Developing and applying universal standards is not rocket science.  It’s surprising that during the past 30 years of animation education, it’s been impossible to develop and apply an agreed common standard of performance, at least at the level of basic skills.

The result is incredible duplication of effort in program and curriculum development, uneven quality of instruction, major variations in graduate quality and continued high cost and complexity of assessing job applicants. 

This post, together with the last one, is intended to elicit feedback and comments from institutions and companies interested in exploring standards as a framework for further development and to promote discussion on standards development.

 A Proposed Structure of Standards

“A competency standard is a document that specifies in a structured format how people should perform a job or work role. Organizations use competency standards:

•     as a frame of reference for nominating how they expect job or work roles to be performed

•     to judge whether people are competent at their job or work role

Competency standards attempt to capture the various dimensions that, when taken together, account for 'competent' performance.”  See also  - http://digitaldesignfoundation.org/about.html

A complete core competency standards package might contain the following:

•    an agreed comprehensive classification of areas of expertise

•    a set of exit competency statements (performance criteria) that define the skills                     required to attain proficiency in that area, and

•     a set of exemplars (rubrics or typical examples of varying quality) of each competency.

In order to tech to these standards they should be supported by:

•    A list of key concepts (as bullet points)

•    A topical outline (as bullet points or short statements)

•    Instructor notes (related topic concepts)

•    Practice Exercise(s)

•    Commentaries - notes on the evaluation and key points used to evaluate the examples and access student work)

•    Performance Criteria ­-the part of a competency standard that specifies the required level of performance in terms of a set of outcomes that need to be achieved in order for the skill to be deemed competent.

A basic set of core competencies might include: 

•     Animation Principles

•     Cinematography and Film Analysis

•     Shot Construction

•     Storytelling

•     Storyboarding

•     Drawing Skills

•     Colour Theory and Application

•     Staging and Blocking

•     Acting and Reference

•     Character Posing

•     Character Performance

•      Lighting Characters and Scenes

            •      Computer Software Skills

            •      Pitching

            •      Teamwork and Work Habits

            •      Show Reel Development

I look forward to your feedback!