The following are sample animation projects done by students in the computer animation course, Art 273/CIS 518, taught by Professor Don Greenberg and assisted by Jacky Bibliowicz and Will Stokes.  The course was conceived as an introductory course to computer animation and included the following topics:  (The lecture topics) 2D Cel Animation Modeling Creating Geometry Cameras, Splines & Forward Kinematics Lighting Animated Film Procedures Lighting Theoretical & Algorithmic Concepts Articulated Structures Forward & Inverse Kinematics Facial Animation Rigging, Facial Animation Storyboarding Physically-based Modeling & Simulation Special Effects At the end of the semester, the students were given a four- to five-week project to write their own storyboard and create a 45-second to one minute animation using the tools which were introduced during the semester.  The output of 3D Studio Max was sent to the parallel rendering system of the Program of Computer Graphics to generate the final project.  Almost all of the submissions were excellent, the best of which are represented below:

Transplant - Aja Regall Wake Up! - Bernard Peng Cans Arn't Trash - Justin Faberlle Walking on the Moon - Matt Clarey Peacock Tale - Nasheet Zaman Two Aliens and a Fire Hydrant - Richard Herring and Jeffrey Wang No Strings Attached - Sally Huang Snowmen - Zennard Sun

Two of the animations were done by the prior year's class. It is interesting to note that the class consisted of computer science students, both Master of Engineering and undergraduate students.  This group made up approximately 50 percent of the class.  A large portion were from fine arts or theater arts with a small sampling of students from such diverse disciplines as sociology, astronomy, and English.  The combination of the interdisciplinary approach between art and computer science is obvious and indicates the enormous creativity of Cornell students. This year for the first time an advanced animation course is being offered and we hope that this two-course sequence will be a major component of a digital arts and graphics major for the future.