ANIMATION

BACHELOR OF ANIMATION
Stage 1: Foundations

Develop the essential technical animation skills and the knowledge required to collaborate with
other creative media students and professionals.

ANIMATION STUDIES AND PRACTICE - ANM110

Credit Points: 10

Develop your reflective, critical and analytical skills and abilities through an enhanced awareness
and understanding of the purpose of tertiary education from a personal, societal and professional
perspective. In class activities are used to prepare you with the skills and confidence to engage
with a range of scholarly frameworks that you will encounter throughout your studies. You will
explore the animation discipline through a team presentation, where you will develop group
working, thinking and learning skills.

DRAWING FOR ANIMATION - ANI170

Credit Points: 10

As a practice, drawing provides a core skill set for the expression of both concept and form. This
unit introduces you to the concepts and methodologies of drawing using a variety of media with an
emphasis on drawing from life, including anatomical studies and perspective techniques for
environment and character construction.

The unit is an introduction to the general practice of drawing and rendering and specifically helps
to scaffold further learning through support for developing sketch-based visual production skills &
knowledge.
FOUNDATIONS OF COMPUTER GRAPHICS - ANI171

Credit Points: 10

Take a practical first look at modeling, lighting, shading, animation, and rendering to gain a holistic,
foundational understanding of computer graphics.

This unit will involve using industry-standard software such as Autodesk 3Ds Max, Maya, and
Blender. The practical and theoretical knowledge of 3D production pipelines acquired in this unit
will act as a foundation for successive animation units.

INTRODUCTION TO ANIMATION - ANI172

Credit Points: 10

As the name suggests this unit provides you with an introduction to animation. You will apply the
theoretical underpinnings of animation processes via a range of practical explorations and critical
analyses. This will provide you with a solid understanding of animation principles and methods that
will form the foundation of successive animation units.

CONTEMPORARY INDUSTRIAL PRACTICES - CIM151

Credit Points: 10

This unit aims to develop your understanding of the creative media industries by studying the
evolution of the industries over time. Change, evolution and disruption within creative media
industries occur regularly and change the way the industries operate by displacing an existing
market, industry, technology, person or process and creating something new which is more
valuable. Change, evolution and disruption are inevitable and both creative and destructive
processes.

In order to develop a career within the creative media industries, you will need to prepare for this
disruption and evolve your employability skills over time. The key to maintaining this career is
developing hard and soft skills, refining current skills sets and anticipating future changes in
required skill sets. You will need to understand how the audience informs and influences the
production and distribution of creative media products and how this in turn affects the skills
required to succeed within the creative media industries.

You will study these topics alongside your colleagues in other disciplines, to develop an
understanding of the intersections between various creative media industries.

APPLIED ANIMATION TECHNIQUES - ANI174

Credit Points: 10

In this unit, you will apply and build upon the foundational animation and computer graphics skills
and knowledge that you have learned, to advance your skills via some in-depth, practical activities
of 2D/3D character modeling and applied animation techniques.

By undertaking a series of iterative tasks, your static models will become talking moving
characters and you will develop the skills and knowledge required to showcase them effectively.

ANIMATION STUDIO 1 - ANI181

Credit Points: 20

In this unit you will engage in a collaborative studio-based learning environment, to produce a
short animation under client direction and in response to a brief. You will be guided through your
exploration of the production methods needed to pitch effective creative concepts to potential
producers.

By working in small groups (and in accordance with the SAE Group Work Policy), various creative
and organisational challenges will be encountered throughout this process, requiring the
application of appropriate project management techniques to help ensure the brief is successfully
met.

Stage 2: Refine & Expand

Broaden your scope to work on complex multidisciplinary projects in accordance with industry
standard practices.

MEDIA STUDIES - CIM210

Credit Points: 10

In CIM210 you will be working on interdisciplinary projects that relate to some of the most
important concepts in contemporary media production. You will learn practical and analytical skills
in order to help you develop your creative powers and meet briefs that take you out of your comfort
zone. You will need to bring all of the skills you have learned so far: technical skills, research skills,
communication skills and a growth mindset, and be prepared to encounter new concepts and new
ways of working.

ANIMATION STUDIO 2 - ANI212

Credit Points: 30

In this studio unit, you will work collaboratively on a series of projects set by briefs and led by your
Facilitator. In collaboration with your your classmates, you will work towards developing several
project milestones within a simulated studio environment with your Facilitator acting as your
project manager, executive producer, mentor, and colleague.

Emphasis will be placed on advancing your development of the fundamentals of animation

production through conceptualising, planning, and executing rapid animation productions, short
films and contributing towards a portfolio. Working to a clear timeline, you will explore a range of
skills and workflows in collaborative, cross-discipline, and individual work. This includes focusing
on the creative, technical, and project management aspects required for completed animation
production. Teamwork, collaborative skills, and engagement with specific feedback processes are
emphasised in this unit, as you further refine and reflect on a set of Transferable Skills.

ANIMATION STUDIO 3 - ANI213

Credit Points: 30

In this studio unit, you will work collaboratively on a series of projects, set by briefs and led by your
Facilitator. In collaboration with your your classmates, you will work towards developing several
projects within a simulated studio environment with your Facilitator acting as your project manager,
executive producer, mentor, and colleague.

