The very first animation Craig Bobie created was a snowman.

“I just fell in love with it,” Bobie said. “I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. It was very basic, but it sparked my imagination.”

Since that project he created in seventh grade, Bobie, a freshman computer art and animation major, has grown as an artist and embarked on more advanced animation projects.

One of these projects involved creating a digital vision of what the Indy 500 might look like in year 2121. Working with a team of students from his high school last year, Bobie’s role in the project was to conceptualize and model the cars, environment and details of the digital landscape.

One lesson that Bobie learned from this project was the importance of having a wide range of skills.

“It instilled the idea in my mind to learn as many programs as possible,” Bobie said. “Being a jack-of-all-trades is a good skill to have. Knowing more than one skill will never be a detriment.”

Bobie plans on using those skills one day to become a visual effects director for movies.

Watching movies that use computer animation inspires Bobie. He said having a background in computer animation allows him to recognize the programs that went into the animation and the structure that the artist used to create it.

“It’s really creatively fulfilling to be able to see someone else’s product and break it down like that,” Bobie said. “With other fields, you can usually only see the final product but in animation you can see the whole process.”

Oddly enough, the assignment Bobie’s currently working on in his animation and visual effects class is a snowman. Unlike the snowman he created in middle school, which was comprised of three basic spheres, he said he is pushing the realism of his current project as far as he can by using a reference photo, details and shading.

Said Bobie: “It basically just showed me how far I’d come. I can see that I’ve come a long way.”

Published on October 27, 2014 at 12:01 am

Contact Alex: aerdekia@syr.edu