My first walk cycle from class! O: All done with paper and pencil :)

it’s a bit shaky but it came out better than i expected haha

A small rotoscoping exercise from class!

Hi hi! Sorry, I just wanted to say I love your art, your style is really unique and refreshing. I hope you're enjoying the VCA! I finished VCE last year and am on a gap year at the moment but I'm hoping to apply for animation there next year. It sounds like you're having a fab time, I wasn't the anon who sent those asks but your responses were really insightful, thanks! I'm deferring from RMIT at the moment because I figured I should have a backup, but the VCA is the dream ;D have a good day!
◥		blamemarcel

thank you! i had a quick look through your art tag too and gosh you’re amazing!! O: i hope i get to see you here next year :)

yeah, my course has been really fun so far! i’m glad you like my previous responses about it! i’m glad i can help some people wanting to apply, since it’s a pretty nerve-wracking process! (really great that we find out if we’ve gotten in in december though, rather than having to wait until january like a lot of other courses)

i hope you have a good day too! :)

i like junko a whole bunch, dang

in the 9:30-5pm times youre there for the animation course, how much of that time is spent in class? what are the timetables actually like? also do you have any tips for the test? i read somewhere that you also have to pick two of the project ideas you have that you want to complete while studying at VCA, do you have to actually stick to those or is it just to give them an example of what youre interested in doing? :o
◥		Anonymous

Class times are 9:30am-1pm Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Tuesdays we’d have guest lectures instead of the morning class and then a 2-4:30pm class, but we had our last guest lecture last week so I get a nice Tuesday morning sleep-in now :)

After the morning classes on the other days, there’s 2-5pm studio time but you can pretty much leave whenever you want because it’s mostly unsupervised project time. One of my tutes pointed out last week, though, that if you’re not prepared to spend until 5pm every day animating when your big assignments roll around, you should forget about this course.

You don’t have to actually stick to those two ideas, but I’d suggest coming up with ideas that aren’t vague. They’ll ask questions about your story ideas, so get into the mindset that you will make them, basically. Ummm, I got no feedback on my test or interview, so I’m not really sure how many tips I can give you? Going to their information night around September really, really helps, I found.

They’re really looking for visual thinkers, so even in the written story part of the test, you need to show that. I’m very much a visual thinker, so my writing style already was very physically descriptive. My 9-image test was in full colour in a style I believed was suitable for animation, and you can see one slide I posted online here! Try not to include only a literal representation of the theme you choose, since they get sick of seeing that. I know it’s hard because you aren’t allowed dialogue, though! The two themes I got to choose from were “the road” (what I chose) and “a dog’s life”.

For the folio, they really like seeing both the finished product and how you got there! I included screenshots of my sketch, ink, colour and effects/shading stages for my pictures, and since I took along my year 12 Media animation, I also included my initial character designs. Take your sketchbook along, too, to show that you draw a lot and how you think, creatively speaking. For the rest of the interview, talk a lot! Be confident! If you’re really intent on getting into this course, make it known. If I didn’t get in, I was planning to try again the next year, and that’s what they want to hear, especially because the spots are so limited that they can’t always fit every single person who deserves to get in.

-edit-

and one more thing!!! What they are looking for is not necessarily your skill-level or experience. They want students who have potential!

how many does the vca take in for bachelor of film and television (undergrad)? and do you know how many were straight from high school? also, does vca accept many interstate students? x
◥		Anonymous

I think it’s about 16 people? Between 16-20 perhaps. I don’t know how many were straight from high school, though o:

And yeah, they really do! A third of the people in my class come from other states, including South Australia, NSW and Queensland. There’s also some other Film and TV students from New Zealand, WA, even Germany O: So it’s really not uncommon at all!

hey! im thinking of applying for VCA with the same course youre doing. i was wondering how good you think the course is and why you chose to do it at VCA instead of other universities such as RMIT
◥		Anonymous

So far, I think it’s great! The work’s been steady, and so far it’s easy to get it done within the 9:30am-5pm hours so I can relax when I get home and on weekends :)

Honestly, I didn’t go to many open days. I really recommend doing so!! Look into a lot of courses. I didn’t, and I’m just lucky I found and got into an amazing course, because I neglected to do the RMIT animation course’s test. Granted, it was because I put all my energy into VCA’s test, but really do try to go for as many courses as you can. I just got lucky! O:

The facilities and the tutes really sold it for me! As in my previous Ask, the facilities are really great, and as soon as I walked into the animation studio on their open day, I knew I wanted to spend the next three years of my life studying there. It’s a very comfortable place to work, and the tutes are always ready to help if you need it, and you get a lot of independent time to work on your various assignments so working has never felt forced for me :)

An animation student at RMIT told me last year though that I should give up on getting into the VCA because they’re so exclusive, and that I should go for RMIT, even though she said their equipment wasn’t so great but they got by. Um, that didn’t really sell RMIT to me, honestly :s Good thing I didn’t give up, right?

