How the BYU animation program earned global recognition

Spencer Baird knew “Student Accomplice” was a good idea when he came up with it. From the moment he pitched it to a friend in his BYU animation class, it “just stuck in (his) head.” What he didn’t know, is that with help from his peers, his idea would mature into a feature worthy of a student Academy Award.
When put up against animated student films from around the globe, “Student Accomplice,” which was directed by Baird, placed third in the 2024 student Academy Awards for an animated short. BYU was the only university in the United States nominated in the animation category.
“It was really, really cool,” Baird told the Deseret News. “I think it was super cool to have an idea that I came up with, and worked so hard on … to receive that kind of recognition. And I felt really proud as well of the team, because there have been just a lot of people who made it possible.”
Baird takes credit for coming up with the concept behind “Student Accomplice,” but it took a team of 30 BYU students — who treated the project like a part-time, sometimes full-time job — and a year-and-a-half to transform his idea into an award-winning product.
Most of the students who worked on “Student Accomplice” dedicated at least 20 hours every week towards the project, on top of their typical BYU workload and paying jobs. Towards the end, it became a 40-hour per week commitment “or even longer” Baird said.
“Near the end of the project, we were all just basically living in our lab, working at the computers, trying to get the thing done,” he said.
It’s that level of commitment and collaborative spirit from students that sets the BYU animation program apart from similar programs on an international level.
When Kelly Loosli co-founded the BYU animation program in 2001 with his former teacher, Brent Adams, he committed to putting all his energy, resources and funding toward “supporting student films,” he told the Deseret News. “The more I’ve done that, the more successful the students have gotten.”
BYU’s animation program has earned seven student Academy Awards, 22 student Emmy awards, and several other honors.
University professors typically spend a large portion of time on their own research and projects, but within the BYU animation program professors turn the focus on mentoring students through student-driven projects, rather than asking students to spend time on their professors’ projects, explained Loosli, who is a co-founder and current director of the BYU Center for Animation.
At BYU, “Students aren’t just … subservient to faculty, they’re actually working on their own projects and they’re working to develop their own skills,” Loosli said. “BYU is focused on undergraduate education. … And that’s not always the case at other major universities.”
BYU’s collaborative approach to student animation projects is also unique.
“You know, you go to any other art school, and every kid makes their own film. And at BYU, we have everybody work together to make a big, collaborative film,” Loosli said. “And the fact that kids buy into that vision … that is just huge to me.”
Creating a collaborative work environment provides a real-world representation of what students might experience working in a film studio. BYU animation projects pull students from inside and outside the program to collaborate.
In the making of “Student Accomplice,” students from BYU’s media arts, computer science and music programs brought their unique skills to the project.
“I think it’s really helpful, because when you go into the industry, you don’t start out directing a film, right? You start out working in a collaborative environment where you have to work on a team, so I’m really grateful for the way that (BYU) runs (the animation program),” Baird said.
While forming the animation program at BYU, Loosli sought advice from Ed Catmull, a co-founder of Pixar and University of Utah graduate. Loosli asked Catmull which sort of creators the animation industry was lacking.
Catmull explained that there are typically two types of people in the animation world — technical people and artistic people, but noted a “big void” between these types, because they struggle to communicate and work with each other, Loosli recounted.
“Why don’t you target talent-training people who could be in the middle?” Catmull suggested, according to Loosli.
“BYU kids are clearly, academically really strong. They have to be to get into BYU. And so we push them to do both,” Loosli said. “All of our students have to take coding and programming, and then all of our students have to take the art.”
“So they end up coming out of our program probably a little more well balanced, but really well positioned to be there in that mid-ground.”
This approach has set countless BYU animation school graduates up for success. A BYU grad created Olaf for “Frozen,” another designed the characters for DreamWorks’ “Bad Guys” and another graduate created storyboards for “Puss in Boots: Last Wish,” said Loosli. The list goes on.
“I think what’s been good for BYU is just that we have found a good recipe in the way we built our program and the way it serves the kind of students BYU gets,” he said.