BYU’s Animation Program has Created a Pipeline to Pixar

[Third Hour]

This article originally appeared in the Daily Herald. The walls of the James E. Talmage Math Sciences/Computer Building is a who’s who of the last two decades in animation. Posters hang for everything from “Up,” to “Coco” and “Frozen,” each poster containing a cluster of signatures. A towering statue of Po, the eponymous panda from the Kung Fu Panda franchise, poses in a lobby, ready to fight any evil kung fu masters. What the Brigham Young University Center for Animation is known for depends on which studio you ask. DreamWorks Animation has dubbed BYU “texture university.” Sony Pictures Animation knows them for their riggers. Blue Sky Studios, the company behind the Ice Age franchise, knows them for their storytelling. BYU’s animation program touts 40 alumni at Dreamworks and 15 at Pixar. And of Pixar’s nine internship spots every summer, out of 1,200 applicants, BYU almost always has at least one student in a slot. In its 18 years, BYU has created a training ground for studios. “There is a direct pipeline, it is...

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