If you grew up in the midwest surrounded by blue and white collar jobs, animation was the thing you watched as a kid, and art transitioned from highschool to hobby. Computers were just making it into Highschools, and students used them for writing essays, and very slowly…surfing the internet. Cell phones flipped back then too.
I remember the realization it took an artist with a computer to make Master Chief in Halo run around and shoot aliens. It took a different artist to make Buzz Lightyear and Woody talk and make it onto a moving van.
In 2010 I moved from Pratt KS, to Redmond Washington to attend Digipen Institute of Technology and earn my Bachelor of Arts in Digital Art and Animation. As students, we learned Traditional Art and Traditional Animation techniques for the first two years, and we didn’t touch digital. The last two years of the program, we switched to an emphasis on Digital Art. 2D Animation was “Dead“ and 3D animation was “The Future“.
There was a divide with Artists who worked in Movies, and those who worked in Video Games. You had to pick one, and stay on that path.
