Meet current student, Sophie Ash

Sophie Ash is training for the 2022 Winter Olympics, and completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Animation). While Athletics and animation are not considered to go hand in hand, Sophie has blended her love of mogul skiing and fine art into one amazing creative practice.

When I decided to start making work about skiing I realised that I had a lot of things to say, and a unique mode of expression of an athlete’s perspective. I find inspiration in a lot of my own experiences as well as other athletes and their stories, especially their experiences of training and competing in their respective sports.

When I was first starting out with everything, I was quick to shut the door on ideas I didn’t think would work. I also was afraid of creating something people wouldn’t like or understand. I find you lose the purpose if you’re doing it for others; and it’s the same for a lot of things in life.

Sophie Ash

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Faculty of Fine Arts and Music

The course is taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, the proud home of the Victorian College of the Arts and the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music.

You’ll enjoy access to incredible facilities, including cinemas, digital vision and audio post-production facilities, visual art studios and technical workshop facilities, purpose-built dance studios, libraries, theatre and performance spaces, and animation and stop-motion studios.

While studying at the Faculty, you will have the chance to benefit from a range of partnerships and engagement activities at major arts companies in Melbourne's Arts Precinct, local and national festivals and sister institutions around the world.

Explore the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music

Wilin Centre

Situated in the heart of Melbourne's Arts Precinct, the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development provides exposure to contemporary Indigenous arts practices and supports the recruitment of Indigenous artists, academics and students.

Learn more about the Wilin Centre

Work on display: Fed Square NYE 2022

Students from the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) at the University of Melbourne took over Fed Square on New Year's Eve 2022.

In a brilliant opportunity for our young creatives, DJs and music producers from the Interactive Composition (IC) course at the Conservatorium performed on the main stage, accompanied by live dance performances and eye-catching animations from VCA students throughout the evening and for the countdown to 2023.

Read the full article on NYE 2022

Staff profile: Rosalie Osman and Christie Widiarto

Rosalie Osman	Christie Widiarto

Rosalie Osman is a 2D animator with an impressive portfolio of web, film and television works, specialising in character animation. She creates short films based on early childhood memories of fairy tales and everyday observations, including her feature film, Bibliomania.

Christie Widiarto focuses on storytelling that explores the themes of cultural identity, family and nature. She specialises in combining traditional artistic techniques with digital technology to create multimodal collaborations, including working with the Footscray Community Arts Centre to create a series of animated wall murals for her "ECL" project.

For Rosalie, animation represents incredible opportunities to design and create: “I have a great respect for the pre-production and design of a film, weaving story through every aspect of the production from the ground up and manipulating how you want the audience to feel and react. Everything on screen should be intentional. Animation expands the ways I can design and create. I moved from designing single compositions to developing characters, creating entire worlds and generating thousands of images across a timeline with soundscapes.”

And for Christie, the deep variety of animation – and how to animate – drives her excitement: “What excites me is the many different directions that animation can take you these days. There are still animated films being made with stop motion puppetry and traditional 2D animation, while new technologies create opportunities in interactive media and for developing film making techniques. Sometimes there is a combination of old and new techniques which is exciting.”

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