Self-Reflective Statement
Jeremy Mowery
Assistant Professor of Animation & VFX
October 2024
Teaching
My goal as a teacher, as always, it to connect with, inspire and empower students to succeed in their field of work. This falls in line with my life philosophy of being a good person, always willing to help others. In turn, I make it an objective to improve the courses I teach each new semester. For the latter goal, I look at teaching evaluations, receive feedback from students 1-on-1, bounce ideas off fellow professors and make observations on how assignments and the overall schedules of my courses have succeeded or needed improvement as the semesters unfold.
This past year I have continued to teach Intro to Stop Motion, Portfolio Production, Senior Thesis 1, 2 and 3, Production Design and taught Intro to Digital Media for the first time. That was very exciting for me as I love starting new things and I believe I have improved the process for this course. The fact that I have an editing background helped in that regard, because previously, this course taught students to make short animations all in After Effects, supported by creating elements in Photoshop. This method is possible, but it misses an important opportunity by excluding Adobe Premiere Pro for editing. After Effects is setup better for Animation, Compositing and Effects, but Premiere is best for editing videos to figure out the pacing and it has better features for incorporating sound effects and music. Premiere also integrates seamlessly with After Effects, so it was a no-brainer for me to add Premiere to this course. The students did great work and had fun learning the process. This will help them moving forward when working on their Junior and Senior thesis films.
While it was a great experience teaching the new course, I also spent a lot of time over the summer re-working one of my original courses - Intro to Stop Motion Animation. Over the past few years, I have gained a lot of experience myself through my freelance work, and after seeing the quality of work the students have produced, I think there is much room for improvement. Before I had them produce an entire short film in a single semester and the fabrication aspect proved to be very time consuming, so the students did not get adequate time animating, which has led their animation to suffer a bit. Another reason for revamping this course is that our puppet building elective will be returning in the spring, so I decided to change the Intro to Stop Motion Course and make it all about animating. Now they do a series of animation exercises all semester long to gain as much experience as possible animating in stop motion. I also added a creative lighting test to help them get more experience with on-set lighting. However, much of the fabrication has been taken out and a big part of that will be saved for the puppet building elective. The first iteration of the newly improved course began this semester and so far, is going well.
I have also continued developing my relationship with Apartment D Films and was able to help a student get an internship there this past summer. In addition, I recommended three other students who were able to work on an indie short film at the studio over the summer. After completing his internship, my student was also hired to work on two projects towards the end of summer. Besides Apartment D, I also worked with another studio called, Screen Novelties, and got their Producer to come and be a guest speaker and took seventeen students on a studio tour to see them working on a fun new SpongeBob project that is coming out this December.
University Service
Throughout the Spring 2024 semester I continued serving on the Adjunct Faculty Issues committee where we primarily discussed adjunct pay issues and helped organize the Adjunct Faculty Social Gathering that we hold once per semester. We continued to encouraged Adjuncts to apply for the Faculty Development Grants as they are eligible for those as well.
Over the summer I completed the project that I was awarded a Faculty Development Grant for - the short film called, Love Forevermore. It was a great experience working with colleagues and having my own students earn internships credits and work with us to create this short film. Our team totaled twenty people including myself, five of my colleagues, twelve student interns and two additional alumni who are recent graduates. I was able to push our process further with the help of the grant to include 3D printing for puppets and set pieces. We are currently submitting the project to film festivals.
In Fall of 2024, I switched over to the Institutional Review Board. All of us on the committee this semester are new to it so we have been conducting turnover with the previous chair to get up to speed. We held our first meeting recently and I was selected to chair the committee so I am excited to get started.
Professional and Scholarly Development
My primary vehicle for developing in my field is to continuously work on projects. In the short term, my goals are to complete new projects, working for others and/or myself, and to learn something new with each project. Long-term, I aim to gain prominent contacts in my industry to work on projects with bigger budgets and provide better opportunities for my students.
As usual, I have continued to work on different projects, all of which I have learned various new techniques and have continued to grow as an artist. I completed an original short film, Love Forevermore, as stated with the faculty development grant. After that I was hired to be a VFX artist for an indie feature film, Executor, where I learned how to make force fields in After Effects for the first time which was a fun process. I was also hired to work on a short stop motion film called, Hommage to the Laundress of Erik Satie. Utilizing my contacts I have made through Apartment D Films and Screen Novelties, I was able to hire a set builder who built the first set at Apartment D, and another fabricator who made one of the puppets hair pieces. The director also hired an art director who has worked with Laika and other stop motion studios up in Portland, so I’m hoping to be able to network with him soon as well. It has been great to meet and work with more experienced industry professionals in my field. Currently I am animating a music video for Radioactive Chicken Heads and was able to hire four of my former students to work as my fabrication team.
Through these experiences, I have been able to practice new techniques, such as 3D printing, push my VFX skills by doing things I haven’t done before and continue to gain more experience animating which is my primary specialty.
I have also been working over the summer on a course in the software, ZBrush, through CGMA, a professional online school specializing in CG modeling and animation software. Now that I have learned 3D printing, ZBrush will come in handy as I will be able to digitally sculpt anything I need to 3D print for freelance projects and/or my own short films. I am looking forward to learning and practicing ZBrush more and being able to possibly teach it to my students in the future.