Twelve Random Developments and Other Stuff

By the end of 1980 I knew that I'd be entering the Ph.D program in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences at Northwestern University. In retrospect it's perhaps surprising that I'd satisfied all my course requirements in the Business School at Loyola University Chicago and that two free electives remained. Innumerable interactions with Loyola are to that University's credit: one is that they put no obstacles in my way for transferring elective credits in from courses at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). And so I signed up for Animation I with Byron Grush and Drawing for Animation I with Dennis Wille. I remember being exceedingly nervous when I showed up at SAIC to register and pay for those courses as I had no portfolio, only a (one hopes) coherent verbal explanation of my interest in the subject. The gentleman seated at the film department table signed off on my application. That was my first meeting with Fred Camper