How should animation major get employment?

Chen (/Chen Liaoyu)

For today's topic, as an ordinary teacher, because I haven't systematically studied the overall situation of animation education in China, and I don't have the strategic height and vision of industry leaders, in order to be worthy of everyone sitting here listening to me, I can only talk about my views and thoughts on animation education from the perceptual perspective of a teacher, and it is inevitable to generalize with everyone. To paraphrase a TV station, the guest's remarks only represent personal views, not our position.

I think, in China, people who are engaged in two professions are particularly humiliated in front of people: one is football and the other is animation. Both of them attracted much attention and spent a lot of money, but they were finally cornered. The two unfortunate children even had similar failure experiences. They thought their strength was above Japan and South Korea, but later they were left far behind. So I joked that in fact, every four years, the leaders of the Football Association and the animation leaders of our country are interchangeable, and they are all the same anyway.

However, there is one difference. Everyone says that football in China is not good because the Football Association has long neglected the cultivation of young people. Don't think that China has a population of/kloc-0.3 billion, but the football population is very small. It is said that only a few thousand young players have registered. But animation is just the opposite! In recent years, the animation population in China has been expanding with the intensity of the atomic bomb explosion. Today, I can't tell how many people have * * *, because I haven't personally investigated and counted. I don't like to say those numbers mentioned in countless people's speeches. This is my intuitive feeling. So I think the animation major is very sad, so sad that people can be bullied. Not a wife's wife, but a bully. Why do you say that? For example, agricultural university can offer animation major, and the application for this major can be approved. I would like to ask, if our film academy offers a major like "Veterinary Department" or "Rice Planting", can it be approved? Everyone must think you are crazy! That's ridiculous! This does not mean that animation professionals can be bullied. What does this mean? ! But how many people from top to bottom have thought about this simple truth? Of course, we don't discriminate against others. Professions in every field are worthy of respect. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that animation majors in those schools don't necessarily have good teachers, but it's not enough to have one or two teachers to set up a major in universities. Does it mean that a graduate of the piano department of the Conservatory of Music is assigned to the Film Academy, and the Film Academy can offer piano majors? ! I think he can offer piano lessons, but he can't simply offer such departments, but this happens every day in the field of animation education. What major a university offers should have an academic background and an overall professional atmosphere. For example, even if you don't learn animation well in the Film Academy, or think that the teachers in the Animation Academy are not good, as long as you are not a fool, you won't fool around for four years. Why? Because there is always something you can learn or be interested in in in the whole film academy, and there are also many students in Cao Ying's heart, in the Han Dynasty. I don't mind, as long as he can learn what he wants to learn and do what he wants, it doesn't matter whether he is animated or not. But if you can't learn animation well in the animation major of Agricultural University, do you think it is possible for you to switch to "veterinary medicine" or "bioengineering" or something? Then you really wasted four years! This is one of the reasons why the so-called "animation population" has expanded so rapidly in number, while the animation industry in China has not developed in substantial proportion! Because many of this population are empty! This is like saying that there are/kloc-0 million teenagers playing football in China, but look carefully, there are 9.9 million basketball coaches teaching part-time! So most of it is empty. Many times, I think the status of animation in China is just like that of the product in the illegal pyramid scheme. No one really cares about that product. The important thing is to take it seriously and develop people's brains. Isn't it? Animation education only cares about the number of people who develop, and animation production only cares about the minutes of development.

Of course, it is also good for any school to offer animation major, that is, our graduates have a place to go.

