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Painting Byte Numbers
Cogswell College leads the pack among digital art colleges
By Kelly Wilkinson
Up in the northern section of Sunnyvale, the low-slung, gray industrial buildings slump away from the road, belying any creative work that may be going on inside. Cogswell College inhabits one of those buildings on Bordeaux Drive--and, despite its drab exterior, students at the school have been steadily and inconspicuously producing some of the most cutting-edge, technology-based art in the nation. Former Cogswell students have gone on to work on top animation movies such as Toy Story, Antz and A Bug's Life and various commercial animation projects including the M&M characters and the Pillsbury Dough Boy.
Cogswell's alumni updates mention industry trend-setters like George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic, LucasArts, Pixar, and Pacific Data Images(PDI). Some of the top companies provide a direct link to Cogswell on their web pages, within their list of recommended digital art and computer animation programs.
Cogswell is one of the first four-year colleges in the country to offer a bachelor of arts degree in digital art and animation and is quickly earning a worldwide reputation as one of the best.
Tim Harrington, the provost for the college of visual and performing arts, assembled the program with Paul Schreivogel, Cogswell's marketing and recruiting director, when they recognized the potential for an explosion in the computer animation field. In 1991, Paul was running recruiting programs at high schools and started fielding more and more questions about the emerging field of digital art.
"A lot of [the idea] came from Paul's experience on the road and having students come up and ask him about digital art and animation. They wanted the step beyond what was being offered," Harrington says.
Both Harrington and Schreivogel were monitoring the graphic design and film industries and started noticing an integration of computer-generated imagery and motion pictures that wasn't being addressed in any schools. Most of the computer art classes being offered were floating in an undefined area somewhere between computer science and technology classes, Harrington explains. So it was a matter of plucking it out of its shadowy environs and creating an entirely new program around the idea of computer-based art.
"We put a lot of ideas into the toaster and up pops 'computer video imaging,' " he says. "The concept had been there, but we were the right surfer on the right wave."
And students have been clamoring for a ride on that same wave. The CVI enrollment has experienced a 30- to 40-percent growth rate per year, and has also started a sister school in Oregon.
Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Toby Newell creates a foam character for a claymation movie he's producing.
Cogswell student Rachel Wilson took some classes in a computer-based drafting class as part of a technical program in high school and felt she was getting closer to where her interests lay, but wasn't quite there yet.
"It was really boring," she said. "I was always trying to draw cartoons on the program but it wasn't made for that. So that helped me realize that I was in the wrong area."
At the time she was looking for potential colleges, she started scouting around for art colleges, and since she also had an interest in computers, Cogswell emerged as the logical choice.
Ivan Todorov, a Bulgarian student, found Cogswell through the Internet. He first came across the name on Pacific Data Image's website, which lists Cogswell as one of the top schools for computer/digital animation.
"But then, the name kept popping up everywhere I looked," Todorov says.
Todorov credits Cogswell for providing students with a glimpse of what's possible in the computer arts and animation field, but then stepping back to let students take the initiative in getting there.
"They teach the concepts, and then leave you alone to create on your own," he says.
And he should know something about creating things: at 20 years old, he's now the creative director of Enluminent, a design studio and production house he helped start that has now evolved into a full-fledged advertising agency, which has done work for Doritos and Kodak.
"Cogswell has really shown me where I can be, and helped me to get there," Todorov says.
One of the tenets of the program and a reason for its success, say Harrington and Schreivogel, is the stock they place in the students' fine art capabilities both before they are students as well as throughout their course of study.
"The foundation of digital art is fine art," Schreivogel says. "So we look at their drawings first and then their reel. In computer art, the tools are like a paintbrush, and they can use those tools to paint a canvas, whatever that canvas may be. But first and foremost, they've got to bring in the art background."
This is evidenced by a turn through Cogswell's classroom and halls, which are lined with graceful, wiry sculptures and abstract and realistic paintings. Tacked up in one studio are loose, accurate figure drawings and sketches of bodies in motion.
Harrington explains that in some examples of poor animation, a figure looks like it's floating through a scene, unanchored to any surface or realistic portrayal of movement. He blames this on a shaky understanding of movement.
"[Motion studies] is key to understanding animation," Harrington says. "If there's a problem with grounding or the character looks like they're slipping along instead of walking, [a lack of knowledge of motion studies] is probably why."
Mike Schultz delicately moves a drummer character, which bears a striking resemblance to its creator.
Cogswell emphasizes the critical storytelling element in animation and offers classes in scriptwriting, storyboarding and storytelling. Cogswell also requires math and science classes to reinforce the technical aspects of computer-based animation and art.
Students are guaranteed access to technology with a one-to-one computer-student ratio. Todorov says this is essential to the learning process.
"Everything is very hands-on here, and there are always enough computers to get your work done," he says.
Harrington and Schreivogel are careful to keep some distance from the word "multimedia" in their descriptions of Cogswell, to separate themselves from the recent boom of non-accredited schools that have been cropping up in the industry.
"Multimedia is the new buzzword, but no one really knows what that means," Schreivogel says.
"It's like honey," Harrington say. "It keeps dripping and oozing, and no one can hold onto it but it keeps sticking."
He returns to the wave analogy.
"The schools at the front edge of the wave will get the best ride, and keep advancing. When more and more people try to get on that wave, it starts to break down and it waters down the quality of the product. We plan on staying out on the front edge and continuing to move our students to the next level."
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
