Marlene Garcia graduates in May with a degree in animation from New Mexico State University. A transfer student, Garcia's main reason for coming to NMSU can be summed up in two words: creative freedom.
"That's what I really like about NMSU is they encourage us to use our own stories," Garcia said. "We use the principles that they're teaching us, and they let us show what we can do, what we have created. When I tried to use my own characters at my previous university, they would actually give me lower grades because I was using my own characters, but here they support that."
"We want to help our animation students enhance the storytelling, but not necessarily tell them what stories to tell," said Derek Chase, professor in NMSU's Creative Media Institute who specializes in 3D animation. "As Marlene said, we give them the tools, give them some parameters and some prompts and let them play with that so they can build their own adventure."
NMSU’s animation program continues to be ranked among the top programs in the country for the 12th year in a row. Animation Career Review evaluated nearly 200 programs across the United States. In the 2023 rankings list, NMSU’s animation program rose from 22nd to 19th nationally. The program remains ranked seventh regionally and first in New Mexico.
“That ranking has been a big component of our recruitment, retention and the growth of our enrollment because we’ll find students that come from outside the state who hear about us,” said Chase.
Animation Career Review considers animation programs in degree-granting institutions with the exception of two-year community colleges. The criteria evaluated include academic reputation, admission selectivity, depth and breadth of program faculty, value as it relates to tuition and indebtedness, graduation rate, geographic location and employment data. Since 2020, the employment data has been given significantly more weight in the ranking formula than in previous years.
The criterion of geographic location is considered because students who attend school in cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Orlando, New York, Chicago, Boston, Austin, and a few others have a distinct advantage over students in other parts of the country in terms of employment opportunities.
“The Animation and Visual Effects program at NMSU has steadily grown since it started,” said Amy Lanasa, CMI professor and department head. "Since 2018, the number of majors has grown 40%, and the number of degrees we're awarding in animation has grown 50%. We were lucky to get an additional faculty line during that time, which made it possible for us to accept more students into the program, but we are still turning away applicants each semester."
“CMI offers a high-quality education at a very affordable price,” said Eddie Bakshi, who specializes in teaching 2D animation production at CMI. “We offer access to industry-standard software, taught by highly skilled professors, many of whom have worked on popular movies or TV shows.”
"We really emphasize storytelling and improvement of foundational knowledge, Chase said. "So like Marlene mentioned, we want to encourage our students' personal development and the ideas and stories that they want to tell."
Garcia is focused on the adventures of Marlyn Wolf, a character Garcia created at age 11. In addition to classroom projects, Garcia shares the animated character Marlyn on social media. "Her story has been changing as I grow up so, right now, she is a little content creator. She's not famous, I just share her drawings and little animations she does."
Bakshi explained the students who graduate from CMI's animation program can apply the skills they have learned to a wide variety of fields. The skillset is not limited to entertainment, but can be useful in almost any profession dealing with visual media.
Looking beyond graduation, Garcia is confident the tools mastered in CMI's animation program will help design the next career adventure.
"I share the same dream as most of my classmates, to work on my own stuff and get it out there," Garcia said. "But first I would like to have experience in the industry. I would like to focus on what I've studied. I would love to focus on the 2D animation, which is what I like the most."
Watch more of Garcia's animation and see examples of animation and visual effects projects by other students in NMSU's animation program.
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