Basic Information
The Location of the school: Prague, Czech Republic
The URL or address of the official website: http://old.famu.cz/eng
Course titles (duration):
– Bachelor’s Degree (3 years)
– Master’s Degree (2 years)
The number of students admitted to each course:
– Bachelor’s Degree – 25
– Master’s Degree – 6
Where we may check out the works of students and graduates: https://vimeo.com/famu
Interview with Eliška Děcká, PHD. Assistant Professor of The Animation Department
1. Could you please give us an overview of the curriculum of the animation course?
Eliška Děcká: The animation course focuses mostly on traditional artistic aspects and hands-on techniques of animation (e.g. stop-motion, paper cut-out, puppet animation, drawn animation, etc.) and traditional storytelling with strong narratives that benefit from the specificity of animation. Recently, one of the most popular student exercises (at the end of the 2nd year of bachelor’s degree) is, for example, an “animated documentary”. Later, during the master’s degree, the focus is mostly on the realization of the final Master animated short.
2. What do you think are your unique characteristics or strengths?
Eliška Děcká: The strength of our school is, in my personal opinion, based in the fact that Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) is a versatile film school where students from various departments can easily collaborate if they want to. Our animation students, for example, frequently work with students from the sound design department, the editing department, or very importantly, also with the producing department. Many of these animator-producer creative teams last successfully after the graduation.
3. What do you look for in prospective students? What characteristics or skills do you want your prospective students to have when they apply?
Eliška Děcká: We’re always searching for creative types of candidates who will be capable of strong auteur ideas and visions while at the same time also with technical (e.g. drawing) abilities needed for the type of traditional hands-on animation which our department focuses on.
4. Could you please let us know what is your vision of the career that prospective students can expect by learning from you?
Eliška Děcká: Many of our students really do end up in artistic animation productions after graduation, where they would be working on their own films (mostly animated shorts) or are being part of smaller independent productions (working either on animated TV series or animated features, mostly). Some of them are also used in bigger international animated feature co-productions.
