Animation classes spring to life for fall semester
Stephanie White, Staff Writer
Published On: 06/22/2009
The new classes will include everything from motion capturing to flash animation.
Instructor Christopher Lowther is the teaching head for the new program and truly feels the students have an overall excitement towards the new classes being offered.
“Video and time-based media are the sexy new area. It’s the newest child to fine arts,” Lowther said.
The Department of Art and Art History is one of UAB’s majoring contributing schools and according to the department chair, Erin Wright, it provides more than an educational experience.
“The Department of Art and Art History is a crucial asset to UAB because a university education that leads to a rich and fulfilling life is not just about what job you do, but the appreciation of creation and aesthetics in the world,” Wright said.
“To me, the idea of a ‘universal’ education is not that of a job training institution but a place where a person can become an educated and therefore more responsible and productive member of society,” says Wright.
The new time-based media classes will only be furthering the creative development that the department is currently offering and students enrolled in the program will be learning the latest and greatest in the animation world.
The classes are attracting majors from across the spectrum and not just those interested in time-based media. “I don’t get just interest from art students, I am getting interest from film students and student in the sciences who want to create animated simulations for their science projects,” says Lowther.
“Right now we are trying to form a collaboration with the school of engineering advanced visualization lab. They’re dealing with 3D modeling and simulation and [we are] trying to see if there are opportunities to collaborate,” says Lowther.
“Unlike other media, such as painting or printmaking, where elements of time and movement can certainly be implied but are static, time-based media integrates the passage of actual time in the artwork,” says Wright.
While the classes took a year and a half to get finalized, they are still in the beginning phase, but offer a student great potential in the job market. “It is really quite a broad field that could conceivably incorporate everything from kinetic sculpture to cell phone animate,” says Wright.
Lowther says students can go into animation or film. They can even do something in the graphic design sphere in video editing and the use of motion graphics, which he says is seen a lot in ads and commercials.
“Time-based media encompasses animation, video, motion graphics, 3D animation [and] anything that involves time,” says Lowther. He also says this type of animation attracts the youthful minded and spirited. It’s an alluring field of study for those youthful in thought and persona.
One of the things Wright says makes UAB a great place to learn time-based media is professor Lowther himself and the knowledge and expertise he brings to the classroom.
Lowther received a BA in art history, MS in education and a MFA in digital art all from Indiana University Bloomington and moved from his home in Noblesville Indiana for the opportunity to teach the digital program at UAB.
“We have an award winning artist in the field teaching the courses here at UAB. When we went looking for a teacher for our new time-based discipline Professor Lowther was our top candidate. We were very pleased that he accepted our offer to teach at UAB,” says Wright.
This past spring semester the department of Art and Art History offered its first of many classes in the field of time-based media.
Email: sgwhite@uab.edu
