As art director for the animation company Tippett Studio, CCA alumnus Nate Fredenburg (Printmaking 1993) speaks with authority when he assures all you art students out there: The time you're spending in foundation courses -- drawing, sculpting, painting, color theory -- is time well spent. "Back when I was a work-study student, one of my jobs was to call prospective students and explain to their parents the value of an arts education. At the time, I only had anecdotal evidence. Now I say this from firsthand experience."

Even in a business as high-tech as his, he says, "Some of our most effective artists come from traditional art backgrounds. A lot of college animation programs gloss over that -- they're more task or software-centric, and they forget about training an artist's eye. At Tippett, we invest time in training people on the tools we use, because we use a lot of proprietary software. What we don't have time for is teaching people how to see."

Fredenburg generously spends a lot of time career coaching at art schools around the Bay Area (not just CCA) and reports that students in fields outside the strict confines of media art frequently give him a confused look when he invites them to imagine themselves in the business of film or animation. But there are actually fewer barriers to it than they realize. "There is still a noticeable disconnect between traditional and digital media. But I tell them, the skills you're building now are applicable beyond your discipline."

Fredenburg's own career path serves as further evidence of this. "At CCA I worked as a shop tech, cleaning up in the evenings and keeping the shop running. It was a unique position, helping other students, and it made me consider teaching." So, after graduating, he attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for his MFA. "But the harsh realities of teaching soon became clear. I realized I needed to look for other options. So I came back to the Bay Area and lucked out in the dot-com boom. I worked for a bunch of unorthodox startups, like Xulu Entertainment, where I designed environments and vehicles for two-person motion simulators. Basically it's a big box that you climb into, with screens in front of you taking up 120 degrees of the visual field, and the box is on hydraulics. You drive around virtual worlds. It used a sophisticated physics engine and cutting-edge technology to simulate flying and driving."

Then he moved to Tippett. "A large part of the appeal of printmaking, for me, is the way it combines aesthetic and technical elements. And that's followed me into digital. I was hired at Tippett despite having no film background. They saw I was technically minded and good at problem solving, so they took a chance on me." In eight years, he's moved up from texture painter to art director. "It's certainly a challenge. Art direction is kind of a composite job, with a huge part of the responsibilities involving communication among different groups of people who think in different modes. I straddle the communication gaps between the production staff, technicians, and artists by being able to convey ideas verbally that are related to visual problem solving."

Founded in 1984 by Phil Tippett and formerly based in a garage, Tippett Studio now employs around 200 artists and technicians and is based in Berkeley. Tippett originally made his name in the late 1970s and early 1980s with his stop-motion work on the first Star Wars trilogy. His subsequent work on Jurassic Park, released in 1993, made him a contender with the CGI generation. Since then, the firm's contributions to Hellboy, Charlotte's Web, The Matrix, Constantine, Starship Troopers, and The Twilight Saga, to name only a few, have established it as a heavy in the field of character animation, although Fredenburg describes the company as still "small and scrappy. Phil's quite a character in the industry, while his partner, Jules Roman, handles the day-to-day business. The two of them have kept Tippett craft oriented, which is no small feat for a business in our industry. I've learned a lot from Phil and Jules."

Fredenburg's advice for tomorrow's graduates? "Network and stay open to unexpected opportunities. Fine artists tend to work in isolation, or at least they imagine themselves working in that manner, but you must resist the temptation. The relationships you establish in school, in particular, can serve you well later. Don't underestimate those relationships. Your friends today can help you along on your work adventure."

When the CCA Alumni/Student Mentorship Program launched in 2010, Fredenburg signed up immediately to be a mentor. "I'm really glad CCA is doing this. Not many schools invest time in mentoring, and it's great to connect students with people operating in the working world. It's easy to be enclosed when you're in school. Yes, it's a wonderful gift to be able to think all the time about being an artist, but at some point you need to stick your head out of the bubble.

"When I was at CCA, there were three guys who ran the printmaking faculty: Jack Ford, Ken Rignall, and Charlie Gill. They were the critical instructors for me, and the most important was Charlie Gill. We established a nice relationship. At some point, around 1992, we were asked to talk to the Board of Trustees about mentoring, and we just looked at each other and said, 'Huh?' There was nothing formalized about our relationship; somebody had just recognized how effectively Charlie fostered talent."

These days, Fredenburg keeps more than busy outside of work raising his two boys (aged nine and eleven) and revisiting, after a decade's hiatus, some personal fine-art projects. "Having grown up in the Central Valley, in Modesto, I'm interested in the boundary between the natural environment and the environments people make. I recently started to combine the computer background that I've evolved over the last 10 years with my printmaking experience. I use aerial images and data to make paintings on the computer, then turn them into laser-cut plates to make prints."