Great news out of the Masters of Digital Media (MDM) program at the Centre for Digital Media last week. Academy Award-winning animation pioneer and games industry veteran Glenn Entis was appointed to its faculty and Jeffrey Ventrella joins the faculty as the new instructor for the “Building Virtual Worlds” course.
As Adjunct Professor, Entis will provide guidance and leadership for the continuing development of collaborative design skills of the MDM students. Entis was formerly CEO of Dreamworks Interactive where he worked with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg on a number of video games including the first title in the successful Medal of Honor series. In 2000, when Dreamworks was acquired by EA, Entis joined the gaming giant and went on to become their Chief Visual and Technology Officer.
Ventrella is an artist, artificial life researcher and former Second Life developer as well as an Internet entrepreneur. In 1997, Ventrella co-founded There.com and as the principle inventor of that virtual world he was the principle designer of avatar centric communication. As Senior Developer at Linden Lab, the birthplace of Second Life, he invented expressive technologies such as Flexies, FollowCam, and Puppeteering.
Launched in September 2007, the Masters of Digital Media (MDM) Program is an innovative, full-time professional master’s degree offering students team-based experiences focused on project learning in close collaboration with the international digital media industry. Housed in the Centre for Digital Media at Great Northern Way Campus, the MDM is a 20-month program and includes a paid summer internship. The Great Northern Way Campus (GNWC) is a collaborative educational innovation that combines the strengths of four leading academic institutions: the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design and the British Columbia Institute of Technology.
