NJIT's Digital Design Major Again Tops in N.J., Says Industry Website

NJIT's digital design major is the best in New Jersey for the second year in a row, according to industry website Animation Career Review.

The Bachelor of Arts degree in digital design -- which has tracks for entertainment and production, as part of the School of Art+Design in the Hillier College of Architecture and Design -- also received strong marks for its standing on the East coast, nationally among public schools and nationwide overall. 

Glenn Goldman, director of the School of Art + Design said, “We are particularly proud of this given that we don't even have a typical animation program. It's a generalized B.A. where our students are learning animation, VFX, game design, graphic design, UI/UX, physical computing, AR/VR, etc. We are requiring our students to do everything.” 

The field of animation changed drastically in the past few years. Now it refers to an umbrella of uses covering everything from architectural renderings to visualizations in the natural sciences, powered by a range of software evolving quicker than any one person could master. Animation is a powerful modern tool used in careers like data science, pharmacology and marketing, not merely for entertainment purposes Hillier faculty in the design department observed.

Polina Zaitseva began teaching digital design at the program's inception in 2009, spearheaded by Goldman, who is known as a strong advocate for new technologies in education. Goldman led the college's push into computer-aided design and drafting more than 30 years ago and is currently teaching virtual reality technology for interior design as he pushes further into the 21st century.

Students still learn traditional design methods, in which Zaitseva excels. "It was kind of an experiment ... I built up quite a good portfolio in illustration and film work here and there," she recalled. Then by 2020, "As a digital design program, I think now we are pushing the students to get into heavy software earlier on ... it's not just that we as instructors are pushing it, the [students] are very hungry," she said.

Animation software use is not limited to the Hillier College’s Digital Design students. When students were forced to finish their spring semesters from home, animation software was used to complete architectural modeling complete with virtual walkthroughs. While physical studios were unavailable due to the COVID-19 remote learning period, animation software kept the learning process moving forward.

Nicolas Arango, a sophomore from Succasunna, N.J. working on his Bachelor of Architecture, said his studio course pivoted to animation workshops when hands-on woodworking became impossible after spring break. Professor Christopher Gardner led Arango's class through the basics of making animated graphic interchange files, popularly known as .gifs, in Arango's case using the Adobe After Effects software. 

"The irony was, they told us it was supposed to be a very model-heavy semester. They had a lot of workshops on woodworking," Arango said. Switching to computers, "It was pretty daunting at first. But after a bunch of workshops it was pretty helpful ... we did a virtual walk through of our space. That way we could show what the inside looked like."

Arango said he was nervous about having to learn complicated software so quickly. At first, "It was brutal," he said. But students in the course sought further assistance from online tutorials and helped each other master the application. After that, "We liked it a lot, but we were really surprised by how much time was needed to make a 6-minute .gif. By the end, a bunch of us now know how to make .gifs now which is pretty fun."

Another adjunct professor of digital design, Miguel Rodrigues, said it's also vital to teach students that what matters most is the final product, not the method used to create it. Animators working on the East coast tend to have general careers animating for television commercials, corporate logos, movie trailers and similar endeavors, whereas West coast counterparts are typically specialists or work in Hollywood, he added.

Rodrigues teaches a method called multi-pass compositing and rendering, which he said relates to layers of lighting, refraction and specularity, and is analogous to multiple layers in architectural plans or in Photoshop. The method takes longer to create an animation, but saves time later because it's easier to make changes.

Zaitseva predicted that 3D software, which is starting to become mainstream now, will be the dominant form by 2030. Near-term, she would like to bring in more guest speakers and lead more field trips to animation studios. Rodrigues said he's anticipating more animation applications mixed with artificial intelligence such as the emerging Google Deep Dream software, initially invented to help scientists and engineers understand deep neural networks.

Animation Career Review stated that its rankings of 192 schools since 2012 are based on academic reputation, admission selectivity, depth and breadth of the faculty, graduation rate, employment data, location, and value as determined by tuition and student debt. "For 2020, employment data was given significantly more weight in the ranking formula," the editors stated. Graduates from NJIT’s Hillier College of Architecture and Design go on to build careers as motion designers, creators of forensic visualization, user experience designers and work for firms such as NBC Universal, NFL Films, High 5 Games and Powerhouse VFX.