Image provided by: Clackamas Community College; Oregon City, OR
About The Clackamas print. (Oregon City, Oregon) 1989-2019 | View Entire Issue (May 21, 2014)
WEDNESDAY, MAY 21/2014 Small program expands to hands-on internship | Nolan __________ _ _ _ _ _______________ . H W . Bradley provides movement'for his motion capture class. Photo reprinted from The Print, volume 47, issue 11. Students in the DMC p ro g ra m strike CWE gold in the Motion Capture field by LIZ GOMES associate photo editor Ten years ago the Digital M ultim edia C om m unications (DMC) program was just a glim mer in the eyes of Andy Mingo Together they c r e a t e d a •screep yreilaag arjÿi y j d e o production class under the cre ative writing headings WR-264 and WR-265. The students were given access to a couple of GL2 mini DV cam eras which shot in standard defi nition and two Mac stations for editing kept in The Print lab. This experiment led to the creation of some of the most wonderfully terrible student films, but more im portantly showed Clackamas ^ ^ m m u n T ^^^o n eg ^th at'ffiere Today the DMC program has its own Associate of Applied Science Degree and is a finely tuned machine. Its many focus areas are supported by several tal ented members of the faculty and a vast supply of the most state- of-the-art equipment. Students of the program have gone on to internships and careers in the multimedia industry. The trick o f the program is that, unless you follow the degree plan exactly, acquiring all of the essential credits for a chosen focus area can be a bit of a chore. The classes are primarily offered during the day, and some courses only offered one term a year. Perhaps the m ost difficult credits to obtain are the ones that require the most self-motivation: Cooperative Work Experience (CWE) credits. Some students of the DMC program have expressed that there’s a lack o f opportunities to get CWE internships, and the leads passively mentioned during classes don’t usually go anywhere. The Clackamas Print cahgTit up with Andy Mingo during one of his classes to find out whether these claims were legitimate and to talk with him about the recent wealth of opportunities being •generated by one of the newest additions to the DMC curricu lum, Motion Capture. The Clackamas Print: In the past it’s been hard to get CWE credits, or at least know about CWE credits. A ndy Mingo: CWE credits actually aren’t that difficult to get. In the DMC program we have partnerships or know of companies who would be willing to take on internships. TCP: We’ve heard that the m o t io n cap tu re cla ss is o n e o f th e o n ly a v e n u e s for in te r n s h ip s for CWE credits. Why is this specific class successful? M ingo: W inter term was the first term that we offered DMC-250, the motion capture class. We brought in Damon Redmond who is the art direc to r from SuperGenius to teach the class. He has some experi ence with motion capture and obviously a lot of experience with SuperGenius, which is a video game design company in Oregon City. W ith SuperGenius and the resent CWE internship that’s appening, it was kind of an extension of the original class. We had students taking DMC-250 in winter term but they wanted to continue on and engage in a professional project. TCP: What are the interns doing with SuperGenius? Mingo: W hat we’re ’doing is through Damon’s guidance and SuperGenius, (I’m also giving some support to tins project) we’ve come up with a short film idea that is going to be done exclusively via m otion capture. The interns are helping with the preproduction process, the directing process, the m otion capture process and all of that, and then what we’re looking to do is to take it into two additional classes that will be started in the summer. One will be a 3D modeling class, and the other class will be a Unity class, which is a game engine program but you can also nave it drive animated films. We’re creating a pipeline, if you will; o f workflow so that we have the stuff that we take in the motion capture sessions, and We*lf take it in and design assets,* a n d t h e n a c t u a lly d e s ig n o u r film - The success^,these students found with their internship may inspire confidence in their weary DMC peers to keep looking. Mingo’s advice is simply to ask. A lesson to be learned during the quest for CWE is that, like real jobs in the industry, these opportunities don’t usually just fall into one’s lap, they have to be pursued. Welding students could follow Portland’s example with ‘Art Racks’ tion, “why not do something like that here?” According to the City of Portland website, the “Art Racks” program operates to serve the following goals: “To provide needed parking for the increasing number of people who choose bicycling as a, trans portation option To enhance Portland’s image as a people- and bicyde-friendly city; a community that regards bicycles by TIM YOUNG as a permanent and important associate news editor part of the city’s transportation infrastructure The city of Portland has a To encourage more people to program where “innovative choose cycling as a transporta and aesthetic designs” are tion option [ incorporated into city bike To create a symbol for our city’s racks. Anything from tooth livability that will gain positive brushes outside o f dental attention locally, regionally and offices, to whatever you can nationally.” imagine that would serve as In the Portland program citi an effective bike rack can zens are encouraged to participate be made as a way of adding by using a step by step process artistic flair to city function. called “Art Rack Approval and At Clackamas Community Installation 101,” using bike rack College, we asked the ques- fabrication companies and fol- Wi th the help of the CCC welding pro gram, some sug gest that Portland's artistic bike rack program could be launched on campus lowing the established Oregon Administrative Rules on the sub ject. The welding program recent ly purchased a virtual welder where students can work with the instructor on the machine and get trained with cost saving on mate rial and reduced safety concerns. At Clackamas we have an impressive and well-equipped welding program where students and instructors can make just about anything, according to John Phelps, CCC welding instruc tor. Phelps said the welding department is equipped for projects b u t nobody has brought the ideas to him or the welding department.
