New Trainees to Bolster Booming French 3D Animation Industry.
Leading European CGI studio TeamTO announced at Annecy the formation of a new educational project: a consolidated and free animation school in Bourg-lès-Valence, (Drôme), l’Écas for students with no prior experience or training. The school’s remit will be to offer 25 students a year (aiming at classes of 50 in the future) with a 6-month course in 3D animation which will provide them with the skills necessary to start a professional career within the TV and film animation industry.
Guillaume Hellouin, President of TeamTO, commented, “Ten years ago I set up a similar training program in Vietnam where there was no significant production. The school was the seed that became what is Vietnam’s thriving 3D animation industry today, so I am very optimistic about the impact that training and education can have on increasing the talent pool for France’s extremely busy and demanding market.”
TeamTO plans to run the school in partnership with, and on the campus of, world-renowned animation school La Poudrière in Bourg-lès-Valence, next to one of TeamTO’s own state-of-the-art studios. The plan has been developed in collaboration with the School of Second Chances in an effort to expand the pool of domestic creative talent for the booming French animation industry by recruiting from unconventional sources.
In a unique approach, the training program will be open to candidates with no previous qualifications or experience, selected entirely on the basis of their natural ability and talent. Anyone over 18 – with or without a degree or training – can apply for initial consideration through a simple on-line test accessible with a browser, smart phone or tablet. The results will be used to select the top 100 contenders who display the best natural aptitude for animating. A second, more sophisticated and complex test, followed by a personal interview, will serve to identify the top and final 25 candidates.
The curriculum will cover: designing character in 3D, mastering animation software, preparing backgrounds, and working in a creative team. The first three months will be spent on learning basic skills, which will then be applied and perfected on group projects for the rest of the term. The curriculum will also include art history lectures, during which the students will acquire broad basic knowledge of the world of animation and will be exposed to key classical works. The school is scheduled to launch in 2018.
TeamTO is renowned for producing some of the most sophisticated CGI animation in the market such as 4 seasons of their own Emmy-winning series Angelo Rules (also on Super RTL) and My Knight on Me (airing on Cartoon Network worldwide), Activision Blizzard’s Skylanders Academy, eOne’s PJ Masks, Disney’s Elena of Avalor and Sofia the First, and Ubisoft’s Rabbids Invasion.