Therefore, animation and animation education in China have really developed digitally in recent years. You can see that the number of students in each meeting, animation production minutes, animation market output value and so on are all being refreshed! Why don't I like to quote specific figures? Because I think it must have been refreshed during our meeting! But no matter how fast the number rises, it is strange that the public's intuitive feelings or we have not made any decent, good-looking, successful and widely influential cartoons! How do you feel if you often attend various animation summits and forums? Anyway, I'm tired of hearing those figures. In animation education, we should not only care about and talk about tens of thousands of students studying animation, but also care about what kind of animation education each specific student has received. What kind of person will he be? Obviously, the latter is ignored. The simple idea is to measure quality first, which seems correct, but it doesn't hold water in practical education. Because your students have increased tenfold, but your educational resources have not increased tenfold, which means that the educational resources occupied by each student are declining. For example, when I was at school, there were only eight students in the whole animation major. At that time, there were five or six teachers, and even the basic professional courses were taught by our teachers. I'm talking about regular teachers, that is, the ratio of students to teachers is 8 to 5 or 6, at least 2 to 1! I have the impression that the average teacher-student ratio in art colleges at that time seemed to be around 1: 2.5. Now, we have developed, with 30 teachers and nearly 400 students! That is 13+0! Some schools recruit thousands of students every session, so what do you think is the ratio? This is like China in the world, if compared with the total, many aspects can be ranked first, but compared with the per capita, it is ranked last! My most intuitive feeling is that when we go to school, there are eight people with two big classrooms, one specialized course and one basic course. Every professional teacher has a four-year site, a big table, and every site is filled with everyone's breath. Later, I visited some animation departments abroad and found that it was the same. Everyone has a fixed little world. I think this kind of atmosphere is particularly important for art study. Everyone is there in a three-dimensional and intuitive way, forming an aura. So, when I got to the classroom, I looked at the many clean tables and chairs. The students sit there neatly, taking small notebooks and taking class notes. It looks like a big class. At first, I felt nothing. As soon as you said start painting next, they began to waste their time. Why? I can't feel it sitting in this position! Let's go back to painting! Honestly, I don't feel it either. Art activities need an environment that I am familiar with, like and comfortable. At this time, the problem appeared. Animation is not math. What the teacher said, you will understand. You will understand. Animation is still a skill at hand! In addition to theory, there are face-to-face communication and personal guidance! It's like teaching sketch in the Academy of Fine Arts. It is impossible for a teacher to tell a theory in class and then say, let's go back to painting. Even if everyone works hard and stays in the classroom to draw pictures, or they hand in their homework, because there are more and more people, the average time for teachers to guide each student is relatively less. Don't get me wrong, I am by no means denying the present development, saying that everything in the past was good. In fact, many conditions, especially equipment, are incomparable in the past. However, art education has its particularity, and art and artists cannot be mass-produced. This is the case all over the world. Because art education needs full communication and collision between people. Otherwise, you can buy any book now, and the network information is all-encompassing. Why do you have to go to school? ! Because there are living people in the school! There is live communication!

Speaking of art and artists, it is estimated that some people will laugh. Animation Institute is not a place to train artists! We should cultivate practical animation talents! I know that many people think that talking about art now is either naive or cynical, which is very sad in itself. But I want to ask, if we don't train artists, how many practical talents have we really trained? I haven't made statistics, but in my memory, what percentage of students who graduated from animation colleges really finally entered the mainstream animation industry? I think it's rare. Why? I think it is like this: a large number of people are really not suitable for training artists, and practical animation talents should be trained, but what about our teaching? Cultivating practical talents is not the best design. Strictly speaking, universities are advanced training institutions with diplomas, so we should hire a large number of people with high level, successful practical experience and still at the forefront of the industrial field to teach! Because they have mastered the most practical things today! But this is a paradox, because the development level of animation industry in China is very low at present. For example, if you want to invite a successful animation director to give a lecture and visit in China, who is the successful animation director? Can't always invite foreign teachers? Even foreign teachers may not be able to teach you the most practical things in China now. Therefore, we can see a rule here to cultivate practical talents, provided that the industry is relatively mature. However, animation is just not in China, or the practicality of China is still at a low level. Therefore, if we really want to train practical talents, our animation education should first strive to train people who train practical talents-that is, to train teachers! And it is to train teachers who have the ability to train practical talents! This kind of training can't rely on teachers' spontaneous efforts, but should be organized and planned, so that teachers have the opportunity, conditions and time to study the actual animation production, and then sum up the laws, experiences and problems from the perspective of education, and then it can be effective when teaching students, instead of the self-promotion education from book to book and from classroom to classroom.

