1st Year Student Work - Jumps

In my studio animation class with the 1st years studying animation at Southbank, the students have just recently finished their first (and alas what may be their only) piece of animation that employs the old school full traditional animation process from beginning to end. I thought I would share some of my favourites out of those that have posted their work on their blog so far. Considering that in many cases this was the students very first full key frame animation with a character there is some good stuff here. I'm confident that we are raising the bar with each passing year :)

Student Blog Stuff 01

One of the great things about getting all of our students to make a public blog is going to be that I can point out those who I think are doing well. So every now and then I will make a post linking to some of my favourite work over the last few weeks.

The first year students are just approaching the end of their motion principles section, lots of falling things, bouncing things and emotional things. For the first time I have also incorporated a tour of our major software packages while we are at it. The hope is that students can start to visualize the different possibilities associated with the different programs.

Nathan demonstrating weight through timing in After FX.

Shane's happy jumping pole in Maya

Brendan's traditionally keyframe animated falling tree.
Ben's traditionally keyframe animated falling tree.

In addition to her assessment work AZ has posted some beautiful artwork on her blog (mmmm colour harmonies)


Meanwhile I've had the second year students pumping out some 3D character animation. I think that last year I let the 3D classes get to bogged down in technical stuff, I don't think I had managed to communicate just how immediate and empowering programs like Maya can be, so we started off this year by doing some quick exercises. These are scenes that only have about 6 major key frames and were animated in a couple of hours.

Dan's jumping guy.




Rosie's look and react.



David's look and react.





Stay tuned for more exciting installments :)