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PROVO — While most students at Brigham Young University were studying for final exams and readying themselves for the winter break, a team of students was busy producing comic pratfalls and double-takes.
They were making an animated movie called “Ram’s Horn,” a Chuck Jones-esque situational comedy about an arrogant mountain climber battling a ram to scale a formidable peak called Ram’s Horn.
Despite the subject matter, these are serious students of animation. Tucked away in the Talmage Math Sciences Building, the BYU Center for Animation has produced not just accolades on campus, but student Emmy and Academy Awards for their annual student films.
It was just a fledgling program when ten years ago students won an Emmy and an Academy Award for their first big project, “Lemmings.”
“Lemmings created a culture of success,” said assistant professor Kelly Loosli, co-founder of the program. “One film after another would win an Emmy or win a student Academy Award.”
Students have won four Academy Awards and 14 Emmy Awards, found employment at all the major animation studios, and a profile in the New York Times. This year’s team of undergrads has been busy getting “Ram’s Horn” ready to submit to the student Emmy’s.
We're working with people working, with each other, to make something great. The common goal of making something beautiful.
–Jenna Hamzawi, director
It’s a lengthy and painstaking process. The animators spend hours, days and weeks on the smallest details, and say they enjoy it immensely.
Jeremy Obern has been working for weeks on an avalanche that lasts four or five seconds. Jorge Gonzalez has spent six months making clouds.
“The whole point is the illusion of life and it's actually on the kind of addicting,” Gonzalez said. “At some points it’s like, ‘why am I doing this?’” said animator Emiliano Leon. “Before they were just dead characters on the screen… and now I’m making them do things like move and emote and do things like, oh my gosh, it's so cool.”
“I wish I had no homework so I could work in here all day,” Gonzalez said.
“We’re working with people working, with each other, to make something great,” said director Jenna Hamzawi. “The common goal of making something beautiful.”
