Northwest Arkansas schools team up on course in animation, design

David Kersey has worked on films such as The Polar Express, Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen.
David Kersey has worked on films such as The Polar Express, Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen.

ROGERS -- A partnership between two Northwest Arkansas schools will provide local students a chance to learn the digital arts from a veteran of the animated film industry.

New Design School, a Fayetteville nonprofit organization, will develop curriculum and deliver two digital arts classes per semester for high school students at the Arkansas Arts Academy, a charter school in Rogers.

Job prospects

Multimedia artists and animators create special effects, animation or other visual images using film, video, computers or other electronic tools and media for use in products or creations, such as computer games, movies, music videos and commercials. There are more than 30,000 such workers in the United States, making an average of $70,300 per year.

Graphic designers design or create graphics to meet specific commercial or promotional needs, such as packaging, displays or logos. They may use a variety of media to achieve artistic or decorative effects. There are about 205,000 graphic designers in the United States, making an average of $51,640 per year.

Source: U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics

Some students may be attracted to the class because it could lead them to a film career, but there are other ways to apply the skills they'll learn, said Aaron Jones, an arts integration specialist at the academy.

"You also have art directors. You have needs for layout and design or anything that needs to tell a story," Jones said. "Any student who is taking this is not going to be on just one track of Disney animator. It's going to open a lot of doors for a lot of students."

Sonia Davis Gutierrez, co-founder of New Design School, added there is a growing demand for those who can produce "explainer videos," which may demonstrate a product, promote a service or attract donations for a research project.

"So that's very much connecting to that millennial group to understand something, because they've grown up on YouTube," she said. "Businesses are responding to that, so that's kind of where we also see a huge potential market."

Arkansas Arts Academy paid New Design School $5,000 to cover the cost of developing the curriculum for its digital arts classes. The academy will pay New Design School an additional $20,000 to provide the classes for the 2016-17 school year and $25,000 to provide them for both of the following two school years, according to terms of a contract between the two institutions.

New Design School, originally called New Design Center, began in 2005. It offers a two-year academic certificate program in graphic design. It aims to promote innovation in design and technology.

David Kersey, 38, will teach the classes at the academy. Kersey, who was born in Little Rock and grew up in Texarkana, Texas, has worked on films such as The Polar Express, Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen.

Kersey earned a bachelor of fine arts degree with a focus in computer animation from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Ga., in 2000. From there he drove to Los Angeles for an interview with a game company. He didn't get that job.

"But I had a computer, I had software, and I had an Internet connection," Kersey said. "I basically just started working out of a garage at a friend's house, doing jobs I could find online."

He eventually was hired by Sony Pictures Imageworks, where he spent six years. He worked another five years with Disney Feature Animation. Two projects he worked on won Academy Awards: the blockbuster Frozen won Best Animated Feature in 2014 and Feast won Best Animated Short Film in 2015.

Kersey left his job with Disney in early 2015 and moved to Fayetteville.

"I didn't see (Los Angeles) as a place I wanted to spend the rest of my life," he said. "Yes, it was a great career, but I was ready for the next chapter."

Education was one of his interests. He joined New Design School as its director of development.

Students in Kersey's classes will learn software such as Photoshop, Illustrator and Maya, which he called the "industry standard" for computer-generated imagery.

"We're going to focus on animation, but we want to teach some basic graphic design skill sets too, because they all kind of go hand in hand," he said.

Kersey has had some practice teaching. Last fall he began as an adjunct professor at Northwest Arkansas Community College, where he has taught classes in design and computer animation. He said he intends to continue teaching at the college as long as he has the time.

Mary Ley, chief executive officer of the Arkansas Arts Academy, said she knows of no other high school in the state that offers a digital arts course.

"I'm excited," she said. "I think we're going to see some students who never felt excited about waking up in the morning to go to school before that won't want to leave school because they're working on (digital arts) projects."

Ley said she wants Northwest Arkansas to be known as an art community.

"We can be a competitive mecca just like New York or Chicago and having this partnership (with New Design School) helps make that art mecca happen," she said.

"It's great to have the museums and the shows, but we want our kids to be able to make those things they're showing in the museums. Instead of hiring people to come in and do the designs for our Fortune 500 companies, we want our kids trained here to do the marketing and design for our companies."

NW News on 05/01/2016

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