Brent Adams - LDS Philanthropies

R. Brent Adams
Director of the Center for Animation
Brigham Young University
What’s behind the successes of the
Center for Animation at BYU?
“The motion picture industry provides 2.4
million jobs, $41 billion in wages and
provides 95,000 businesses -- 93 percent
are small and the majority are located
outside of California and New York.”
Online computer games.
15 million subscribers, $10.00 / month.
One game!
Paul Heydon of independent banking firm Avista Partners, an
investment banker working in the game sector since 1999, has
come up with his best guess for the approximate value of the
videogame business across the entire world. Heydon puts
video gaming at about $105 billion worldwide.
“Animation is a Team Sport”
Jeffery Katzenberg
President DreamWorks Animation
Education has typically been an 'Individual Sport’
Visiting the Head of Human Resources at DD
“Keep requiring your students to take religion classes”
Animation Center is Multi-Disciplinary
3 Departments.
2 Colleges.
+ Strong relationships with other colleges and departments
on campus.
Students in the
Animation and CS Animation Emphasis programs
at BYU
all work together on a single group animation.
Costs of creating Animation:
Feature length… $2 million per minute.
Pixar budgets $2 million for a short.
Games are budgeted between $20 and $60 million.
Ira Fulton
Super Computer
Virtual Reality Theater
Ira Fulton
He doesn’t donate; he “invests”
“Isn’t anyone using it?”
Short film: “Lemmings”
1.
2.
3.
4.
Quit trying to compete with Art Schools
Added huge Technology / Science Component to film
4 lemmings as pitched
Super Computer from Ira Fulton.. Sole user for awhile
General Motors, EDS and Sun Microsystems donated
$313,000,000
in Software to BYU
“Faux Paw and Faux Paw 2”
Laura Bush is the main voice of 2.
Hosted by the McGruff Crime Dog
Endorsed by the FBI and the Center for Exploited and Missing Children.
Short film: “Noggin”
1.
2.
3.
4.
1.2 million files
74,000 folders
1 hour to load the file
1 hour and 25 minutes to save the file
Short film: “Pajama Gladiator”
Took two years because everyone was getting hired
away.
Short film: “Kites”
1.
2.
Our most requested film.
Numerous Awards around the world.
Student Emmys
Two women responsible for education Outreach for The
Academy of Television Arts and Sciences were talking about
how much our film had affected them.
Moved from Engineering to Computer Science
Found out that we didn’t have any computers two months
before the new semester was to start.
Short film: “Owned”
1.
2.
3.
5 characters
4 environments
1st place Student Academy Award and Student Emmy
Successes at BYU
16 Student Emmy Awards +
5 Student Academy Awards
11 Years
Nickelodeon Television
4,500 Entries
29 Accepted
We won Producers Choice and Viewers Choice Awards.
It is not a student contest.
Where are our Alumni?
Pixar
DreamWorks
Sony
Disney
ILM
Blizzard
Riot
Valve
Nike
GM
Hasbro
Nickelodeon
What are our Alumni doing?
Hyrum Osmond Lead Animator of Olaf on “Frozen”
Emron Grover Head of Cloth Simulation on “Brave”
Tom Mikota: Head of Texturing on “Avatar”
Dan Lemmon: Nominated for an Oscar as VFX Supervisor on “Rise
of the Planet of the Apes”
Mike Smith: Character Setup Lead on the “Transformer” movies
Rango, Napoleon Dynamite, Spielberg's new movie, Star Wars
On and on and on……
Industry Mentors who are donating their time
New York Times
“I kept being reminded that B.Y.U.’s program was only 13
years old: most of the moral emissaries that it has been
pouring into the industry are still climbing to the positions
from which they’ll be able to truly influence a film’s tone
and content.” - Jon Mooallem
President Worthen
Mission of BYU
“We believe the earnest pursuit of this institutional mission can have a
strong effect on the course of higher education and will greatly enlarge
Brigham Young University's influence in a world we wish to improve.”
“BYU's existing program and vision for
the future puts it into an elite group of …
International educational
programs that are defining the next generation
of Animation and Computer
Graphics educators and professionals.“
Barry Weiss
VP Sony ImageWorks
Are you able to talk about religion to your students?
“One of the interesting things is, all of a sudden,
in the last few years, we found that BYU has
risen to the top. BYU has an extraordinary
program here.”
Ed Catmull
President of both Disney Animation and Pixar Animation
"It's amazing to suddenly see that BYU is producing the
best in the industry, … It's the perception not just at Pixar
but also at the other studios that something pretty
remarkable is happening here.“
Ed Catmull
What’s behind the successes of the
Center for Animation at BYU?
Obviously faculty, administrators, and great students but the
main catalyst for success:
Donors of both money and time
Thank You