Emphasis will be placed on advancing your development of intermediate animation production

through conceptualising, planning, and executing rapid animation productions, short films and
contributing towards a portfolio.

Working to a clear timeline, you will explore a range of skills and workflows in collaborative, cross-
disciplinary, and individual work. This includes focusing on the creative, technical, and project
management aspects required for completed animation production. Teamwork, collaborative skills,
and engagement with specific feedback processes are emphasised in this unit, as you further
refine and reflect on a set of Transferable Skills.

CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES - CIM211

Credit Points: 10

Media and culture are not simply entertainment, but something that affects the “real world”, our
everyday lives, and our worldviews. As such, we will not ask whether media accurately reflect the
real world but instead ask how media shape, reinforce, and challenge power structures that
influence our understanding of the world and ourselves. This unit takes a ‘critical theory’ approach
to analyze media and culture. In this unit, you will explore media texts, contexts and meaning,
society and subjectivity, pop culture aesthetics, and critical cultural discourses that inform creative
media practices.

Drawing on a range of creative content and analytical frameworks, you will be encouraged to
develop ways of thinking about media and culture that demonstrate a broad awareness of
aesthetic principles and stylistic trends; subjectivity, agency, ethics, and relations of power;
contexts, disciplines and discursive formations. In support of this exploration, you will produce a
range of media artifacts that explore and contextualize the relationship of media to culture through
individual analysis, collaborative and interdisciplinary creative practice, and critical reflection.
ANIMATION STUDIO 3 - ANI213

Credit Points: 30

In this studio unit, you will work collaboratively on a series of projects, set by briefs and led by your
Facilitator. In collaboration with your your classmates, you will work towards developing several
projects within a simulated studio environment with your Facilitator acting as your project manager,
executive producer, mentor, and colleague.

Emphasis will be placed on advancing your development of intermediate animation production

through conceptualising, planning, and executing rapid animation productions, short films and
contributing towards a portfolio.

Working to a clear timeline, you will explore a range of skills and workflows in collaborative, cross-
disciplinary, and individual work. This includes focusing on the creative, technical, and project
management aspects required for completed animation production. Teamwork, collaborative skills,
and engagement with specific feedback processes are emphasised in this unit, as you further
refine and reflect on a set of Transferable Skills.

Stage 3: Showcase

Execute a project of your own design which is of a high quality and externally published, with the
knowledge to commercialise if you choose. You'll also apply your skills through industry work
placement.

MAJOR PROJECT DEVELOPMENT - CIM312

Credit Points: 20

This is the first unit in a two-part process of developing a collaborative project, designed to meet
professional publication standards. In a group, you'll design and execute a full-scale creative
project which will be designed to a specific target audience and market of your team's choosing.

Working closely with SAE Project Supervisors, your project will be guided through formal pre-
production and production processes to deliver a creative media project. If you are undertaking a
specialisation in your course, you will be required to align it with this capstone project as part of the
approval process.

This unit is designed to support the pre-production process, long term success of the project and
the fair and equitable contribution of group members. You'll present to the panel your forward plan
for the project, which demonstrates rigourous pre-production processes to mitigate risk to ensure
the project can be delivered on time and to specification.

Once you successfully complete this unit the emphasis of the capstone project development will
move away from pre-production into full production mode.

ANIMATION STUDIO 4 - ANI314

Credit Points: 20

In this studio unit, you'llll continue to consolidate and advance a broad range of animation skills in
a self-devised specialisation projects with mentorship from your facilitator.

These projects may range from testing ideas and techniques for future animation productions, in
addition to exploring cross-discipline projects.

You must demonstrate your ability to creatively and pragmatically scope a production brief with
assistance from your facilitator, clearly establishing your aims for the project, and engage in
sophisticated feedback processes. You are expected to begin to identify and emulate current
industry practices and trends in order to compete as industry professionals. Team work,
collaborative skills, research skills, and engagement with specific feedback processes all continue
to be emphasised in this unit, as you further refine and reflect on a set of Transferable Skills.

CREATIVE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND MARKETING - CIM320

Credit Points: 10

Gain an introduction to the principles of entrepreneurship to create and operate your own creative
media small business venture. Through analysing the global media landscape, You'll be able to
identify and explore start-up opportunities within the creative industries.

This unit is designed to be done in parallel with your capstone project. You'll apply the skills and
knowledge from this unit to formulate a rigorous business case to help you commercialise your
capstone project and use it as a basis for a creative media start-up.

WORK INTEGRATED LEARNING - CIM310

Credit Points: 10

Future jobs will require workers to learn on the job; focus on relationships with people; have strong
communication skills; use a range of transferable skills. Research consistently points to the
benefits of students being prepared with documents that are required for job applications, such as
a Resume, Cover Letter, and E-portfolio.

In addition, the value of a Work Placement which provides you with professional experience and
an opportunity to use skills and knowledge gained from study to complement this.

The Work Placement for SAE Bachelor students requires a minimum of 80 hours at one or more
host organisation. Both the student and the host are required to complete an SAE Agreement
which formalises the placement.

ELECTIVE

Credit Points: 10

SAE Creative Media Institute