ACR Staff

What is Japanese Manga?

Manga is a Japanese art form that encompasses drawn cartoons, comic books, and graphic novels. Manga is different from non-Japanese cartoon, comic books, and novels in a number of ways. For starters, manga reads right to left, back to front. This means that the last page of a book or comic in the West would be the first page of a manga. Next, according to Simon Richmond’s The Rough Guide to Anime, “in their original Japanese form, manga magazines are mainly printed in black ink on white or color-tinted pages on flimsy recycled paper. They will typically have four hundred or more pages and contain a score of serialized and one-off stories.” 

Animation instructors at top schools have at least two things in common. They are passionate about animation and all are accomplished artists in the field. Many of these artist-educators began their journey just as their students did—in an undergraduate animation or related program. Just about every top program will provide the opportunity to complete an internship, where students have the chance to gain real world experience. This will become a valuable asset when comes to securing a position in the industry. Common jobs in animation include animator, stop motion animator, 3D modeler, flash animator, compositing artist, storyboard artist, render wrangler, texture artist, and art director. 

Though there will always be more undergraduate programs in animation than graduate options, advanced degree programs in this growing industry are becoming more common. Some of the most prominent programs include UCLA Animation Workshop, the MFA in Studio at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), the MA and MFA in Animation at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), the MFA in Animation at DePaul University, the Film and Animation MFA at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), and University of Southern California’s (USC) MFA in Animation and Digital Arts. 

So you want to be an animation director, huh? Well, congratulations! You’ve chosen one of the coolest careers in the entertainment industry, and we’re not just talking about the creative part. Animation is a growing industry with expected employment growth of six percent for the 2014-2024 decade. Add “director” to the title and growth increases to nine percent over the same decade. This is faster than average for all occupations.