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Animation Option - Film and Animation BFA

Rochester Institute of Technology’s School of Film and Animation is among the top 25 film schools in the United States, according to the most recent list published by The Hollywood Reporter. RIT was ranked number 21 this year, marking a continued rise in rank from previous years.

RIT’s School of Film and Animation has been continuously recognized as being among the best film and animation schools in the country. The latest recognition comes from Variety magazine’s 2026 Education Impact Report.

Cartoon Brew interviews Christine A. Banna, assistant professor in the School of Film and Animation, about her creative process for animating Moira Smiley's "Haiku" music video.

Forward-thinking faculty; curriculum that fuses technology, the arts, and design; and a legacy of priming students with a maker mentality helped RIT’s School of Film and Animation maintain its place on TheWrap’s list of Top 50 Film Schools of 2025.

Ricky Figueora taking over as the new director of RIT's School of Film and Animation headlines exciting promotions and additions to the College of Art and Design faculty.

Animation is most often viewed on a screen. But when animators break traditional rules and abandon the “almighty rectangle,” Christine Banna says artistic magic can happen.

The Character Mosaic Project is a recently revived initiative that aims to build a library of 3D characters — diverse in their ethnicities and backgrounds — that are open source for animators to seamlessly use as a broader range of subjects in their films. The project is led by Kevin Bauer, graduate director of the film and animation MFA program.

Accomplished alumni, creative technology research, and interdisciplinary program offerings set RIT’s School of Film and Animation apart from others on The Hollywood Reporter’s 2025 top film schools list. RIT was ranked number 22 this year, a leap ahead from the school’s rank in 2024.

Each fall semester, RIT in LA students attend classes and gain work experience while living on the West Coast. Students come home with experiences that will help pave the way to a career in the entertainment industry.

Friendships formed at RIT helped lay the foundation for Apartment D, an alumni-owned indie stop-motion animation studio. Apartment D specializes in content that packs a visual punch and evokes the unbridled joy of watching Saturday morning cartoons.

The School of Film and Animation's Radical Cinema Workshop class gives students an opportunity to focus on experimental and alternative filmmaking methods.

Student’s access to state-of-the-art facilities and software, impressive faculty with industry experience, and a wealth of opportunities for hands-on learning before graduation has earned RIT’s School of Film and Animation (SOFA) more recognition as one of the top animation schools in the nation.