B2 Skills & Production

Previsualization is the process of making a stripped-down version of your film/animation sequence before actually making it. Usually made within the 3D program, a previs is animated very basically, just enough to get the story across.     This time, we jumped straight into the task, instead of doing any prior research because the task […]

Similarly to the structure of the previous couple of 3D lessons, we recapped a key part of one of the old sessions, learned new skills and/or techniques, and then spent the remainder of the time modeling something, most likely using said skills. Firstly, the recap. We were tasked with making a spiral staircase, to remind […]

So far, we have learned about pose-to-pose and straight ahead animation, and how to work with each method to produce a 2D animation. However, there is a way to combine both and potentially speed up the process and/or have more control over what is drawn. The Ideal Animation Workflow: A way to blend pose-to-pose and […]

In this 3D session, we learned about the symmetry and mirror functions and Maya and modelled the Utah Teapot. Before we got to the main part of the lesson, however, we addressed the right way to delete edge loops, since a lot of people, including myself, have been deleting them incorrectly and causing problems for […]

In the industry, model sheets, also known as character boards or character sheets, are used extensively in pre-production and production in order to standardize the appearance, poses, and gestures of a character. They showcase the character from different perspectives to achieve a consistent look and scale in the animation, comic or video game and are […]

In this lesson of 3D modeling, we learned a few new tools/techniques, the main one being the duplicate special. Bevel Edge   The first demo was about how to patch a hole and bevel, both useful skills which seemed to have been skipped over by accident. I will be relaying the demo as if giving […]

For this 2D workshop, we were going to focus on breakdown frames and how we can use them to enhance our animations. The breakdown frame in traditional linear animation is used for the transformation from one keyframe to another.     In great animations, however, is a tool used to create a unique shape for […]

Box Modeling Recap   In order to develop my skills in 3D and in box modeling, I recreated the same saber as last time, trying to be faster and more efficient this time around. Overall, I used the same techniques and skills as last time, so I won’t be going over every detail in the […]

For this 2D animation lesson, we focused on animation charts and how they are used to plan an action. First, we quickly went over the three types of keyframes, which are used quite a lot in charts: Keypose/Keyframe (K), Breakdowns (B) and In-Betweens (I). The letters for each of these are used to label the […]

In our continuation of 3D modeling, we next learned to box model and extrude. Before that, however, for a quick recap and a way to get into the modeling mindset, we were given the task of creating a character in Maya.   Voxel Task   Our reference was the voxel versions of the characters Tin […]