However, if all universities focus on training practical talents, it is undoubtedly to downgrade the university to an employment training institution that can develop Wen Pin. The most successful thing is to cultivate a group of people who adapt to the industry and only adapt to the status quo. So who will change this industry? Who will create new industries? For the current animation industry in China (if it exists temporarily), I think the most important and urgent thing is not to enlarge the development, but to change it. What does this mean? China animation is like ten people walking, but now ten thousand people are walking, so we look like a big scene. However, these 10,000 people did not find that the original ten people were taking the wrong road, but blindly followed. The saddest thing is that they are still in the dark and think they are very excited to walk on Yangguan Avenue. So no matter how many people there are, they are still as far from the target. The result is like looking at things with a magnifying glass, all the mistakes and problems are magnified, so China's animation has not regressed, but why do people feel that there are more problems than before? This is the magnifying glass effect. In fact, the most important thing now is to find out what is wrong at present and study the correct direction and road, that is, change and reform! If all the people trained are people who can only adapt to the status quo, who will shoulder the heavy responsibility of reform and innovation? If the university does not have this consciousness and goal, it will be sad.

Therefore, a good education should not only cultivate people who adapt to the industry, but also cultivate people who improve the industry and even create new industries.

-The dividing line.

(In the last message, there was a shortage of people in animation major of Agricultural University. Let me correct it. When I say "Agricultural University", I don't mean "China Agricultural University". There are many agricultural universities in China. You can enter "Animation Major of Agricultural University (or Agricultural College)" in Baidu to find out. There are also popular secondary colleges, and there are many "art colleges" below colleges that are far behind, such as this one. Thank the commentators for understanding my intention of taking Agricultural University as an example. )

Go on with the last article.

Regarding the direction of training, we still often fall into a conceptual misunderstanding and often argue about it. What misunderstanding is this? Is to confuse knowledge classification with professional identity. What do you mean? For example, we often hear that the training goal of an animation college is "senior animation director". Of course, there will be a bunch of familiar stereotypes in front, and that is to train directors. I think this idea is like setting up a major in a university, saying that it is to train bosses or directors. Anyway, I haven't heard of any university with "boss major", "director major" and "director major". . . . . . Speaking of graduation assignment, you can't ask people if they want a boss, a director or a director! Which president in the world graduated from "Presidential Major"? The nature of the director is similar to this in the field of creation. The director's identity is unequal to other members of the team in creation, which is equivalent to a "leader" in creation. It is professional knowledge, but it is also an identity. We offer such courses, but it doesn't mean that people who have listened to this course should assume this identity or have the ability to undertake it! This also explains why the director department of the film academy is not the department that trains the most directors. Just because you take many directing classes doesn't mean you can be a director. One of my Israeli students explained this phenomenon. He said, for example, students in photography department, recording department and literature department can at least do their own majors well after graduation, and some of them may become directors according to their own accumulation and interests. Students who graduate from the director department can only wait to be directors, but they can't be directors, and they can't do photography first, so they have no chance to continue their studies in practice, so they are more likely to become good directors. I think there is some truth in this statement. For animation education, we can locate the characteristics of the course, but we can't tell students that you want to be a director in the future! Or we train directors. I think we are just a shop selling animation knowledge. Students can buy high-quality animation knowledge here with money, but you can't specify or predict what people will buy this knowledge for! Therefore, what we should care about is whether the knowledge we sell keeps pace with the times or even has a certain lead. How students go out to find jobs and change careers is their own business and also a social business. The most ridiculous thing now is the employment rate! I think higher education, especially art higher education, is a matter of struggle and suffering! Graduating here, candidates who have no jobs there are still squeezing the threshold! who is it? You try to tell a candidate that we may not find a job after graduation here. Give it up. What is he doing? ! In terms of conscience and responsibility, what we need to do is to make it clear in advance, including the true nature of our major, what we teach you, the possibility of going abroad in the future and so on. Whether the candidate is an adult or choose on the premise that he already knows is his own business. Of course, at present, both sides in China are at a relatively low stage, and the professional slogans of some schools are still fanning the flames. What about the candidate? Anyway, my parents will pay to go to college first. I heard that the requirements of your animation culture class are not very high. Just take the exam without looking at your appearance.

