new ideas for his own work, Coby said “I already have an idea of what I’m going to start making for my BFA but this research is definitely going to influence the way I think about growing from that point.” This is the fifth year CCCD has partnered with museums in the U.S. and U.K. to provide art students with internships to work with craft collections. The other three museums chosen to receive internship underwriting this year were the Oakland Museum of California; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
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