A good college for 2-D animation?

[Ramona D. Parker]

I am a senior in high school applying (a little late) to art schools that specialize in traditional/2-D animation.

The reason I'm applying so late is because I was going to go to The Art Institutes in my state, but after some much needed advice from this site and other artist in the business, it turns out that those schools are not good for artist looking to do traditional animation.

I was just wondering if the schools I currently am applying to are good schools:

Academy of Art University (my first choice)
California Institute of the Arts
School of Visual Arts
Rochester Institute of Technology

Any advice about these schools would be very helpful, seeing as I'm definetly late on applying and have no time or funds to see the schools for myself, nor do I trust admisssions counselors to tell me what is wrong with their school :}

[AlexBerry]

Hey there,

I went to RIT and I can tell you that if 2D is your thing, it might not be the best decision. That said, I did 2D there. The thing is, from what I can tell at the moment they're concentrating less and less on 2D character animation. I can't speak for how it is now, but I can tell you when I was there (graduated just about a year ago) they did little digital 2D animation, either. I had to teach myself how to do character animation in Flash (and in an internship, too).

That said, it wasn't a bad program. There are good resources (many just added) and you get a pretty thorough knowledge of filmmaking. But you have to trudge through the live-action stuff first. Basically, the program is what you make it. I've seen people do excellent work there because they're just driven more than other people. 90% of what you get out of a school is what you put in.

If you have any other questions about the school, feel free to shoot me a message. I've known a couple people out of SVA who were pretty positive about it, but that's about all I know about their program. And obviously CalArts has a lot of prestige.

[Eben zboch]

theres a lot of people on thes site that go to KCAI you can talk to them ...im some what in the same delema but i have 2 yr. or so...but what ever school you get in to thow i would love to hear...good luck on the serch

[Brian Larson]

Hey, this may be a little late, but here is my 2 cents: I was an instructor at the Art Institute, and yes, they are NOT a good choice for 2D ( or even 3D in my opinion), and I am now teaching at RIT. I am a 2D character animator/designer/instructor. so the level of instruction in 2D at RIT is looking stronger and stronger in the overall program. it was a bit lax in the past few years, but is going to get better and better. and the foundation you get in filmmaking is very beneficial to you as an artist and storyteller.