I remember a few years ago, there were always students from advanced classes looking for me, mysteriously: Teacher Chen, can you get me a college syllabus? These students are sent by other institutions to study, and one of the tasks given to them by the leaders is to get the syllabus of our authoritative institutions, which is equivalent to sending a business spy (or should I call it an educational spy). As for me, of course, I can't betray the school, because the leader really lists the syllabus as "confidential". Therefore, we will see that these students with mission often copy and write in our office against the curriculum of each grade, which is probably the only way to spell out an "outline" by themselves and go back to work. Of course, these are no secrets now. However, many institutions are still very concerned about the curriculum, including ourselves, and there will be many meetings and discussions about the curriculum. In fact, there is a more important problem that has been ignored. As I said at a meeting in a school, in fact, these courses in any school are similar, and so are those in foreign countries. The key is not to be keen on what courses to offer, but to care more about the teachers who take this course and how to take this course! ! I never choose courses for graduate students according to the course name, but according to the teachers who attend the class! I have always believed that the key to a person's college education is not what classes he takes, but what kind of teachers he meets! This is the essence of university! Therefore, it is extremely extreme to implement standardized education in higher art education. . . . . . . Fucking thing! ! ! ! The course names on those schedules are meaningless! Do you always hear "Did you listen to the teacher" and seldom hear "Did you listen to the teacher"? That's the truth! For example, Master Studies, is this class a bluff? But I heard that there is a school where the teachers of this course only study books and finally let the students go! When I was at school, Zhou Chuanji was a famous professor at the Film Academy. He is a teacher in the recording department. The course he teaches is called The Sound of the Movie, but I learned much more than The Sound of the Movie in his class! Now everyone is more concerned about the content of education than the method, and the method itself is the technical core of education and teachers! This is also the reason why a person who has made great achievements in the professional field is not necessarily the most suitable for class! We are all studying what classes to take, but we never study how to take them. What is the content? The whole world is the same! Isn't it different when you come here? This is why so many "teaching materials" are basically duplicated and plagiarized, but the methods of explanation have their own tricks, and none of them is the most correct, so it is good to achieve the effect. It is difficult for anyone to create content, but new methods emerge one after another, which is the specialty of teachers. As I said above, animation education itself should first educate itself, that is, train teachers. The majority of brother colleges do have this demand, so we also recruited "teacher classes" and the like. However, it is meaningless to teach in the "teacher's classroom" or the content of optical animation. Also study the content of "how to teach animation"! It is easy to copy the syllabus and curriculum, but it is not the same thing that different people have different influences on teaching. Otherwise, wouldn't it be okay for all of us to copy the courses of the most recognized school in the world? It's like when my home is decorated, I always say don't look at the name of the decoration company, the key is to look at the workers who work for you! So I don't think all colleges and universities must pursue a seemingly perfect curriculum, but set up courses according to the characteristics of their own teacher resources to a certain extent. If you want a painting teacher to speak the language of movies, let him speak painting well. Even if you study movies and take an authentic painting class, it's better than the last wrong film class (I'm not saying that all painters can't speak movies). And in this way, it is possible for each school to create characteristics with differentiated advantages.