A thing to note about VCA is that their courses aren’t very business based. From what I’ve heard, places like Monash and RMIT will teach you more about how to do commercial work, please clients, and deal business, but VCA is more focused on the actual art, stories, and independent, unique ideas. I’m not saying that either is better than the other, because I think that both the commercial and visionary sides of art are really important, but it’s just something to consider when thinking about courses. That being said, both of the animation tutes currently work in the animation industry, with one of them working on a stop-motion music video for a client at the moment, so they’ve have been telling us a bit about the business; though it’s not a huge focus of the course, at least not right now.

thanks for the info about VCA. I'm really interested in going! What's it like, generally? Are the facilities cool? What's the local hangout? Do you interact much with the other specialisations? I really want to do screenwriting, I think its a pretty new specialisation, so I'm trying to find out everything I can. I'm sorry that I'm crowding you with questions!!! aha.
◥		Anonymous

Keep in mind that I’ve only been at VCA for less than a semester, but I really love it so far! The facilities are great! As with a bunch of other universities, there’s a separate building/area for each “school” of specialisations/disciplines, so the screenwriting, animation, and film and tv courses all fall under the School of Film and Television. There are lots of editing suites in the Film and TV building, as well a bunch of big filming studios (with blue screens) that can be booked, a cute student lounge/kitchen/garden, and the whole place is always nice and neat!

I only really know about the animation studios’ facilities in detail, though, so to give you an idea of the quality, I’ll tell you a bit about them :) Each animation student gets their own workstation, with a big desk, a light box, a huge Mac computer and a medium Wacom Intuos (i think there are some Intuos3s and some Intuos4s or Intuos5s). We have a few rostrum camera rooms, a construction room (for stop-motion stuff) and a stop-motion studio. You’ll need to buzz through every door in the building if you stay after 5pm on weekdays or come in on weekends, since it’s a pretty tight lock-up. Screenwriters may have it a fair bit slacker (I know composers do) but the general VCA hours, although they differ slightly from discipline to discipline, are 9:30am-5pm monday to friday. The difference for animation is just that we get fridays off.

I think the Bachelor of Screenwriting takes a group of around 25, from memory? But they only started this year, along with the Bachelor of Animation, so that might change!

As for the “local hangout”, we only have one on-campus place to get food, but that’s the cafe, and it’s super cute, I love it!!! It’s fairly priced for a cafe, so I don’t think it’s so bad, and it’s decorated really well! Heaps of people hang out there, especially because there’s a huge grass area right outside it where people can smoke and just sit outside in the middle of all the discipline buildings. To be honest, the Visual Art area is my favourite, and you’ll see why immediately if you go check it out, but the Theatre building looks really cute too!

A lot of other specialisations seem to interact, but because we’re the smallest specialisation, us animators seem to have gotten a reputation for being tight-knit. I’ve made a few acquaintances from other specialisations already, though, and I hope to work with a lot more on projects later on! There’s an official VCA facebook group for first years, so it’s really good for networking for that kind of stuff!

And noooo don’t be sorry, I love talking about myself, and this counts :P

Hey, I was wondering, did you go straight from high school to VCA? How many people do they take each year for each specialisation?
◥		Anonymous

I did! My Media teacher went to the VCA for Film & Television when he was studying, and told me that they often take mature-aged students because they tend to have more experience and more refined ideas. But I got in on the A-list or whatever that means :’) I was one of their first choices, I guess? There’s about eight students in my class (including me) who are straight from high-school, and the others took either a year or two off studying or transferred from other university/TAFE courses.

I don’t know about the other specialisations, but for my Bachelor of Fine Arts (Animation), they were going to take 10 but opened up two extra spots and took 12 in total. Since we’re the first year for the Bachelors course though, I’m not sure if they’ll change that number in the future! They plan on doing some construction work so they can even fit in a new year of BoFA(A) students next year as well as us, so we’ll see! I think there’s only five or so Masters of Animation students, too! o:

However, we are the smallest undergraduate specialisation! I think the other specialisations take around 16-30? But don’t quote me on that, haha!

A friend and I made a Facebook community group for Dangan Ronpa fans in Victoria today, so I made a header for it! Check out the group here if you’re interested in joining :)

some fakey fake band posters i made for a stop-motion set for uni! :)

My art's facebook page!

this is the last time i’ll post a link to it, since there’s now a permanent link on my new theme’s sidebar! :)

i’ll be posting a lot of WIPs that i don’t want to clutter my tumblr with there, as well as talking about selling at conventions and other arty stuff :)

Likes and Shares are very much appreciated!

YOU SEE! 50 likes already. You got nothing to lose, and nothing to fear!
◥		Anonymous

yikes!! i got a push notification on my phone, which is super cute haha but yes it’s really flattering, espec considering how i haven’t really put anything up yet ;v;

i’m going to bed soon and i’ve been tired after work so i’ll make a cute link here and actually put some content on it tomorrow :) i want to get a new theme for this blog too so i’ll work on all that :)

make a page and link it here! I'll like it!
◥		nightram

awww, thanks! ;v; i actually am at the moment, but i have work in less than an hour so i’ll post a link when i get back :)

You have literally nothing to lose if you make a Facebook page. Legitimately nothing bad could come of it. I say go ahead, why not.
◥		Anonymous

i could feel embarrassed if nobody Likes it haha