Modern Art : O.C. Universities in Step With Demand for Digital Expertise

FULLERTON — Eyes darting from easels to models, the students in Don Lagerberg’s “Heads and Hands” drawing class learn to sketch the human form the same way aspiring artists have learned for centuries.

All effort centers on replicating the line and shape of bones and tendons with da Vinci-esque exactness. Renderings of muscle-bound butts and thighs cover one wall.

Many of these Cal State Fullerton students aspire to have their work appear not in the Orange County Museum of Art but in films, television, video games, at theme parks and online. They hope to net high-paying jobs in a field--digital art--centuries removed yet forever in debt to the classical techniques epitomized by Michelangelo.

Eric Chauvin worked at a large Irvine mortgage company after graduation from Cal State because he couldn’t find a job as an artist. But he returned for a master’s degree and for the past five years has been digitally “painting” backgrounds and elaborate effects for such films as “Contact.” “I’m now making the same as the CEO at that mortgage firm was making,” Chauvin said.

Art grads nationwide are telling similar stories as universities--including Cal State Fullerton, UC Irvine and Chapman--continue to bolster digital arts curricula in response to the recent heavy demand from visual-effects enterprises. Even relatively inexperienced digital pros may earn $50,000 or more annually, and animators take home an average of $105,000, industry officials said.

For professionals who have been notoriously underemployed, the digital arts boom must feel like manna, whether they make a career of the discipline or just use it to support their “real” work. Indeed, artists who graduated only a decade ago might not recognize their alma mater’s art departments, where PCs share space with drawing boards. But instructors, administrators, students and alums said in recent interviews that the fundamentals of art instruction remain unchanged. And anyway, painting and sculpture have withstood threats through the centuries.

There is, and always has been, enough creative energy to go around, said Howard N. Fox, curator of contemporary art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, noting that video and film started out as “quote-unquote non-art endeavors.”

“Since the time of cave paintings, despite the oft-mourned death of painting, it’s still around,” Fox said, “and so are all of the other arts. So it seems to be a law of history that art forms don’t really die with the advent of a new technology.”

Local school administrators said the cost of computer equipment and software has been covered mostly by tuition from the growing ranks of digital art students. Since they must take life drawing, painting and other rendering courses--an essential foundation for creating digitally animated figures that move realistically through space--traditional art classes are bigger than ever, their supply cabinets well stocked. Even artists who eschew digital as a career option benefit from expanded computer labs because they increasingly use computers instead of brushes.

Overall, the number of non-digital artists is not diminishing, said Steve Criqui, a Los Angeles artist who has taught painting at UC Irvine for four years.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “I’m teaching at Otis [College of Art and Design] too, and over 50 seniors there are very dedicated, and it’s the same over at Art Center [College of Design in Pasadena] and Cal Arts” in Santa Clarita.

Fed largely by the digital specialists, UCI now has almost twice as many art majors, about 255, as it did four years ago. The school established a digital arts minor this semester, and it provides training in CD-ROM technology to local grade- and high school students through a program called the UCI Digital Arts Bridge. Officials also hope to create a digital arts satellite campus in Santa Ana’s emerging Artists Village.

*

Also aiming to keep up with the technology race, Chapman University last year opened a new multimedia lab in which students might learn, for instance, to create a digital “composite” wherein an actor (on film) captains an animated spaceship to Mars.

Cal State Fullerton this fall made official a new major, entertainment arts and animation, that has informally existed for three years. Teachers include Warner Bros. animators who visit classrooms via live video feeds.

The university, with 165 undergraduate art students majoring in graphic design, has long emphasized the applied arts. Alum Nina Stanley, for example, found work even before graduating in 1992. But Stanley, who just started a job in the Bay Area designing a Nintendo game, is among the artists who use digital to support their fine art. It’s far more creative than waiting tables, not to mention more lucrative. Indeed, Stanley believes it will allow her to attain her ultimate goal: “I’m hoping someday to live in London as a painter and teach,” Stanley said.

The drawback to dragging a mouse around all day, she said, was a temporary loss of artistic confidence. Experimentation on a computer can be anxiety-free because, barring a crash, umpteen drafts may be easily stored. The stakes are higher with oil paint, she said.

Professor Lagerberg believes the digital explosion has given classical drawing a tremendous boost.

“I think we’re probably in the greatest age, for certain kinds of drawing and painting, probably since the Renaissance or the Dutch Golden Age,” he said.

*

Yet the trend doesn’t auger the end of abstraction or free thinking, insiders agreed. Artists producing CD-ROMs, for instance, must not only invent characters, but also creatively light and stage action in a scene. Fine artists also have an amazing tool in the computer.

“I’ve seen incredibly [realistic] looking figurative work--that’s also very eerie because it’s done on computer,” said LACMA’s Fox, “and I’ve seen utterly bizarre kinds of abstraction.”

Scenic design majors have pushed the boundaries by going digital, said UC Irvine professor Doug Scott Goheen. “We’re getting results that simply wouldn’t happen using the time-honored traditions of pen and paper,” he said.

Still, for all the enthusiasm, demand for digital artists may have peaked. Some entertainment industry officials said the hiring “gold rush” is over. Cal State Fullerton graduate student Jeanne Brinker, who worked at Virgin Interactive for more than three years, was laid off in February when the company downsized.

“It wasn’t that long ago that all the animators started to lose their jobs because lots of studios were moving overseas,” said Sergio Lizarraga, a Cal State Fullerton associate professor of graphic design. “And those types of shifts are constant, which is why we always want to get back to the core, to make sure our students have the fundamental skills to be well-rounded visual communicators.”