Lysergic Bliss

I can refute rumors, but it helps to know what specific ones you have heard!

Calarts has a strange sort of Jekyll and Hyde personality to it—essentially, it’s a really nerdy, talented little Character Animation program nestled inside a really avant-garde, “edgy” fine arts school that tends to look down on Animation as “hack industry sell-outs”. The school as a whole has a reputation for being a “crazy party school” but Animation is known for being a lot more work-oriented and quiet. I personally am not a party person and spent a lot of time sitting in little nerd clans watching movies, and a lot of my classmates did the same.

Whenever you hear rumors about Calarts, be sure to clarify whether they apply to the animation department specifically! We are a weird school like that.

As for “huge egos”, there are occasional douchey people but I doubt it’s anything worse than you would find in any school, or any gathering of human beings. On the whole, since most of us do want to go into the industry, we are really encouraged to be nice and neighborly to other people, because it’s a small industry and really no one can afford to burn bridges or get themselves blacklisted.

I think Calarts is an awesome school, but art school is really what you make of it!