Why Framestore backed our new Animation & VFX course at Bucks

Right behind us

Last year Head of Animation at Framestore Kevin Spruce signed off on our new Animation & Visual Effects course at Bucks, acting as what is known as "an external examiner". Being an external examiner involves vetting a course to make sure it is fit for purpose. In our case, that means preparing our students to be able to animate animals and creatures to a professional level, and making sure that our graduates are capable of finding work in the expanding animation and visual effects industry. Framestore are one of London's leading VFX houses, a world leader in visual effects, and the people who brought you the astonishing digital work on Gravity.

We hear a lot about skills shortages in industry, but there is no substitute for speaking to leading figures at our best companies to find out what skills they need, and where the shortages are. For many years animation schools have focused largely on character animation - that's the Pixar-style stuff, teaching students to give a character performance.

Framestore did the bears

Creature work is a bit different. Companies like Framestore have to be able to re-create lifelike and photo-real animal and creature performance and then - and this is the really tricky bit - layer in a character performance on top. Think of the armoured bears in Golden Compass, animated by Framestore, and you start to get the idea of how difficult a task this can be.

We're aiming to give our students a solid grounding in this kind of animal and creature work, so that our graduates can take aim at the best visual effects houses in Soho, find employment, and build themselves a satisfying career.

---Alex

For more about the experience of studying at Bucks New University, come and visit us at one of our Open Days,  take a virtual tour of one of our animation studios, check out what our students think of our course, and see why we're ranked in the top 12 creative universities in the UK. Find out why we're giving free laptops to all our students, and why we give all our students free access to videos at Lynda.com. Also, see what financial assistance might be available to you. Learn which is better for animation, a PC or a Mac? Get hold of a copy of a map so you can find your way around campus, and learn about motion capture at Bucks. And find out about how our online video tutorials work.