Questions to ask before you pick an Animation college

How to choose an animation college

You may not get to know from anywhere about the reputation of the college. Asking few relevant questions will give you an insight into what the institute can offer you.

Our expert Neelu Kapoor shares few important parameters you need to keep in mind while selecting an Animation school for yourself.

1. Faculty: Mainly meet the faculty or the Centre Head. If they are passionate about the subject, then that's the place. Meet them and talk to them. See if what they tell you starts changing your understanding about the field. It is good to see some faculty films or students films. However, in India some schools put faculty full time on movies so this criteria may fail, since the intent is to see if the faculty after returning home has enough passion to work on his own movie short. This field is about passion and commitment. These are infectious diseases. If the institute faculty is about passion, well you're in for a bout of passion very soon.
2. Labs and Infrastructure (If Applicable): Surely Labs must have a good hardware starting with C2D and going to QuadCore/ i3/ i5/ i7. However, it is more important that the systems be equipped with Graphic Cards to run 3D Applications. Other things would definitely include cameras, tripods.
3. Reputation from Industry perspective and placement: It does matter what the industry thinks about the institute more than what the UGC thinks. Check out the Placement Records more than promises. Suspect every guarantee. Remember that even your Dad cannot guarantee a career. Remember, your Career is a resultant of your knowledge combined with your passion and expression ability.
   
   
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4. General environment and fee: Don't go by appearances, a simple college with a good library is better than a flashy one with none. Beware of too flashy campuses. It shows where the investment goes. A good college would rather buy more books than repaint every 2 months.

Questions to ask while talking to the Institute:

1.     Ask why you should take the course. Now if they tell you why without asking you the answer, then there is an issue. Since career is about you.
2.     See if they dig up information about you before they start advising you about yourself.
3.     Ask to see their library. See if they stock books on concepts of animation more than about the software.
4.     Ask to see the movies made by the faculty. Now check if they made it at home or in office. Ask the faculty directly on what projects they work on at home. If they work on nothing at home then they are not passionate enough. If they made it in office, then there is something wrong since world over the faculty are doing a lot of work at home.
5.     Ask them about their assessment methodology. Check if the assessment includes panel reviews (since a single person judgment is not ideal for an opinion based field).
6.     Also check about the additional learning opportunities like workshops, internships, studio partnerships which allow a student to work under real studio environments.

Neelu Kapoor has studied BE and MBA and is the Director and Centre Head of Arena Animation, Chandigarh.