Animation Courses After 12th: Courses, Fees & Career Options

Animation courses after 12th come in three sizes. There are short certificate courses of 3 to 6 months, professional diplomas of 1 to 2 years, and full degrees like B.Sc. Animation (3 years) or B.Des (4 years). Your stream doesn’t matter, and most private institutes don’t ask for a minimum percentage. If you want to be working in a studio within two years, we’d point you to a 12-to-24-month diploma in 3D animation or VFX, and we’d tell you to spend every month of it building your showreel.

What exactly is an animation course after 12th?

An animation course after 12th trains you to make moving pictures for films, cartoons, games, ads and e-learning videos. You learn to sketch and plan scenes, then build and move them in 2D or 3D software. At the end, you walk out with a showreel, and that reel is what studios look at. We teach these courses at MAAC Noida Extension, in Galaxy Diamond Plaza, Greater Noida West, along with VFX, graphic design, and video editing.

Certificate, diploma or degree: which animation course after 12th should you pick?

A certificate is 3 to 6 months spent on one thing, say 3D modelling in Maya. It’s a good way to find out whether you like the work. By itself, though, it rarely gets anyone a studio job.

A diploma is where most of our students end up. It runs for 12 or 24 months and takes you through the whole process, from sketching and modelling to lighting, rendering and finally the showreel. Degrees move slower. A B.Sc or BA in Animation is three years, a B.Des at an IIT or NID is four, and a good part of that time goes into theory and general subjects.

In most families, the degree is the sticking point. Parents from Gaur City and Crossings Republik ask us the same thing almost every week: what if he needs a graduation certificate later for a government job or an MBA? It’s a fair question. What we usually suggest is a diploma for the skills and a recognised distance degree alongside it, and our animation course in Noida Extension has an Open University tie-up for exactly that.

Can Commerce and Arts students do animation after 12th?

Yes, and we have Commerce and Arts students in every batch. For animation courses after 12th commerce or arts, private institutes (ours included) don’t ask for a particular stream or percentage. What helps in class is patience and the habit of noticing how things move. Accountancy and physics don’t come into it.

Entrance exams work a little differently. For UCEED 2026, students with Physics, Chemistry and Maths could apply to all seven participating institutes, while Commerce, Arts and non-PCM Science students could apply to four: IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Hyderabad and IIT Indore, as per IIT Bombay’s UCEED 2026 eligibility page. UCEED 2027 is on 17 January 2027, and the rules for that year will be on the same site.

Take a case we see often. A Commerce boy from Greater Noida West has two sketchbooks full of characters, and the family keeps saying “B.Com kar lo, safe rahega.” He joins our 3D diploma anyway and nearly quits in the second month, because Maya feels impossible at first. By the end of the year he has a short walk cycle good enough to get him called for a studio test, where he spends most of the time fixing a rig and nobody mentions his board marks.

2D, 3D or VFX: which is the best animation course after 12th for you?

For most students, 3D animation is the best animation course after 12th, because films, OTT shows and games mostly use 3D now, and that’s where studios hire the most. Go for 2D if you already love drawing and don’t mind slower, frame-by-frame work. VFX suits students who’d rather work on real camera footage than build characters.

A 2D animation course after 12th is mostly drawing, frame after frame, so it depends heavily on your hand. A 3D animation course after 12th is more technical. You model a character, give it texture, rig it with a skeleton, light the scene and then animate it, and in our 3D animation programme we do all of that in Maya and Blender.

VFX and animation courses after 12th often get lumped together, though the daily work differs. A VFX artist spends the day on real footage, removing wires, adding smoke or placing an actor somewhere that doesn’t exist, using Nuke and After Effects. We’ve also noticed that students who’ve been editing reels for their college fest or a cousin’s wedding pick up compositing fast.

You can see how our VFX courses at MAAC Noida Extension are laid out before you decide. Still torn? Some students start with a short graphic design course to get comfortable with Photoshop and Illustrator, and both tools come up again later in 2D work.

How much do animation courses after 12th cost in Noida and Greater Noida?

At MAAC Noida Extension, short skill courses start at Rs 25,000 and the full career programmes go up to Rs 4,00,000 (2026 fees), and every programme can be paid in EMIs. Where you fall in that range depends on the course length and how much of production it covers.

Private universities charge B.Sc Animation and B.Des fees semester by semester, so add up all three or four years before you compare. For NID, applications for B.Des 2027-28 close on 30 November 2026 on the NID admissions portal, and the fee is listed in the brochure there. Verify current figures at admissions.nid.edu and uceed.iitb.ac.in before acting.

Here’s something that happens more than it should. A family picks an institute because the first month is cheaper, then gets a separate bill in the second year for the showreel project. So when parents sit with our counsellor, the first thing we do is list every charge on one sheet, EMI interest included, and you should ask any institute for the same sheet. If a course comes bundled with a distance degree, search the university’s name on the UGC Distance Education Bureau portal for your admission year before you sign anything.

Do you need drawing skills for an animation course after 12th?

Not as much as people think. Drawing matters a lot in 2D and storyboarding, but for 3D and VFX it’s more about noticing how things move (how someone shifts their weight before standing up, how a dupatta falls) and having the patience to redo a shot ten times.

The software you’ll pick up in class. 3D and VFX students work in Maya, Blender, After Effects and Nuke, and if you lean towards design and video, the APDMC digital media programme covers Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and Audition.

One tip we give everyone who comes in during the board exam break is to keep a sketchbook and draw someone at home every day. Draw your mother cooking or your brother slumped on his phone, and don’t worry if it looks rough. By the first class, you’ll read poses much faster.

What jobs can you get after an animation course?

Your first job will be at trainee or junior level. For 3D students that usually means modeller, texturing artist, rigging artist or junior animator. VFX students tend to start as roto artists or compositors, and a lot of 2D and design students get hired as motion graphics artists.

Location matters more than students expect. Around Delhi NCR, a lot of the animation jobs after 12th are with digital agencies and e-learning companies, which hire motion graphics and 2D artists. Many of the big VFX studios are in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Pune, so if feature films are the goal, be ready to move for your first job.

The government has also opened its own institute for this sector. According to the Press Information Bureau (2025), the Indian Institute of Creative Technologies in Mumbai, set up with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, started with eight courses in Animation, Comics and XR, six in Gaming and four in Post Production.

You’ll notice we haven’t put salary figures here. Private studios don’t publish official pay scales, so any number would be a guess, and if an institute promises you a salary, ask to see the offer letters. We also get a lot of Science students from Ghaziabad who’ve dropped a JEE attempt and join VFX half-heartedly, as a backup. The ones who get called for studio tests are usually the ones who start posting breakdowns of their shots online around the eighth month, so they already have a link ready when a studio asks for samples. For more on each role, see our guide on 3D animation career scope.

How do you choose the best animation institute after 12th?

Visit at least two centres before you decide. This is what we’d check if our own younger brother or sister were joining.

1. Ask to see showreels from students who finished in the last two years.
2. Check how many hours a week you’ll get on a lab computer.
3. Sit in a demo class and watch how teachers correct someone’s work.
4. Get every fee in writing, including EMI interest and the final project charge.
5. Look at their recent placement records and ask what role each student got.

Drop in during class time to see how crowded the labs are.

Final Thoughts

Before you pay for any course, try making something small. Spend two weeks on free Blender tutorials or with a sketchbook, and animate a ball bouncing or a person walking across the frame. You’ll know quite quickly whether you enjoy the fiddly part.

Then bring whatever you made to MAAC Noida Extension at Galaxy Diamond Plaza, Greater Noida West. Our counsellor will go through it with you, suggest a course and give you the full fee breakdown on paper. Call +91 7011 098 633 or fill the enquiry form on our website to book a demo class.

If you’re also curious about editing, read our piece on video editing career scope in India.

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