BYU’s Center for Animation has garnered two significant awards this year. In May, animation students won E3’s College Game Competition, an important honor in the realm of game animation. Now BYU has been named the top animation program with Bachelor of Science programs by Animation Career Review. Capitalizing on a co-operative team model that mirrors the top animation studios, the program produces two capstone projects each year, one animated short and one video game.
This cooperative model has led to many College National Emmys and Student Academy awards over the years for the animated shorts. The video games they have produced have received finalist status in four out of the six years that E3 has held the College Game Competitions — nabbing their first win this year. Alums of the BYU Center of Animation are working in many recognizable studios including Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks and BlueSky. To watch films, play games and see other work from BYU’s animation students, click here, or to see the full BYU article about the animation program’s recent recognitions, click here.
Recently, Julia Ashworth, Amy Jensen, and undergraduate student Mariah Eames attended the 5th International Theatre for Children and Young People Researchers and Critics forum in Buenos Aires, Argentina (ITYARN). The forum took place from September 17-21. The theme of the forum was “Writing for the new generation, ‘Gen Z,’ ‘iGen’ or ‘Centennials.’ Where is TYA Going?” Julia Ashworth and Mariah Eames presented on the processes they went through as two white, non-Latina women adapting and directing Romeo y Julieta. How do you present and invite a minority culture into the dominant one? They discussed the processes they used to adapt the script and ways they brought Latino voices into the process.
Amy Jensen also presented her research around the theatre students who were victims in the Parkland shooting in Florida and how they presented themselves to the nation via social media. The title of Amy’s work is “No More Thoughts and Prayers: What the Performance of Youth Protest in Real-World and Online Communities Might Tell Us About the Future of Theatre with Young People”, which is about how the online and live protests of young people might help us to see them better as collaborators with us rather than receivers of our work. The case study is about the Parkland student’s public and activist response to the shootings at their school. Closely aligned with ASSITEJ, ITYARN, the research branch of ASSITEJ, is held internationally every three years. This smaller forum for the Argentine chapter is held every other year. Paper presentations were in both English and Spanish. English speakers were provided with headphones. Julia has found the international perspective of these forums, particularly the ASSITEJ conference which focuses more on production, to be invaluable to her in her role as Young Company producer.
This is the last week to go see Young Company’s production of The World’s Strongest Librarian on BYU campus before they continue their tour to elementary schools in the area. The show has had considerable success as well as fun surprise visits from the world’s strongest librarian himself, Josh Hanagarne. Don’t miss out on this heartwarming tale about learning to make friends and love learning. For tickets and showtimes, click here.
The Sound and the Fury 