Learn to be an Animator. Part 1. "Good habits"
What you'll learn
- By the end of this Course Students will have good understanding of Animation process, they will work in stages: "Layout", "Blocking", "Rough Animation", "Polish". They will Animate simple Pendulum, 2-section Pendulum and a chain link. After completing this course Students will be strong enough to take my Next course: "Human Locomotion: walk, run, sneak"
Requirements
- To take this Course Students need Maya Student version, available from Autodesk free of charge. You'll need to fill out student application and download the software.
Description
During this course, by repeating exercises, explained in the Videos, Students will learn Animation Work Flow by using:
- Projects.
- Incremental save.
- Graph Editor as their main Animation tool, working with splines and tangents.
- Time Slider and Copy/Past/Delete functions.
- Drag and Drop Tool
- Extremes and Breakdowns
It should take from 1 to 2 weeks to complete the course.
"Learn to be an Animator" is 100%video, easy to follow, step by step instructions of gradually increasing complexity. students are required to repeat the manipulations while they watch the video, and then practice on their own several times before taking another video.
It consists of two sections.
- Preparatory procedures: making projects, learning to Save, undo, delete/copy/paste etc.
- Animation Exercises with pendulums of increasing complexity.
Who this course is for:
- This Course is designed for both, complete beginners and those, who did some Animation in Maya, but get stuck in "Polish" stages. Those who want to learn Human and Animal motion, will benefit the most from it. No special knowledge is requirred at this stage.
Course content
- Preview02:23
- 07:50Navigation in Maya
- 10:55Creating a project, Incremental save, Playblast
- 08:37Simple Pendulum. Channel box, Frame range, copy/paste, delete
- 08:06Graph Editor, tangents, fixing the splines
Instructor
![Michael Berenstein](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 64 64"%3E%3C/svg%3E){kind=avatar}
- 4.7 Instructor Rating
- 18 Reviews
- 204 Students
- 2 Courses
I was born in Minsk, former USSR, where, after receiving degree in Architecture, was hired by Belorussian Film Studio as Camera Assistant, but found myself helping with props for Stop Motion Shorts. Learned in-betweening, clean-up and worked on Cell Animated shorts. After graduating from Moscow Courses for Animators worked on various Shorts as Stop Motion and Cut-out Character Animator.
Perestroika freed more opportunities and in 1990 I made my first Animated short "The end of cone rider", which was accepted to be shown at Moscow International Animation Festival.
Unfortunate events in former USSR made me decide to move to the USA in 1991.
I've been employed at Will Vinton Claymation, Colossal, Danger Production, Pixar, Tippett, PDI, ILM.
Throughout of my Animation Career I used various Animation techniques:
Cell Animaiton, Cut-outs, Stop-Motion, Clay on Glass, Back-lit Sand on Glass, Anime Studio, Maya.
In my teaching at De Anza Community College and Academy of Art University I try to engage students during class by giving them short exercises, that prepare them for homework. For example, prior to lip-sync assignment I demonstrate and have them do short one word lip-sync shot.
I'm finding myself helping students in areas away from my expertise: rigging, storyboarding, sound, lighting. To prepare myself for these tasks, I took rigging, lighting and modeling classes at Academy of Art.
My Demo Reel, shorts, rigging and modeling can be seen on my Blog, please follow the link:
www.michaelberensteinblog.blogspot.com/