Imagine you are a first-year student and your professor gives you a project typically meant for a senior. You have two semesters to complete it — or you'll fail, but you don't have the skills or experience needed to complete the project. This is what Ruth Berkowitz, an ASU alum who graduated in 2024, and her team experienced throughout their capstone project.
Berkowitz and her group unveiled "Maria" at the Spring 2024 animation showcase — a short animated horror film meant to retell the Virgin Mary's pregnancy. Rather than portraying the beauty typically associated with pregnancy, this project intended to show the unspoken aspects, such as unpleasant bodily changes and how motherhood can transform an individual. Instead, the team lost this symbolism as they were forced to reduce their production from five to three minutes. Berkowitz's team went into their capstone project with no experience in production or skills in industry-level software.
As a result, they were simultaneously learning these pipelines while completing their film in two semesters. Berkowitz said they worked whenever they could, even during their winter break, to ensure they'd meet their deadline. "We didn't have the time, we didn't have the knowledge, we were stressed out," Berkowitz said. "We couldn't really make the film as deep or provocative as it could be." When she initially enrolled at ASU in 2019, there wasn't an animation program yet, but she attended due to affordability, proximity and based on her research, she felt the school would provide her with an adequate education for her aspirations.
She later switched into animation once ASU introduced the degree program in 2020. Instead of graduating prepared for the industry, she felt she was left "high and dry."
"I wanted to graduate with a degree in animation," Berkowitz said. "But despite being an animation major, I do not know how to animate." In the initial creation of the program, it represented roughly 200 students and had limited resources, such as a single computer lab. It also lacked professors who had adequate animation experience who could teach area-specific classes.
Shawn Lawson, the former director, said that due to the rapid student growth, efforts were made to improve the program, making it more rigorous. "When I was hired, I thought it would be a very low number of students taking some animation classes," Lawson said. "We didn't realize we were going to have this rapid growth and need to kind of build things up this way."
Lawson said the program has finally stabilized in enrollment and faculty hire and they're now transitioning their focus to developing the curriculum and classes such as electives. He also said the department is working on building an overall identity for the program. Despite these strides toward improvement, current and past students at ASU are still questioning the program's ability to prepare them for professional animation careers.
Animation's first years at ASU
Before purchasing her own graphic tablet, Sarah Pedrini, an ASU alum who graduated from the animation program in 2025, recalled the singular computer lab as unfortunate, especially when learning about the professional software and technology used for animation. Even when she had access to this facility, there were technical issues such as defective tablets, missing styluses or lagging systems.
She said that during professors' tutorials, these setbacks caused her to fall behind. "It took a while to get the tablets or PCs up and running because they're so slow," Pedrini said. "There'll be missing styluses or something else, so I'd have to move around or sometimes I just wouldn't have access to a tablet that day."
During Pedrini's first couple of semesters, she experienced frequent curriculum and course requirement changes, as she said the program would have students take a class, ask for feedback and then change it based on the responses. These changes agitated Pedrini because there were instances where she planned to take certain classes, but then had to reconsider or find other courses. To ensure this did not affect her when she graduated, she overloaded on general studies credits.
"If there were any more shifts like in my core animation classes, I'd still have wiggle room to adjust," Pedrini said. "If I didn't do that, then it would have been a massive concern." Although Pedrini went into her capstone with separate experience in each phase of the planning and production, she'd never worked the entire process of creating a short animated film altogether.
Because of that, she said time management became her team's weakness. For her specifically, she struggled with animating quickly, as she said she could animate 15-20 seconds per week — with the final production being two minutes and 30 seconds. She compared that to a previous class's final project, where she had three weeks to animate 10-15 seconds.
While Pedrini and her team felt satisfied once they debuted their short animated film, "Lost on Delivery," it still did not remove the feeling that there could have been a better outcome if they had been prepared. Pedrini described the production process as "emotionally and physically exhausting" because the final months consisted of waking up, attending class and rushing home so she could work on the animations while still finding time to sleep.
"Already knowing how to manage that pipeline and our programs, all while taking other classes would have been a lifesaver," Pedrini said. "I wish (the junior projects) was encouraged or even required for us, or that our other classes have projects or assignments that prepared us for making a short film."
As a result of this sentiment, Alex Lee, the animation program coordinator, said the junior projects became mandatory to provide students with experience before the capstone project. The junior projects are a two-semester-long project, where animation students form groups and create a short animated film between 60 and 90 seconds long.
The first semester is the pre-production phase, which involves conceptualizing ideas, storyboarding and creating elements to use. The following semester is the production and post-production where the art and story become animated. "Before junior projects, the majority of students weren't really prepared for the amount of work necessary for a capstone-level project," Lee said. "Many were making mistakes, unprepared or underestimated what it took to create a competitive capstone."
Program's development
This change is one example of how the program is trying to accommodate its growing student body, which currently sits at roughly 480 students, according to Lee. In addition, Lawson said ASU hired 14 new faculty members with extensive experience to bolster the program. They also added specialized classes like 2D and 3D animation. The program's growth required more classroom space and facilities, and they acquired it with the construction of the University Gateway Building in Tempe.
"I'm quite surprised that we have as many students as we do," Lee said. "Many of the previous programs I have taught or have been in have no more than 30 majors at a given time." Lee formerly taught at Clarkson University, a private university located in New York, where the 2025-2026 base tuition cost for full-time students is about $60,000 per year.
In comparison to ASU's program, whose 2026-2027 base tuition is roughly under $15,000 for in-state students, it also did not implement classes in drawing, or 2D and 3D animation, alongside general studies. In addition, capstones were mainly experimental rather than character-driven animated shorts.
"Student access to the quality and amount of facilities and resources of ASU are incredible," Lee said. "This is the advantage a large R1 affords and I don't think a lot of students take full advantage of (it) whilst they are here."
Students who focus on 3D animation currently have access to industry-standard programs like Autodesk Maya, Adobe Substance, Zbrush, a stop-motion software called Dragonframe and a 3D open source called Blender. As for 2D, Berkowitz said she initially learned to animate on Adobe Photoshop and eventually industry-level software like Toon Boom Harmony during her senior year.
Pedrini also had access to Toon Boom Harmony, but it is currently unavailable to ASU students. Lee said this is due to the advanced versions' licensing costs in comparison to the program's student capacity and that it tends to be unstable or crashes frequently. The program had Adobe Animate for 2D animation; however, in early 2026, Adobe announced that this software would enter maintenance mode, meaning that it would still be accessible, but it would no longer receive updates.
Lawson said that the program will continue implementing this software and open source alternatives in their labs, as it won't immediately affect students. Lee said they're currently addressing this by trying to obtain 2D software licenses.
"Adobe Animate being phased out (has) caught us with our pants down, and (it) looks like Adobe is pivoting on AI integration," Lee said. "Moho could be a viable option (but) we're actually meeting with the Toon Boom rep soon to see if we can negotiate a deal."
One concern that Leo Sukenick, a transfer animation student, said is that he feels like he's left to teach himself. One factor is the online courses and resources, which he said are typically video tutorials or lectures and discussion boards for critiquing other students' work. While he said it can be convenient at times, it's not the same as being fully immersed.
"When you're learning alongside your peers and everyone's asking questions, everyone is voicing their opinions," Sukenick said. "You have like an exponential growth in what you’re capable of learning from the one class alone." His previous school, the Pratt Institute in New York, only had in-person classes.
Although Sukenick withdrew from Pratt between 2018 and 2019 due to personal reasons and enrolled at ASU for convenience, he said that the professors were in-depth with teaching and often stayed behind after classes. While he understands that he's only in his first semester and that he's aware of the resources, such as tutors, he said it's difficult as he lives off-campus. Insufficient amount of time for class work is another concern that Sukenick initially had, as Pratt has customary three-hour lectures.
At ASU, classes such as live model drawing are typically one hour and 15 minutes, yet after the professor provides the class expectations, he's given less than an hour. To resolve this, his live model drawing professor granted him permission to stay through their next class after Sukenick expressed concern with the lack of time. As a result, that professor opened their classes to any student wanting additional time.
"I know me and one or two other students do extra sessions now," Sukenick said. "I feel like our work has benefited tremendously from just taking a second class, which stretches the one hour to like two and a half hours." Lee said he hears both sides of this argument; students who feel the work is not challenging enough or is excessive.
For in-person classes, he said faculty aim for about eight hours of work per week — including both in-class and out-of-class assignments — whereas for hybrid, the workload is three hours. In any case, he said students are invited to meet with him or any other faculty member via office hours.
Since Sukenick lives off-campus, he said it's difficult to find support and network; clubs such as Untitled Animation have provided these opportunities. Kendra Montes Cardenas, the club's president, said she, along with two other students, co-founded the organization due to a lack of a present community. Although Lemon Tree Animation and Women in Animation are two pre-existing clubs, Montes Cardenas, a junior who formerly studied animation but is now studying computer science with a focus in software engineering, said Untitled's focus is creating an online presence to include both off-campus and online students.
"I'm a commuter and it feels very isolating," Montes Cardenas said. "I want to connect with others, just like I connected with Grace (another Untitled co-founder). She was on campus and even as an on-campus student, didn't feel like there were that many animation networking opportunities."
Untitled often holds open drawing sessions on Magma, where students are able to freely draw together without judgment. However, students seeking feedback, support or simply wanting to view other students' art are able to in specific club channels. In addition, Sukenick said that he's spoken with professionals, gotten portfolio reviews and even gained additional live model drawing sessions.
However, he said these opportunities should be offered by ASU, rather than clubs that don't have an extensive budget. "The clubs themselves are amazing, like there are so many animation clubs and those guys have been a tremendous source of resources," Sukenick said. "The clubs are doing so much of the footwork for ASU, for creating a sense of community and for creating a way for all of us in our disjointed, digital world."
Editor's Note: Sarah Pedrini previously worked at The State Press
Edited by Leah Mesquita, Natalia Jarrett and Abigail Wilt. This story is part of The Best of ASU, which was released on April 29, 2026. See the entire publication here.
Reach the reporter at akpaulic@asu.edu and follow @akp.reports on Instagram.
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