20th Annual Digital Media Festival features distinguished alum Christopher Mascio '96
Friday, November 16, 2012, 7:30 PM Recital Hall Room 153
College of Visual & Performing Arts
The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
285 Old Westport Road
North Dartmouth, Massachusetts
The faculty and students from the Digital Media major in the Design Department of the College of Visual and Performing Arts at UMass Dartmouth are especially proud to announce that the Twentieth Annual Digital Media Festival will take place on Friday, November 16, 2012.
Now in it's 20th year, the Digital Media Festival has annually presented undergraduate and graduate student-created works on the big screen. That evening, on the main campus in Dartmouth, festival founder and Professor Harvey Goldman, along with Digital Media Professors Scott Ahrens, Mark Millstein, and Shawn Towne, the very best student works from the past year will be presented. The presentation will include two-dimensional images and animation, three-dimensional animation, and examples of interaction design from students and classes at all levels in both the BFA and MFA degree programs.
Admission is free and open to the public, but seating is limited. As always, visitors are advised to come early and park in the main campus lots number 7 or 8. Follow the signs to the College of Visual and Performing Arts Recital Hall, Room 153 on the first floor.
The November 16th presentation will start with a showing of still image works and story-telling samples from students beginning their studies in Digital Media, to be followed by a series of two-dimensional animation studies from junior students. Then, this year's well-anticipated three-dimensional animation from junior-level Digital Media Four classes will be presented.
This year, the student animators are proud to present their version of The Magic Act. Working in groups, each student contributes three-dimensional modeling and animation skills to highly detailed projects in which a magical act is performed. Students begin their work with research that includes historical and contemporary magicians and their acts, character development and human locomotion. Teams of four students then plan and design a story, then build virtual stage sets, props, and lighting. All of the models and textures, as well as the characters and actions that will appear in the festival that night were designed entirely by students studying animation in the Design Department's Digital Media program.
This year's festival will also include presentation of the hilarious animated work "Slothfulness" by Digital Media MFA alum John McGowan. Created as part of his graduate thesis, John's humorous story examines the imaginative desire of a young sloth to fly with the birds above his jungle home.
The Digital Media program at UMass Dartmouth is an integrated digital art, design and technology program with the mission of providing future creative leaders the skills and knowledge to meet the design and communication challenges of the of the
21st century.
A key objective is to facilitate and develop graduates who are broadly educated, articulate, scholarly, visually sophisticated and capable of active participation in all phases of the design process. Upon completion of their degree, many UMass Dartmouth Digital Media majors seek and find a profession in the film animation industry, electronic gaming industry or in one of the many facets of interaction design for the Internet.
On November 16, another such story will be told when the 2012 Digital Media Distinguished Alumni Award is presented to Christopher Mascio, a 1996 graduate of
the UMass Dartmouth Digital Media program. Now a Senior Developer at Jack Morton Worldwide, creators of interactive media for a lengthy list of international and Fortune 500 companies, Chris will be on hand to receive the award and show some examples of his professional work.
For additional information, or questions about the evening's festivities, please contact UMass Dartmouth Professor Harvey Goldman at (508) 999-8563, or by email at: hgoldman@umassd.edu. For driving directions or more information about the Digital Media program and the College of Visual and Performing Arts, please see the university web site at www.umassd.edu.