Information for Students Seeking Individual Learning Contracts (ILCs)

I prioritize contracts with students working in animation, students with whom I have worked in a previous program and students who contact me to initiate developing a contract by at least week five of the preceding quarter. The deadline for approving ILCs is the Friday of the last week of the preceding quarter, so make sure you give yourself enough time to complete this process well.

Individual Learning Contracts are not the place to begin learning animation.  You need to have taken at least one quarter of college level animation before attempting an ILC that includes animation production.

Prerequisites for doing an animation ILC with me are one Evergreen interdisciplinary program (preferably two or more quarters) and junior or senior status.

I am usually available to take contracts in summer session.

Here are things you need to provide when requesting my support for your ILC:

  • A draft ILC that you’ve written after consulting with Advising and reading about ILCs on the Individual Learning Contracts web page.  Make sure that the contract draft focuses on your learning goals, clearly separated from the activities you will undertake to achieve those goals.
  • A one page treatment for your project in which you discuss the underlying concepts and describe your stylistic and technical approaches, including whether or not you will use sound.  You should explain why you want to express the concepts in those ways and make it clear how the form of the piece is related to its content.  The treatment should also include an estimate of the total running time and a working title.
  • Pre-production and production schedules that outline all the steps you will take to complete the project, week by week.  Include an estimate of how many hours per week you expect to devote to this project. Note that if you want to do a 16 credit contract, you should plan for a minimum of 40 hours per week of work.
  • A list of readings and films related to the work you expect to do.  Some of these should be focused on the background of your idea. At least one reading should consider other artists and animators who have also worked with this content, or theories about animation or media in general. The list of films should include ones that represent the subject you are interested in animating about and ones that use techniques or approaches that you would like to try.

If we decide to proceed with your ILC, we will meet to talk about other readings and films you should consider, credits, and preliminary drawings, storyboard ideas or other imagery that you have developed.