Are your students just starting out on their animation journey? We believe that following our course curriculum in this order through the Animawarriors Stream will give them the very best experience.
● Basics 1 : Bouncing Ball Exercises
● Basics 2: Walk, Jump and Dance
● Basics 3: Run, Clear the Gap and Fight
● Basics 4: Standing Up and Heavy Lifting
● Posing Foundations 1: Line of action, silhouette and staging
● Posing Foundations 2: Facial Posing
● Posing Foundations 3: Storytelling Posing
Assumptions
● Basic computer literacy
● Desire to animate
Prerequisites
● Basic understanding and knowledge of Maya including viewport and navigation controls
● For students with no prior experience in Maya, we recommend starting with our free course Essential Maya + Animbot Fundamentals
Duration
● 8-12 hours of stream per course
Interactions
● Follow along curriculum
● We recommend students complete the exercises and assignments within each course to practically apply the skills learnt
● Your students also have the option to purchase eFeedback sessions where their work will be critiqued 1:1 and they’ll be offered personalised feedback on their progress
● If your students upgrade to “online courses” they will have full access to the assignments set in class including access to open feedback, where they can have their assignments reviewed and be offered personalised feedback on their progress
Learning Pathway
Course Description
Basics
Posing
Objectives of Basics 1: Bouncing Ball
8 hr
Objectives of Posing Foundations 1: Line of action, silhouette & staging
6 hr
● Understanding the basic concepts to enable you to start building an animated scene and how to use all the main tools for the bouncing ball exercises.
● Understanding the main principles of animation such as timing, spacing, anticipation, breakdowns, curves and trajectories.
● Understanding the importance and all the steps to create a workflow ‘pose to pose’ in stepped mode.
● Understanding all the intrinsics required to create an animation from scratch.
● At the end of the course students should be able to plan and complete a simple bouncing ball animation.
Objectives of Basics 2: Walk, Jump & Dance
10 hr
● Understanding the fundamentals of character posing (what makes a pose strong, why is that important and how do we use poses to communicate).
● Developing your skills in posing through the use of silhouette, lines of action and staging.
● Developing your skills in breakdowns by building poses for transitions between key poses.
● Developing your skills in blocking by using your key poses and breakdowns to lay the foundation of your shot.
● At the end of the course students should be able to pose any full body character to create rapport and believability with the audience.
Objectives of Posing Foundations 2: Facial Posing
12 hr
● Understanding the basic principles so you can set the foundations of posing, workflow and breakdowns.
● Understanding the main (key or golden) poses for all animated walk cycles .The contact pose, the passing pos, the hig pos and the low pos.
● Developing your blocking and breakdown skills for your character to complete a walk cycle, to jump and to dance.
● At the end of the course students should be able to plan and create a simple (vanilla) walk, jump in place and pose to pose dance animations using a simple rig.
● Understanding and applying the basic principles of posting facial expressions using the eye mask and the mouth.
● Developing your skills in the fundamentals of posing the eye mask and mouth.
● Developing your skills for facial posing to represent neutrality and the main emotions (joy, fear, anger, sadness, excitement, rage, surprise)
● Understanding and developing your skills in phonemes and facial posing for acting.
● At the end of the course students should be able to pose any facial expression to express the character’s emotional intention.
Objectives of Basics 3:
Run, Clear the Gap & Fight
12 hr
Objectives of Posing Foundations 3: Storytelling Posing
12 hr
● Understanding the basic principles of moving a character from point A to point B with a focus on the creative aspects, techniques and principles of “in-betweens” (including arcs, overlaps and anticipations)
● Developing your blocking and breakdown skills for your character to complete a run cycle, to jump a gap and to complete fight moves
● At the end of the course students should be able to plan and create a running, jumping over a gap and fight animations using a simple rig
● Understanding and applying the design principles of appeal in full body poses.
● Developing your skills in using in full body emotions to represent the main emotions (joy, sadness, rage and fear )
● Understanding and developing your skills in video referencing to extract ideas and key poses.
● Understanding and developing your skills in entertainment value and contrast related to poses.
● At the end of the course students should be able to pose any full body character in an entertaining, appealing and emotional way.
Objectives of Basics 4: Standing Up & Heavy Lifting
12 hr
● Understanding and applying the essential principles of energy and weight of living things.
● Developing your skills in combining posing, appeal, timing and spacing to add a sense of grounding between the different parts of the body.
● Developing your skills to animate movements linked to standing up, weight change and heavy lifting.
● At the end of the course students should be able to plan and create animations of a simple rig standing up and lifting a weighted object.
