Digital Art & Animation Students Accepted the 24 Hours Animation Challenge

Fifteen Digital Art & Animation students (three teams of five each) recently participated in the “24 Hours Animation Challenge” created by the California State University, Long Beach Animation Department. The teams gathered at 3 p.m. on Friday, and were given the prompt: “family.” From there, the students had 24 hours to come up with a story idea, characters, and up to 30 seconds of animation showcasing their interpretation of the prompt.  Once complete, the teams uploaded their work to the YouTube page of the competition before 3 p.m. on Saturday. Professor Paul Naas supervised the groups in the studio during the challenge, but was prohibited from helping them in any way.

The challenge is in its 17^th year, and this year had over 200 student teams competing from nine different countries. All three Cañada College student teams finished their films, including one team that decided to do their film in a software package that none of them knew before the challenge. When the list of winners was announced, our students learned their films ranked higher than some of the submissions from highly regarded animation schools. 

Despite being exhausted and a little loopy at the end, all the students who took part want to do it again next year. The three shorts produced will be screened in the Digital Art & Animation Student Show in May 2020.