CSU, Chico News

Students from Rick Vertolli's advanced animation class, California State University, Chico, brought home the top four Best Animation awards from the CSU Media Arts Festival, held at CSU Channel Islands Nov. 3. There were 56 entries from the 23 CSU campuses.

The animation that won first place was titled "Working Stiffs" and was written by alum Mike Wellins and animated by students Kenny DiGiordano, Jerry Zigounakis, Luke Machado, Travis Lee and Peter Mazen.

The second-place animation was "Trash Landing," created by Rusty Robins, Chris Distefano, Eugene Chung, Tracy Hammer, Andrew Davis and Steve Liebenberg. Brendan Harry wrote the music.

The third-place winner, "Dungeon Seed," was created by Josiah Munsey, Dylan Smith, Matt Berglund and Kurt Feudale.

The fourth-place winner was "The Janitor: Bud," created by Andre Nguyen, Vince Yamamoto, David Cross and Chris Maggitti.

One of the judges of the competition, who works for Gold Circle as a producer, wants to create a feature film of the winning entry and is talking to the students who created it.

The Media Arts Festival has five categories: narrative, music video, interactive media, experimental and animation. Chico traditionally has done very well in the animation category. Including this year's wins, Chico has won in the category "Best Animation" an unprecedented nine times in the 15 years since the competition began. In past competitions, CSU, Chico students have won the "Best of Show" four times.

Vertolli said there are many stages involved in creating an animation, and quite often it takes over a year from inception to finished projects. Vertolli, an animation supervisor in the Instructional Media Center and instructor in the Applied Computer Graphics program, believes it all starts with a good story.

"Computer Animation is very complicated, and animators must acquire a variety of skills. They are designers, sculptors, camera and lighting operators, technicians and editors, but most important, they need a good idea and story to tell," said Vertolli.

Vertolli came to CSU, Chico 20 years ago from Kent State University with a fine arts degree to study computer graphics with Professor Grace Hertlein. "Very few people were creating computer graphics at this time. So we took the information from traditional animators and applied those principles to computer animation," said Vertolli.

With help from industrial advisors, Vertolli and others have developed a method for producing computer animation. It simplifies what is a very complicated process. "We've developed a production pipeline that makes file sharing among students easier, and it has really helped streamline the process," said Vertolli.

"First, we develop a 'treatment,' a summary of the main idea of the story," said Vertolli. "Then we draw storyboards that serve as blueprints for the action and dialogue. Next we build an animatic, an animated cartoon strip that combines vocals and still imagery. It is used to flesh out the timing of each shot. Then we design characters that have strong audience appeal. It is only at this point that we begin using computers to model our characters and get them to move and act out a scene."

Ken Derucher, dean of the College of Engineering, Computer Science and Construction Management, said, "Rick Vertolli's teaching style and ability bring out the best in students. We are proud of the students who did such a fine job on their projects, and we are proud to have Rick as a top-notch teacher and leader in the field."

The Applied Computer Graphics program is in its fourth year as an approved major. Faculty members include Vertolli, Clark Steinbeck, Frank Periea and John Pozzi.

###

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 15th, 2006 at 8:30 am and is filed under 2006 Fall.