China Academy of Art

Established in 1928, the China Academy of Art is a national comprehensive university with a long-standing heritage in fine arts education. While traditional visual arts remain central to the institution, its digital, interactive, and time-based media studies are concentrated within specialized academic divisions, notably the School of Animation and Games and the Shanghai Institute of Design.

CAA initiated its animation curriculum as a department in 2002 before earning designation as a National Animation Teaching and Research Base in 2004. In 2022, the university restructured this unit into an independent School of Animation and Games, separating it from the School of Film Art. This structural separation established real-time rendering, interactive media, and game design as autonomous disciplines alongside narrative film and cinematography.

Curriculum and Departmental Structure

The School of Animation and Games organizes its academic programs around three core departments:

• Animation: Encompasses both 2D and 3D pipelines, integrating traditional aesthetics and visual modeling with modern narrative techniques.
• Interactive Media and Games: Centers on game design, digital interactive art, virtual environments, and real-time engine workflows.
• Illustration and Comics: Emphasizes sequential narrative, character design, and publication-ready visual storytelling.

Coursework actively connects theoretical aesthetics with technical execution. In courses such as World Building within the Interactive Media major, students work with Unreal Engine and real-time pipelines, bridging conceptual design with the technical demands of interactive authoring and virtual production.

Practical Work and Graduate Exhibitions

Curricula across animation, film, and digital media require comprehensive studio projects and portfolio development. Graduating cohorts present their independent and collaborative work during major public events, including the Zhijiang International Youth Art Festival and the annual CAA Graduation Season. These exhibitions span physical gallery spaces across Hangzhou and digital showcases, presenting thousands of graduate works across interactive games, digital animation, stop-motion, and short films.

Distributed Campuses

CAA conducts its teaching across several campuses located in Hangzhou and Shanghai. In Hangzhou, traditional and foundational arts are anchored at the Nanshan and Xiangshan campuses, while the Liangzhu Campus serves as an international design hub connecting creative practice with science and business. In Shanghai, the Zhangjiang Campus houses the Shanghai Institute of Design, focusing on art and technology, media design, and commercial creative production.