Animation Design

Moving images are part of our everyday lives. Everybody today has access to someone else’s stories – which may or may not include images. Thanks to screens, billboards with moving images, tablets and smartphones, information is available to us, whenever and wherever we want. New media like YouTube allow us to be creators and viewers at the same time.

Despite this rapid technological development, the academic question remains relevant: Which stories move us? When does something become meaningful to us? When does something lack meaning? And how do you create a meaningful story? At Animation Design, the focus is on the development of a personal style of storytelling. Our programme helps students find a personal balance between creating a story and maintaining a professional focus. This personal storytelling style is expressed through the creation of art films as well as through applied productions, such as commercials, user manuals, banners and informational items.

Students develop ideas into full stories, news items and informational products. Professional products that they both author and create. They also develop partial products, such as storyboards or characters. This study programme looks at traditional and new working methods, techniques and media. The nature of the story determines the choice of medium (live action film, stop-motion, drawn animation, 3D animation). In no other visual arts discipline does sound play such a crucial part.

The programme’s most relevant aspects are its focus on storytelling, its interdisciplinary character and its media-independent design. An animator is first and foremost a storyteller who conveys a story through film. ArtEZ believes that the creation of content – or in other words ‘authorship’ – is of crucial importance.

Animation from Sophie Kaars Sijpesteijn on Vimeo.

 Student Animation Design