Cogswell College, a leading educational institution offering a unique curriculum fusing Digital Art, Engineering and Entrepreneurship, has announced that students within its Digital Art & Animation program have developed and created 3D animatable rigs depicting 12 original digital characters, through the program's in-house character project: "Avatarah."
To download these 3D rigs, visit: http://www.cogswell.edu/modeling-rigs/project-avatarah-free-rigs.php#sthash.VCo7Ksuu.dpbs
ALSO: For "Avatarah" support, requests and comments, please
Email: avatarah.cogswell@gmail.com
The first character from "Avatarah," "Cogswell the Dragon," has just been released via open source data to the general public. A few of the additional 11 original characters will be exclusively for usage by Cogswell College students, but the school does plan to release a number of additional character 3D rigs in the near future, in efforts to draw the general public back to the Cogswell College website for download. Students around the world regularly seek interesting rigs to download, so that they can use them within their own portfolios as they animate original content based on these rigs.
The new 3D animatable rigs from Cogswell College are of the highest quality, and are expected to stand out in the middle of the vast world of "freebie" rigs available online. In addition to the first character, "Cogswell the Dragon," additional characters from Cogswell will include "Toothy" the Saber toothed tiger, "Snowy" the dog and "Thunder" the horse, "Chippy" the squirrel, "Chubby" the rabbit, "Flappy" the bird, and several others.
Jonali Bhattacharyya, Assistant Professor with Cogswell College's Digital Art & Animation program, and formerly with noted game companies Secret Level and Factor5, spearheads the Cogswell student-developed 3D animatable rigs project in concert with game industry professional Sergio Sykes. Sykes, currently with EMOTIV and formerly with Massive Black, is involved with the Cogswell program as an industry rigging artist and Adjunct Faculty Member.
Regarding this program, Bhattacharyya said, "For the past year or so, there has been a constant demand for exciting new 3D animation rigs that can be accessed online. Our goal with project 'Avatarah' is to have Cogswell students create an identity of their own within the rapidly exploding world of animation. Our initial 12 characters have all been designed, modeled, textured and rigged by Cogswell College students. This is a huge platform by which our students can really start to get their names out there!"
About COGSWELL COLLEGE
Designed as a "fiercely collaborative, living laboratory," Cogswell College is located in the heart of the legendary Silicon Valley in Sunnyvale, California. The school is a WASC accredited, four-year institution of higher education with a specialized curriculum that fuses digital arts, audio technology, game design, engineering and entrepreneurship.
Numerous alumni of Cogswell College have secured prominent positions within the entertainment, videogame, technology, computer, animation, and motion graphics industries throughout California and beyond. Several of these alumni have established careers with such high profile companies as Activision, DreamWorks Animation, Disney, Electronic Arts, Pixar, and Microsoft Game Studio. Many other alumni have launched their own creative ventures.
Recent Cogswell alumni were members of the Academy Award-winning production teams which worked on the blockbuster films "Frozen" and "Life of Pi." Some of the other well-known consumer projects to which Cogswell alumni have contributed include the feature films "The Boxtrolls" and "The Avengers," and the popular videogames "Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare," "Halo 4" and "Battlefield Hardline."
Additionally, animated short films conceived and produced by Cogswell students have gone on to win prestigious awards, including those presented by the California International Animation Festival, the Colorado Film Festival, the Oregon Film Festival, the Miami Film Festival, the Philadelphia Film & Animation Festival, the San Jose Short Film Festival, and Canada's International Film Festival.
Cogswell College is located at 1175 Bordeaux Drive, Sunnyvale, California, 94089. For more information, please call 1-800-264-7955 or visit: http://www.cogswell.edu/
