My course

In the last week, I’ve found out that my course won’t actually exist at the university next year, people can’t actually apply for computer animation. I have mixed emotions about this, I know the computer science field is rapidly changing, so is field of computer animation. I was a little sad that the course wasn’t continuing at the University of Bedfordshire same with Graphics design. All of these courses have been merged into the Games Development course. From my personal opinion computer animation is not games development. For people like me, I prefer “rendered” animating and using software like 3Ds max and creating shorts. 

So if I had to decide on universities again at this stage, I wouldn’t pick this university for that reason. Same with those studying games development, they probably don’t want more graphics/animation merged into their course. I’m only expressing my opinion here, I just don’t think that it’s a good idea for them to be merging. Another thing is my exact course got renamed in my second year from Computer Animation to Computer Animation Technology. We could definitely see that changes where happening in the course. 

I’m nearing the end of the third year now, I’ve had a good experience with the course so far, shame that others won’t be able to experience it too. It’s a growing field, there are plenty of things I can do with my degree and the animation master program is still running at the university, so it hasn’t limited me in any way. 

This whole blog is based on computer science I know, but my course is computer animation and I just wanted to express what I thought on the topic. The other courses like networking and forensic sciences seem unchanged, but I’ve haven’t had any real experience studying in those areas (well, briefly in year 1). What I think we can conclude from this is that technology is always going to be growing and changing, departments grow and change in areas too. It’s always going to be difficult for institutes to keep up-to-date on all the new technologies and indeed even new courses. For example 3D printing wasn’t a huge thing 10 year ago, but now you can cheaply buy a printer for your home.

3D printing stand I manned in the o2 arena for Microsoft

It’s debatable weather or not these types of technology should be extracurricular at this stage in its development. Either way, I’ve tried to keep up to date and you can find more info about the image above on my personal blog…

http://it-ca.net/blogsean/?p=826

 

Extracurricular Activities!

At the University of Bedfordshire, there’s a huge amount of groups and societies to join. Some of them aren’t even course/ subject area specific. As I’ve mentioned in my last blog post. I travel to university, so sadly I don’t actually personally attend any society. But, luckily because I’m studying a computer science related subject there are some societies that the university hold in which you can attend online. For example there was a CGI society run a few years ago. You could enter the weekly challenges on Facebook. Another great example of this is games jam. This may not be a weekly thing, but every year or so the university hold a games jam. I think we still hold the Guinness book of records at the university for the biggest games jam.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19622596

Link is above, if you wanted more information. I know the university is holding another games jam soon. It’s something which will obviously help your CV, build your technical and your social skills. They are not compulsory but I personally think they are great fun and another example of how the university goes the extra mile! Although I think personally as a student you should try and attend as many things like this as possible. I’ve currently attended 5 game jams, a few only 12 hours others 48 hours.