Three DAVE Grads won big at The Game Awards held on December 10, 2020. Aaron Juntunen, Cheick Kamagate and Julian Fitzpatrick all worked on The Last of Us Part II, the sequel to the 2013 hit The Last of Us. Aaron as an Animator for studio Naughty Dog, LLC, Cheick as a Cinematic Animator for Sony Interactive Entertainment and Julian as a CG Supervisor for the Cinematic trailer. The game took home 7 awards in total including the award for Game of the Year. Other awards received were: Best Game Direction, Best Narrative, Best Audio Design, Best Performance, Innovation in Accessibility and Best Action/Adventure.
The sequel knocked CDPR’s Witcher 3 off of the top after 5 years of being the most awarded game in history. Within 3 days of it’s June 19, 2020 release date, The Last of Us Part II immediately went on to smash records with 4 million copies sold, making it the fastest selling Playstation exclusive to date. As shown on gameawards.net, The Last of Us Part II currently has 285 awards to its name. 181 of them are from media outlets and 104 of them are readers’ choice awards.
Game Production Diploma ProgramThe Game Production diploma program is designed to give each student practical exposure to complete each of the major disciplines needed for game art content creation. This includes games produced by both major game studios working on AAA titles and independent production houses working on mobile gaming and other applications. Students will learn the proper tools and techniques used by industry professionals.Game Production Degree ProgramThe Bachelor’s Degree in Game Production consists of an additional 18 months post diploma and an additional 60 credits. The credits are broken down into 36 Credit Hours of General Education Courses and 24 Credit Hours of Elective Courses.
About The DAVE School
The DAVE School was founded on June 8, 2000 by two Industry executives looking to create #CareerReady artists with a practical animation school. Today, The DAVE School offers specialized training in Visual Effects and Game Production with extensive practice under industry level supervision.
Located on the backlot of Universal Studios Florida®, The DAVE School has an 18,000 square foot facility that includes learning and interactive labs, a dedicated Virtual and Real-Time production stage, a Vicon motion capture system, 3D printing and VR/AR labs and secure student access 7 days a week.
NUC University (NUC) is an accredited institution and a member of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) www.msche.org. NUC’s NUC University – IBC Technical Division (NUC-IBC), NUC University – Florida Technical College (NUC-FTC), and The Digital Animation & Visual Effects School (The DAVE School) is included in this accreditation. NUC’s accreditation status is Accreditation Reaffirmed. The Commission’s most recent action on the institution’s accreditation status on 2019 was to reaffirm accreditation. MSCHE is an institutional accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA)