Fine Art people create a world that you can look at, whereas Animators create a world you can inhabit or be apart of. So, if you are not sure of a world and you want to explore it from outside then Fine Art would seem to be a good choice. However, if you want to create a world that you can explore yourself and even discover things in it, you may prefer to go for animation studies. It would be useful to know at this stage that a lot of the leading animators started as a looker on (studied fine art) and later on wanted to enter and explore a world. So from a scientist they wanted to become an explorer.
There is also another way you look at this comparision. Artists over thousands of years have been trying to recreate images that they see and later on even images that they imagine to be there. For this they always used the best methods available with them at that stage. So while the stone age artists used stone to carve images on cave walls, later artists went with the best their era offered. In fact, most of the technologies were invented to help this artist tell his or her story. So, if camera was invented, the best of the artists started using that medium to tell their stories. And while doing this, they invented a new language which was peculiar to that medium. So when animation started they used the constraints and limits of the gadgets that allowed images to move to give the user at experience.
So what are the recent inventions that you may look at?
i. 3D Pen/ Printing – allowing even stop motion to be printed and other impossible sculptures to be made
ii. 3D Stereoscopy leading to Immersive Technology – e.g. 7D Theatre
iii. 3D Gaming using detection – XBox Live!
iv. Social Gaming – massive multiplayer experiences
v. Mobile Devices – many new experiences like whatsup etc are changing the art landscape
vi. crowd sourcing/ crowd creation – many songs/ other arts works are getting created by crowds
vii. UID/ UXD – User Interface or User Experience Design is help new points of view on Design
vii. cloud computing – this allowed the artist to use extensive resources earlier available only yo technical labs
If you have any other questions regarding this article, feel free to write to Vineet Raj Kapoor at virtualciti@yahoo.com. If you want to enquire about courses and programs at Arena Chandigarh, feel free to write to Neelu at info@arenaanimationacademy.com