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Before applying, please make sure to familiarize yourself with Experimental Animation, faculty, facilities, curriculum, and student work.
You cannot make any changes to your application after it has been submitted.
Create an account to begin the application process. This is where you’ll complete each step in the application and receive updates on your application status. Add your personal background and academic history.
Experimental Animation promotes and supports animation as a fine art, and students in the program explore animation in varied contexts and forms, developing a personal aesthetic over a body of work. Experimental Animation is for artist-animators looking for an individualized curriculum that supports creative growth, enhancing technical skills, developing form and content, and collaborating with fellow students to create animated works.
In making admissions decisions, the program’s faculty looks for animation and other creative works that express a strong personal aesthetic in whatever media you choose. Applicants should submit portfolios that contain examples of unique, personal, expressive art that reflects their individual style, including samples of animation if at all possible. Group projects are discouraged because they are harder to assess. Class assignments such as technical exercises, CGI character rotations, or figure, landscape, still life, and perspective drawings are generally not acceptable. Please put time into your written statements, to reveal the breadth of your creative influences and your vision for what you would accomplish if you were enrolled in the program. It is important to explain why you are seeking experimentally oriented coursework.
Portfolios must be submitted using our application’s online portfolio submission.
If you experience technical difficulties while uploading your portfolio, please email admissions@calarts.edu.
An artist statement is very important in the admissions process and should answer the following three questions:
Answers may be uploaded to the written materials section of the CalArts application.
Submit the following written materials in your online application. Each of the following required materials should be uploaded as individual documents into the corresponding sections on the application.
Tell us about one person, place, thing, or event that has helped shape your personality and/or your art practice.
Two letters of recommendation are required.
All letters of recommendation should be received by the application deadline, so it’s important that you contact your recommenders months before. We ask that you submit the requests for your letters of recommendation through the online application, as it will allow you to track when we receive your requested letters.
Only if this is not possible, you may download the Letter of Recommendation Form (PDF) and have your recommender send their letters by mail to the Office of Admissions. Please choose only one method--either through the online application (preferred) or by mail--per recommender. Letters of recommendation will not be accepted via credentialing services such as Parchment or Naviance.
Mailed letters of recommendation should be sent to:
CalArts Office of Admissions
24700 McBean Pkwy.
Valencia, CA 91355
United States of America
Letters of recommendation must be written in English or accompanied by a certified English translated document.
MFA applicants who have passed the preliminary selection process will be notified in mid-February. At that time, candidates will be invited to visit CalArts in March for an interview day to meet faculty, staff, students, and fellow shortlisted applicants. The interview is required of invited applicants and is an important component of the final selection process.
Video chat interviews are available in exceptional cases; however, attendance at the in-person interview day is preferred. In addition to giving the faculty a better sense of who you are, it gives you an opportunity to see the school, and meet and talk to many members of the CalArts community.